Retention Best Practices
I once taught at an institution that gave rewards to faculty who had the highest rate of retention for each quarter. I felt this was unfair because teachers who taught a class of 30 and had 1 student leave at the end of the quarter would have a higher percentage than one who had 5 students and lost 1. I felt that those who taught higher level courses with smaller class sizes were unfairly kept out of this reward system. Have any of you run into this. How would you deal with this issue.
To play devil's advocate, most attrition happens in the early part of a student's tenure at an institution. Drop out rates are usually much higher in the first term than the last as students sharpen their focus and intent. Advanced students are also far more likely to know about - and use - the support services that are available.
Government guidelines can serve a useful purpose, even when they are a response to disreputable behavior. Minimal acceptable standards are the starting place for positive thinking people to build programs that will serve the students and their future employers. And they provide the tools necessary to rid our industry of the bad guys.
For better or worse, we must function within government guidelines. If the institution is truely student oriented, the governing guidelines may be restrictive. Unfortunately, in many Vocational-ed. cases the guidelines were inacted after disreputable organizations duped students/parents out of lots of time and even more money. So government guideline are a neccessary part of the business and must be adhered too....
I would agree to say that this an unfair practice. As instructors, we do our best to prepare our students for real life in the areas of subjects. Life unfortunately, does not look at it like that. Often times it will throw a curve ball to someone. It is not the students fault that they may have to drop a class, it is not something that the instructor should have to pay for as well.
I feel this is a very unfair practice. Student evaluations are filled out at my school AFTER the student recieves their grade. My school is very fair about approaching the instructors when they recieve a poor evaluation because they know that the students looked at their grades prior to filling out the evaluation forms. MDB
We give out forms monthly for our students to fill out, we are rewarded for them, although the students are not required to fill them out. As long as we have something for our files for the corprate office to review as to how our classes are going that is sufficent.
