Retention has become one of the primary methods universities use to measure success.
It’s not just because of incredibly tight funding or recruitment struggles, but also because regulatory processes in England like the Teaching Excellence Framework and Access and Participation Plans have retention baked into their core. Slowly, institutions are being pushed down the path to keep their students around as much as humanly possible.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that keeping people in higher education isn’t a good thing – of course it is. It can just have some unintended consequences, often because the pursuit of it actively contradicts another key university priority that it seems complimentary to.
Wellbeing
While mental health and wellbeing isn’t the definitive topic of discussion in HE like it was five years ago, universities still spend millions every year on these services that are in great demand from students.
Most of these services have been around for a while now and students have expectations that universities will provide at least some of these services – evidenced recently in the Student Academic Experience Survey.
But expectation is coupled with expense. In the current funding environment, that’s a tricky pill to swallow.
That’s why just about every institution in the country is dissecting this particular pill to see if they can spend less on wellbeing, whilst still delivering high retention rates.
For many institutions, their wellbeing services are being reviewed in light of financial pressures. Whilst they don’t usually raise funds directly for universities, by keeping a student from dropping out it keeps money flowing to the university. Multiply that on a scale of thousands, and you have entire services and departments designed to keep students studying. Every student that drops out is just that much more problematic for the balance sheets.
So what happens when the services that used to be designed to look after students become designed around keeping them studying? After all, I’m sure many colleagues would argue that the day to day function of these services hasn’t changed and it’s just their goals that are different.
My only argument against this is that intention has to be important, especially when helping the most vulnerable.
The only intention worth having in those situations is helping because you have a responsibility to. Any other motive risks dilution of the enormous kindness practitioners show to students day-to-day. What happens when a student expresses their desire to drop out to one of these services? Is the practitioner supposed to do their best to “retain” them?
We just can’t start calling these services or departments “retention and wellbeing” because even introducing the former priority as a parallel one to the latter represents the most dire of risks.
So sure, the everyday behaviour of wellbeing services hasn’t changed yet. But if we start calling them retention services, it’s not crazy to suggest that they will.
The way forward
The link between wellbeing and retention isn’t malformed or malicious. If students are happier, they are more likely to stick around. So with these two things in mind what do we do now?
Let’s return to a scenario I mentioned earlier where a student wants to drop out.
Not only would actively trying to keep them from doing so be detrimental to their wellbeing, in a lot of cases it might make them want to drop out more.
What happens when students feel listened to, when they feel safe to express what they want to even when it’s disadvantageous to the institution? They aren’t just going to be happier in the abstract sense, they’re going to feel like they belong somewhere. They might even be less likely to leave.
Some students are going to drop out no matter what approach you take, and in most of those cases it’s going to be best for them. But for the ones that are on the fence, the deliberate pursuit of retention might be counterproductive.
The way forward may be to refocus efforts on wellbeing support for its own sake – not just because it’s the right thing to do. By getting wellbeing right, it could lead to a better sense of belonging, clarity on institutional procedure and an inclusive environment. If we all agree that in an ideal world, education should be done for its own sake and commercialised as little as possible, then why can’t we say the same for wellbeing?
When it came time to talk about the wellbeing and retention review at my institution, we collectively agreed that retention shouldn’t really be included in the title.
If you’re thinking about how to refocus your wellbeing services with reduced resources, then why not take the opportunity to properly refocus them on wellbeing for its own sake. Shift the goal from increasing retention to increasing students’ sense of belonging. Examine the tension between reactive case work and proactive community building work and which is most effective where. Take a close look at how well you’re looking after the staff who are doing more work than ever with less resources than ever.
When you stop focussing on retention as a goal, you’ll open doors to looking at these important topics and more. This is the stuff that your institution is going to need to really consider as it feels the pinch, not how it keeps students here at all costs. After all, if you get all of this stuff right, who could say you aren’t giving students the best chance to succeed at university?
