The U.S. Census Bureau tells us there are over 37 million adults who have some college but never finished a degree. 37-million! We all know the excuses that colleges and universities tell themselves regarding drop out and stop out rates of adult students. “Life happens for adults” – things outside of school interfere with their ability to persist to graduation. While this may be true for a portion of our adult students I would like to push back just a little and suggest that “life” has not been the only thing that has happened for 37 MILLION people.

Having recently conducted a series of focus groups asking current students about some of the challenges that they have faced in relation to attending school I am more convinced than ever that we have the ability to solve at least some of this drop out/stop out problems. Within these focus groups I have asked adult students to make recommendations regarding things the institution they are attending could do differently to help make their success more attainable. While I had anticipated comments like – “reduce tuition, offer more classes, or have a more flexible schedule”– these weren’t the types of things I heard from the majority of those I spoke with.

The majority of students I spoke with had very practical requests. Requests that were certainly things most institutions could address if they were truly committed to serving adult students. In their own words, let me provide a few general comments that were shared with me.

“Please don’t make me take off a half day’s work to drive to campus to pick up a form from the registrar’s office that could have easily been scanned and emailed to me.”

“Could someone on campus please have the answers to my questions without transferring me and making me feel like I am being a huge imposition to them?”

“A ‘timely’ response in the rest of the world means same day…. Why is it that in higher education this means a week?”

“I am more committed to completing my degree than anything else in my life right now, could SOMEBODY at the school act like they are interested in helping me figure this all out?”

What struck me about many of the requests I heard was that they had more to do with people and attitude than with anything else. This feedback from students leads me to have affirmed that customer service is one of the biggest issues in higher education. The impact of treating our students in a way they perceive as “poorly” is devastating to retention and is at least ONE CAUSE of the 37 million adults who have started school but never finished.

The good news is that it is also something those of us dedicated to serving adult students well can do something about. If you work at an institution that claims to serve the adult student audience you (and your institution) are obligated to do a better job of providing “service” to this student population.

I would like to invite you to an upcoming webinar that will review some of the candid comments made by adult students who graciously participated in focus groups with me, as well as showcase some “best practices” in the industry from institutions who have tackled this problem head on and have made serious impact in student satisfaction as well as retention.

For more on this topic, attend our upcoming webinar, Customer Service in Higher Education: Adult Focused Student Services