The 2020s will bring unprecedented competition for shrinking pools of prospective students. Planning in a SEM culture requires approaching student success not just as a moral imperative, but also as a necessary measure for preserving tuition revenue. Viewed through this lens, student success investments are being made not just based on their potential to improve student outcomes, but also on their potential to ensure the financial health of the institution.

We are just beginning to understand which student success initiatives generate ROI. For example, the Gates Foundation’s “Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success” (IPASS) initiative found that technology-enabled advising improves retention rates and “pays for itself” by generating tuition revenues in excess of costs. If more initiatives like IPASS are shown to be self-sustaining, institutions can feel more confident in making big investments to boost success rates.

Eight years ago, Wayne State University in Detroit was in a state of crisis. Six-year graduation rates had fallen to 26%, and the financial future of the institution was in jeopardy. Defying conventional wisdom, we made a large-scale investment in student success. By 2017, our graduation rate had improved to 47% -- the fastest rate of improvement in large public universities in the nation. In 2018, we were awarded the APLU Degree Completion Award. Increased persistence and credit hour enrollment now yield an additional $5.3 million annually at Wayne State, an amount that more that covers our investments in academic advisors, technology and other student success initiatives.

However, equity gaps remained. Launched in Fall 2017, our Warrior Vision and Impact Program (“Warrior VIP”) reinvests our gains to better support low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students. If we succeed in closing these gaps, we expect to generate an additional $3 million in annual revenue while graduating many more students.

This session will provide multiple approaches to making the business case for student success initiatives, including demonstrating the expected return on investment from increased tuition revenue, as while as describing other financial benefits student success returns to our institutions.

Monica Brockmeyer is Senior Associate Provost for Student Success and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Since 2011, she has been the strategic lead for WSU’s Student Success initiatives.

Submission ID:

7707

Presenter(s):

Monica Brockmeyer Wayne State University