PRINCETON, N.J. — On the final day of the Tribal College and University (TCU) Presidents’ Convening, several Educational Testing Service researchers and higher education experts offered strategic tools to prepare students for long-term career success throughout their matriculation
The session speakers and tribal college leaders discussed various ways to measure the value of college, closely examining the need for better academic advising, for more minority teachers that reflect their student populations, and for more institutional visibility to keep college completion and employment in mind for tribal students.
Dr. Dhanfu Elston, vice president of strategy, guided pathways, and Purpose First at Complete College America, started by stressing that TCUs must first have direct pathways for students to be successful in their academic journey, including making sure that students take at least 30 credit hours each year to graduate on time.
Elston said that at-risk and first-generation students generally have too many choices for selecting a major with few “guardrails to prevent poor choices.” Institutions can help redirect students by helping them identify potential career options early in their freshman year, he said.
Faulty academic advising — which can reach ratios of one advisor for every 1200 students at some institutions — is a problem at some institutions, he said. And with limited resources, institutions such as TCUs can change the role of advisors from being merely a scheduler, to “facilitators of purpose,” Elston said.
Several presidents reiterated that TCUs are often isolated and underfunded, but that their resilience in stretching those resources makes all the difference for their students. Still, it is a lot of “pressure and stress,” said Dr. Cynthia Lindquist, president of Cankdeska Cikana Community College.
Elston replied that each school could customize these strategies on a “scalable level” to meet the population that the institutions serve. When advisors integrate career assessment and counseling, provide real-time labor and job data and inform their students on the return on investment of their chosen career path during the “on-boarding” and early summer months, there will be quantitative data to show decreases in major switching and less students registered as “undeclared majors,” Elston concluded.
