August 1, 2007

Recruitment & Retention - August, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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Testing Required: True or False? A Look at the Trend to Test-Optional Admissions
By Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti
If a novelist or a filmmaker were to paint a picture of a diligent high school student attempting to gain entrance to the college of his or her choice, likely there would be at least one scene of the student studying for the college entrance exams. And for about 80 years, this has meant taking the SAT (or, after the 1950s, the ACT).

Six Affirmative-Action Policy Questions Campuses Should Consider
By Catherine Stover
As we were finalizing this issue of Recruitment & Retention, the Supreme Court ruled on two affirmative action cases for elementary and secondary schools. While the decision did not change the rulings established in the Grutter case, the various opinions did muddy the waters and leave the issue open for more scrutiny. So, we decided to check in with our resident legal expert, Dennis Black, JD, vice president for student affairs at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who writes Magna’s Campus Legal Briefing. We wanted to know what questions he recommends we should be asking at this point in time. – C.S.

Do You Know Who Is Dropping Out? Three Regression-Analysis Case Histories
By Lucie Lapovsky
The issue of student retention is one that plagues all colleges and universities. For the most part, retention has been viewed as an unwieldy institution-wide problem that has many causes. However, an analysis of data can often reveal where the problems lie. Here are three case histories about colleges that used regression analysis to improve retention rates.

Newswire
Net Generation: Here Connecting to the net.generation: What higher education professionals need to know about today’s students by Reynol Junco and Jeanna Mastrodicasa, the newest book published by NASPA, is a guide to understanding the group of people born after 1982, whom the authors call the “Net Generation.” “We hope this book will serve as a cultural guide to the Net Generation, like travel guides for people who are exploring new places,” the authors state in the preface.

Beyond College Rankings
By Kevin Crockett
As discussions about the merits and faults of the college rankings system continue to rage, it seems an appropriate time to consider how institutions of higher education might approach and respond to the rankings issue as they pursue their organizational missions and goals. Valid questions and concerns have been raised about aspects of the rankings process, including the weights assigned to various quality indicators, the potential for manipulation of survey data, and the reputational survey that asks administrators to rate hundreds of institutions with which they may or may not be familiar.

Why You Should Consider Offering College Tours That Go Nowhere
By Neal Raisman
One of the most important parts of the enrollment sequence is the parent/student campus tour, which is also one of the worst parts of the sequence for many potential students and parents Why? Perhaps the answer has to do with the fact that students and parents want different things. Parents, for example, wonder what the return on their investment is likely to be. Students, on the other hand, wonder if they will fit in and feel comfortable there while getting a good education.