Georgia State University Campus Plan Update 2015

Overview

When it comes to higher education, the vision of the United States as a land of equal opportunity is far from a reality.  Today, it is eight times more likely that an individual in the top quartile of Americans by annual household income will hold a college degree than an individual in the lowest quartile.[1]  Nationally, white students graduate from college at rates more than 10 points higher than Hispanic students, and are more than twice as likely to graduate with a 4-year college degree compared to black students.[2]  The United States Department of Education cites a six-year graduation-rate of 39% among Pell-eligible students,[3] a rate that is 20 points lower than the national average.[4]

GSU Undergraduate Graduation Rates by Year, 2010 to Present

In 2003, Georgia State’s institutional graduation rate stood at 32% and underserved populations were foundering.  Graduation rates were 22% for Latinos, 29% for African Americans, and 18% for African American males.  Pell students were graduating at rates far below those of non-Pell students. 

Today, thanks to a campus-wide commitment to student success and more than a dozen strategic programs implemented over the past several years, Georgia State University’s achievement gap is gone. The institutional graduation rate has improved 22 points—among the highest increases in the nation over this period.  Rates are up 32 points for Latinos (to 54%), and 28 points for African Americans (to 57%).  Pell-eligible students currently represent 59% of Georgia State University’s undergraduate student population, and over the past three years have graduated at rates, on average, equal to those of non-Pell students.  Georgia State University now graduates more Hispanic, Asian, first generation, and Pell students with bachelor degrees than any other university in Georgia.  For four consecutive years, we have conferred more bachelor degrees to African Americans than any other non-profit college or university in the United States.

Georgia State University’s story testifies to the fact that students from all backgrounds can succeed at high rates.  Because the challenges we face at Georgia State—finding innovative ways to succeed with our growing numbers of at-risk students and doing so amid a context of limited resources—are precisely the same challenges faced by literally hundreds of public universities nationwide, the story resonates.  Through our outreach, colleagues within the USG and nationally not only learn what is happening at Georgia State but also see what is possible at their home institutions and for their own students.  

Institutional Mission and Student Body Profile

In March 2015, Georgia State University adopted a new mission statement that underscores the university’s longstanding dedication to student success, and its commitment to expanding efforts that would increase access to high-quality education in order to meet the workforce demands of the nation.

Georgia State University, an enterprising public research university, transforms the lives of students, advances the frontiers of knowledge and strengthens the workforce of the future. The university provides an outstanding education and exceptional support for students from all backgrounds. Georgia State readies students for professional pursuits, educates future leaders, and prepares citizens for lifelong learning. Enrolling one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation at its urban research campus, at its vibrant branch campuses, and online, the university provides educational opportunities for tens of thousands of students at the graduate, baccalaureate, associate, and certificate levels.[5]

Georgia State University’s number one strategic goal is to become a national model for undergraduate education by demonstrating that students from all backgrounds can achieve academic and career success at high rates.[6]  The most distinctive principle guiding our efforts has been a pledge to improve student outcomes through inclusion rather than exclusion.  We are committed to improve our graduation rates without turning our backs on the low-income, underrepresented and first-generation students that we have traditionally served.  To the contrary: we have pledged to increase the number of underrepresented, first-generation and Pell students enrolled and to serve them better.  In our mission and our strategic plan, we have committed to achieving improved outcomes for our students not merely while they are at Georgia State University,  but in their lives and careers after graduation as well.

Georgia State University now enrolls more African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, first-generation students, and Pell students than any other four-year university Georgia.  In fact, the University set new records for the number of students enrolled in every one of these categories during the fall semester of 2014.  Our undergraduate population is now 63% non-white and 59% Pell.  According to U.S. News and World Report, Georgia State University is now one of only two universities to rank in the Top 15 in the nation for both its racial/ethnic diversity[7] and for the number of low-income students enrolled.[8]

At Risk Undergraduate Student Populations at GSU  by Year, Fall 2008 - Fall 2014

In line with our commitment to serving Georgia students through a policy of inclusion rather than exclusion, we have consistently increased the proportion of underrepresented minority students (students reporting their race to be something other than White, or who identify as ethnically Hispanic) being served, with the number up ten points over the past five years.[9]

We have also continued to attract an increasing number of low-income students to our campus.  Since 2010, we have seen a steady increase in the number of Pell-eligible students attending Georgia State University, from 48% up to 59% in fall 2014.

Institutional Completion Goals, High-Impact Strategies and Activities

Institutional Completion Goals and Results

In 2011, Georgia State University committed to reach a graduation rate of 52% by 2016 and 60% by 2021.[10]  We also committed to conferring 2,500 more degrees annually than we did in 2010 and to eliminating all significant achievement gaps between student populations. 

On the surface, attaining these goals seems implausible.  Georgia State’s demographic trends—characterized by huge increases in the enrollments of at-risk students in recent years—typically would project a steep decline in student outcomes.  Georgia State University, though, has been able to make dramatic gains towards its success targets even as the student body has become more financially distressed.  In the relatively short period since the adoption of the Strategic Plan in 2011, the overall number of Bachelor degrees conferred by Georgia State has increased by 16%.  The gains have been even greater for a number of at-risk student populations. 

In the 2014-2015 academic year, Georgia State University conferred record numbers of bachelor degrees to Pell-eligible, first generation, Black or African American, and Hispanic students.  Since the 2010-2011 academic year, the number of Bachelor’s degrees conferred to first-generation students has increased by 32%, and to Pell students by 36%. Meanwhile, underrepresented students have also made striking gains over the period, with conferrals increasing by 44% for Hispanic students and 37% for African Americans.[11]

 It is interesting to note that in the 2014-2015 academic year, Georgia State University saw a decline in the number of degrees conferred to Adult Learners.  This is not due to a decline in the enrollment of Adult Learners at Georgia State or in their success rates.  To the contrary, because Adult Learners are defined as students aged 25 and older at the time of graduation, the decline in undergraduate degree conferrals to the group is a direct consequence of the average decrease in time to degree that we have been able to achieve through our numerous student success initiatives.  Our undergraduate transfer students, for instance, are taking less time to earn their degrees and far fewer are reaching the age of 25 by the point of graduation.

Similarly, since the launch of Georgia State University’s current strategic plan, and the start of our participation in Complete College Georgia, our institutional graduation rate has increased by 6 percentage points to a record 54%, with further gains being tracked for 2015.

GSU Undergraduate Degrees Conferred by Academic Year, 2010 to Present

GSU Undergraduate Graduation Rates by Population, 2010 to Present

Low-income and first-generation students’ families move frequently due to changes in jobs and economic circumstances when compared to middle- and upper-class college students.  This phenomenon significantly impacts Georgia State’s institutional graduation rates.  Using National Student Clearinghouse data to track Georgia State’s most recent 6-year cohort across all universities nationally, the success rates are even more encouraging.  For the current year, a record 76% of the students who started at Georgia State six years ago have either graduated from Georgia State or some other institution or are still actively enrolled in college.  The numbers for African American (77.5%) and Latino (76.7%) students are even higher. 

6 Year Graduation Rates Among First Time First Year Freshman, who Started at Georgia State University

This combination of large increases in Pell enrollments and significantly rising graduation rates confounds the conventional pattern.  Nationally, one can track a strong correlation between increases in Pell rates and decreases in graduation rates.  Georgia State University’s completion efforts have made us a clear outlier nationally.  In fact, among all of our peer institutions as defined by the Board of Regents, Georgia State University now has both the highest Pell rate and the highest graduation rate.

How has Georgia State University made the gains outlined above?  How do we propose to reach our ambitious future targets?  In one sense, the answer is simple.  We employ a consistent, evidenced-based strategy.  Our general approach can be summarized as follows:

• Use data aggressively in order to identify and to understand the most pervasive obstacles to our students’ progressions and completion.
• Be willing to address the problems by becoming an early adopter.  This means piloting new strategies and experimenting with new technologies.  After all, we will not solve decades-old problems by the same old means.
• Track the impacts of the new interventions via data and make adjustments as necessary to improve results.
• Scale the initiatives that prove effective to have maximal impact.  In fact, many of the programs that we offer are currently touching 10,000 students or more annually. 

High Impact Strategies

1. GPS Advising

2. Summer Success Academy

3. Panther Retention Grants

4. Keep Hope Alive (KHA)

5.  Meta-Majors

Observations

Georgia State University is testimony to the fact that students from all backgrounds can succeed at high rates.  Moreover, our efforts over the past few years show that dramatic gains are indeed possible—not through changing the nature of the students served but through changing the nature of the institution that serves them. 

Timeline of Student Success Initiatives at Georgia State University

Source: Building A Pathway to Student Success at Georgia State University[12]

Successful Strategies and Lessons Learned

From Reactive to Proactive

Georgia State University’s Panther Retention Grant Program continues to be among its most successful college completion programs.  Not only does it continue to make a significant difference for the many students who receive it, but this strategy is also being adopted by many other colleges and universities across the nation.  By demonstrating the impact of innovative ways of eliminating barriers to successful and timely degree completion, Georgia State University is making a difference in the lives of students beyond its own borders.

As important as it is to address financial need when it arises, it is also important to be proactive and work to reduce the chances of students running into financial hardship in the first place.  From our experience with students receiving Panther Retention Grants, and from improvements to our GPS Advising platform, we have learned that many of our students lack the skills necessary to plan the use of their financial aid in a sustainable fashion. Georgia State University has committed to establishing a Financial Counseling Center,  which is expected to open by the end of Summer 2016. (See below for more information)

From Competition to Collaboration

As a founding member of the University Innovation Alliance, Georgia State University has been working with ten other national research universities to find scalable solutions to problems facing low income, first generation, and minority students on their way to college completion.  By putting aside traditional university ranking systems that pit universities against each other, the University Innovation Alliance has, in just one year, made great strides in changing the national conversation around higher education.  Through sharing and mutual support, successful programs at each UIA institution are being replicated.  The US News and World Report ranks Georgia State University 5^th in the country among the “most innovative” universities,[13] which is evidence of the fact that innovation is increasingly synonymous with evidence-based approaches to student success.  Building on the success of our data-driven approach to intensive advising, Georgia State University has been awarded an $8.9 million First in the World grant from the Department of Education.[14]  For the next four years, we will be taking the lead on a project involving each of the other eleven schools in the University Innovation Alliance, which will establish a scientifically valid link between intensive advisement and college completion for low income and first generation students.  When students succeed, we all win.

Limits to Scalability

In summer 2014, a record 320 students enrolled in the Summer Success Academy.  With a cohort of this size, the program saw larger class sizes and reductions in student motivation and engagement.  Although it is possible that changes in student behavior were not directly caused by the increase in numbers, our team underwent a thorough program evaluation process, which resulted in several significant improvements, including incentives, workshops (which address academics, social skills, personal development, leadership), smaller class sizes in courses, and various other opportunities to engage.  Anecdotally, these changes have been seen to significantly improve motivation and student engagement.  Based on our experience in 2014, we made the conscious decision to reduce enrollments in 2015.  Assuming our changes see the kind of improved student performance that we expect, we are planning once again increase our enrollments in summer 2016.

Planned Improvements to College Completion Activities

The work we have been doing to promote student success at Georgia State University since the launch of Freshman Learning Communities in 1999 has steadily increased graduation rates among our traditionally high risk student populations, but it has also served to foster a culture of student success among faculty, staff, and administration.  In addition to the well-established and high impact strategies described above, Georgia State University continues to employ data analysis to identify and understand the obstacles that our students are facing, and to test innovative new solutions to facilitate efficient pathways to the attainment of high quality degrees. 

With the help of a Transformational Planning Grant generously awarded to Georgia State University in July 2014 by the Association of Public & Land-Grant Universities (APLU) in partnership with Urban Serving Universities (USU) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), we have initiated a series of  major projects meant to address three major issues that continue to confront our students: (1) limited availability of courses necessary for the most timely  academic progression, (2) insufficient financial literacy among our student and the devastating implications of many of the poor decisions that result), and (3) failures to deliver the alerts that identify that a student if off path is the most systematic and timely manner possible.

I. Optimizing Course Scheduling using Predictive Analytics

Until now, course scheduling has been too often based on faculty preference, which meant that a disproportionate number of courses were being taught during the middle of the day frequently on topics that did not fully address the progression needs of students.  Additionally, there was not always sufficient campus classroom space to offer the number of courses requested during peak times, and we had insufficient capacity in required courses to meet student demand.  Finally, scheduling of prerequisite and sequential courses was often interrupted by faculty leaves and availability, which delayed student progression in many cases.  As a result of an analysis conducted by our Office of Institutional Research, we have shifted our course scheduling policy so as to balance faculty preference with other important factors like room availability, student demand, and academic program requirements.  We now will employ the aggregate data that we are collecting on the major maps and progression of each individual student to predict what courses are needed and in what numbers each semester. As a result of our new policy framework, we expect to see immediate and marked improvements in our rates of student progression, along with a resulting decrease in average cost per degree and an increase in student satisfaction.  With help from Ad Astra, we are implementing a predictive analytics solution that will allow us to consistently execute our new, more student friendly scheduling model, while at the same time allowing us to be constantly adaptive to changes in student course demand as they occur.

II. Establishing a Financial Counseling Center

In an effort to mitigate the financial risks to student retention that are created by non-academic collegiate expenditures, GSU has used ten years of student financial data and more than 140,000 Georgia state student records to develop predictive analytics identifying when students make financial decisions that put them at risk of attrition.  These enhanced predictive analytics include information about student housing choices and past due histories to target students for financial counseling.  SunTrust Foundation will fund a dedicated financial counseling center with an extensive outreach function using these cutting-edge analytics—the first of its kind in the USG and one of the first in the nation. President Becker has made a commitment to the opening of such a center, expected by the end of the 2016 academic year.

III. Empowering Students through Mobile Application Development

In collaboration with the Education Advisory Board, GSU helped to develop a student-facing tool for smart devices that incorporates data analytics to provide students with major and career guidance, best-fit courses and schedules, time management tools, and smart resource recommendations about student support that is relevant to their specific needs. The current version of the app provides students with time management coaching in the form of syllabus- and analytics- driven alerts or “nudges”—real-time notifications that pop up on the students’ smart phones and tablets the second an issue is identified.  This mobile application was piloted in two phases during the spring and summer of 2015, and is currently deployed for use by a large cohort of students participating in the GSU Summer Success Academy.  Based on research and lessons learned from the pilot, the application is undergoing a redesign which will continue to be tested during the 2015-16 academic year.

As the story of Georgia State University demonstrates, institutional transformation in the service of student success does not come about as a result of a single program, but grows from a series of small changes that undergo continue reevaluation and refinement.  What it also shows is how a series of seemingly small but successful initiatives can significantly transform an institution’s culture.  As we have seen improvements in the success of our students, the campus community has come to be driven by a shared vision. 

Building on our success in the use of adaptive learning technology in introductory mathematics courses, for example, we are in the process of rolling out adaptive and hybrid versions of introductory courses in Psychology and Political Science.  In 2008, DFW rates in College Algebra, Pre-Calculus, and Introduction to Statistics stood at an an average of 43% and were, and represented a leading reason motivating students to drop out of Georgia State University after their first year.  By replacing the traditional model with one that would see students spend only one hour in lecture per week, and three hours a week in a dedicated computer lab working through personalized, adaptive exercises, we have seen a marked improvement in the success of students in these challenging but foundational courses.  Since reconfiguring these first year math courses, and the inauguration of MILE (our Mathematics Interactive Learning Environment), we have served more than 7,500 students each year using this strategy and have seen a decrease in the DFW rate by more than 50% (down to 19% in Fall 2014).  Through this change in approach, we now see approximately 1,800 more students pass their introductory mathematics courses per year, and in a way that does not sacrifice academic rigor or the quality of learning.  As such, the courses have proven truly preparatory for success in higher level courses.  By implementing similar strategies in psychology and political science, we expect to see significant gains for students in these departments as well.

With a strong institutional vision, well defined goals, and nationally recognized accomplishments, Georgia State University has developed a culture of student success oriented toward constant improvement upon existing programs, while at the same time disseminating insights about our experiences for the sake of fostering the success of students across Georgia and the nation as a whole.

The year ahead will be an exciting and challenging one, as Georgia State University consolidates with Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) to form the largest institution of higher learning in Georgia, and one of the largest in the nation.  If the lessons we have learned, the initiatives we have implemented, the technologies we have developed, and the results we have achieved can be be transferred to the context of GPC, the ultimate winners will be the students of the state of Georgia.

For Further Information:  Timothy Renick, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Success and Vice Provost, Georgia State University, trenick@gsu.edu