Please don’t Go: Eliminating “fight or flight” responses during new student onboarding Dr. Porter Brannon, Mitchell Community College Tuesday, March 6, 2018 Convention Center, ROOM# 113 C

About the Presenter Almost 20 years of progressively responsible experience in higher education. Served in key leadership roles at public, private and proprietary institutions. Responsible for short and long-range strategic planning: academic guidance career services disability services enrollment management financial aid placement testing retention services student activities veteran’s affairs Works closely with campus and external partners to ensure students meet the demands of a constantly changing community and workplace.  Dr. Porter Brannon Vice President for Student Services Mitchell Community College

College students can face a combination of logistical, financial, and psychological stressors that can potentially drive them off-track and lead them to make decisions that may not be in their best long-term interests. A typical new community college applicant will encounter a wide range of stressful situations, during the onboarding process, that elicit “fight-or-flight” responses – threatening students’ enrollment and long-term success at the institution

Testing & Credit Evaluation Application Financial Aid & FAFSA Testing & Credit Evaluation Academic Advising Registration Orientation 1st Day of Classes How College Administrators View the Enrollment Process College administrators and staff often see intake and orientation as a linear path from application to the first day of classes. A series of sub-processes comprise the onboarding process, from application to advising and financial aid, to registration.

Student’s View of the Enrollment Process

Stress-Inducing Scenarios New applicant receives conflicting information about college onboarding steps. Multiple visits required to complete one task. Completing the FAFSA. Selecting a major. Too often students are required to helplessly navigate complex and ill-defined requirements, and make significant academic decisions without fully understanding their impact.

The Negative Impact of “Fight-or-Flight” 50% of new applicants never attend. Most college administrators are aware of what’s happening. We have made sense of our processes. We get frustrated that our student have not. We tend to blame student for their behavior, instead of modifying our processes around their behavior. Why should we change what we do to accommodate perceived bad behaviors? Because we need them.

How did we reduce fight & flight at Mitchell? Creating paradigm shifts using Behavioral Economics Monitoring the enrollment processes Setting goals. Communicated goals. Repurposing staff Modifying methods of student communication.

Paradigm Shifts: Traditional Economic Theory Behavioral economics theory asserts that individuals do not do a good job of making decisions when faced with such large sets of complex and ill-defined choices. Need great people to do great things

Paradigm Shifts: Traditional Economic Theory Behavioral economics theory asserts that individuals do not do a good job of making decisions when faced with large sets of complex and ill-defined choices. The rational person is assumed to correctly weigh costs and benefits and calculate the best choices for himself. The rational person is expected to know his preferences (both present and future), and never flip-flops between two contradictory desires. He has perfect self-control and can restrain impulses that may prevent him from achieving his long-term goals.

Behavioral Economics Reality In contrast, behavioral economics shows that actual human beings do not act that way. People have limited cognitive abilities and a great deal of trouble exercising self-control. People often make choices that bear a mixed relationship to their own preference (happiness). They tend to choose the option that has the greatest immediate appeal at the cost of long-term happiness. We choose a goal and then frequently act against it, because self-control problem fails us to implement our goals.

Community College Processes Don’t Help The traditional community college employs a self-service model of student support, where applicants find their own way through decisions, processes, policies, and procedures. Community college students are forced to make a wide range of complex decisions during their onboarding process. Students do not do a good job of making decisions when faced with complex and ill-defined. Unexplained processes, poor communication from the college, seemingly unnecessary tasks to complete, and directions wrapped in unfamiliar jargon trigger “fight or flight” new student responses.

Infusing new or existing practices with what we know about human behavior and decision-making has the potential to improve whole-student success in a cost-effective, scalable way.

Monitoring the Enrollment Process Issues: Enrollment responsibilities fragmented across multiple departments. No one person responsible or accountable for enrollment and recruitment. No strategic enrollment plan. No one monitoring students through the enrollment funnel. No one monitoring local/regional enrollment trends. Solutions: Centralize responsibility for all enrollment functions under one person. Collaborate with President to create enrollment targets and recruitment plan. Identify one person to oversee movement of students from application to registration. Vice President monitoring and communicating positive/negative enrollment trends

Example of Trends which Impact Enrollment

Top 10 States with a Majority of U.S. HSGs In 2013 From 2013 to 2025 From 2025 to 2032 CA 456,000 -25,000 -5% -37,000 -9% TX 314,000 61,000 19% -6,000 -2% NY 212,000 2,000 1% -14,000 -7% FL 176,000 17,000 10% -16,000 -8% IL 153,000 -10,000 -18,000 -13% PA 146,000 -4% -8,000 -6% OH 135,000 -12% -9,000 MI 111,000 -10% NJ 109,000 -12,000 NC 101,000 9,000 9% See pp. 22-23, 28-29 and Appendix A Data Tables of Knocking full report

Set Goals. Communicate Goals.

Repurpose Staff Reorganize in-house talent with the necessary skills, attitude and desire to improve our processes.

Change how we Communicate with Students Emails Personal phone calls Postcards Text messages On-time Reminders / Nudges Simplify, Personalize, Reframe, and Remind

Simplify, Personalize, Reframe, and Remind Simplify instructions and messaging to increase ease of understanding and reduce the burden of performing a prescribed action. When individuals are overwhelmed with confusing information, they are often more likely to turn to potentially inaccurate sources (friends) of information for guidance, make less meaningful choices out of convenience, or opt-out of the process altogether. Personalize messaging to students and have prompts as tailored to the individual as possible. Individuals are more likely to spur into action when they engage with someone who relates or is familiar to them than they are with an impersonal automated system. Further, communication strategies should meet students where they are; in that students should be reached with certain information via their preferred platform (e.g. texts, emails, phone application pop-ups, etc.). Thaler, Richard H., Sunstein, Cass R, Nudge: Improving Decisions on Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

Simplify, Personalize, Reframe, and Remind Reframe negative thinking about not belonging or experiencing challenges to something common that many others have also experienced and overcame. For example, research on social norming (i.e. that individuals conform to the perceived behavior of their peers) among freshman African American students suggests that framing social adversity as a common short-lived aspect of adjusting to college can lead to students having higher GPAs and improved overall well-being. Remind students about important deadlines, goals, and available resources in a timely fashion. While juggling multiple responsibilities, individuals can experience limited cognitive bandwidth and quickly forget or delay completion of certain tasks. Interactive text-message reminders can provide students with brief, relevant nuggets of information about important deadlines or follow-up steps so that the decision point is more at top of mind than before. Thaler, Richard H., Sunstein, Cass R, Nudge: Improving Decisions on Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

End Results One year after implementation: New student conversion rates at 60%. 3% Increase in student headcount. 1% increase in FTE.

Questions & Discussions

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