Building a Smarter University by Lane Jason E.;Zimpher Nancy L.;

Author:Lane, Jason E.;Zimpher, Nancy L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

COUNSELING BY PHONE

An underlying philosophy behind behavioral nudges, though rarely stated directly, is that nudges are paternalistic—they tell students what to do (albeit without coercion) rather than assume that they can figure out pathways to academic success on their own. That is a good thing, according to Stanford University economist Eric Bettinger. Together with a PhD student, Rachel Baker, Bettinger conducted a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research assessing the effectiveness of another for-profit service, InsideTrack, which provides telephone counseling to undergraduates in a directive way that seems to be good for them. As Bettinger and Baker asserted:

Oftentimes in higher education, we assume that students know how to behave. We assume that they know how to study, how to prioritize, and how to plan. However, given what we know about rates of college persistence, this is an assumption that should be called into question. (Bettinger & Baker, 2011, p. 18)

The largest coaching firm in the country, InsideTrack, works with more than 40 colleges, including public, private, and for-profit institutions. It advises students, many of them nontraditional undergraduates enrolled in online programs, about issues that can get in the way of their academic progress. The company’s philosophy is to try to connect students’ life goals with their schoolwork. Practical advice to students addresses common problems such as academic time management. But counselors (the firm employs more than 300, located primarily in Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; and Nashville) also spend significant time on practical, life-management skills that can make a big difference in whether students stay enrolled—helping students deal with challenges from financial problems to working around job schedules to childcare responsibilities.

The results of the Bettinger and Baker (2013) study, originally released in March 2011, were striking. After just six months of coaching, 8,000-plus students in the test group were five percentage points more likely to stay in school than the 5,500 in the control group. After one year, when the coaching program ended, a dismaying number of students—more than half—had dropped out, but the five percentage point spread between the coached and noncoached students remained, diminishing only slightly by the 24-month mark. Coaching had an impact regardless of a student’s SAT or ACT scores, Pell Grant status, or age, though male students were more likely to benefit than female students (Jaschik, 2011).

While phone calls are not as cutting edge as texts or smart phone applications, they share the key characteristic that makes technology nudges appealing: scalability. In-person counseling is more expensive—and in some cases less convenient for students—than advice delivered over the phone. A key finding of the Bettinger-Baker study is that the cost per student of telephone-coaching intervention was $500 per semester—not trivial but a figure that compares favorably to the modest retention effects achieved though measures such as paying undergrads to attend campus counseling or boosting need-based financial aid by $1,000 or more annually (Jaschik, 2011).

The cost savings of phone counseling are possible not just because of technology but because of specialization. Counseling typically is part of

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