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Report of the Chancellor's Campus-Wide Task Force on Administration and Reengineering

PART II: Reengineering

A. Student Support Services

1. Recruitment/Admissions/Retention

Define process to be improved:: Recruitment, admission, and retention of an undergraduate and graduate student population that meets high academic standards, and includes ethnic minority and nontraditional students, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and members of any other groups underrepresented at the University of Kansas.

What are the perceived problems for Recruitment and Admissions?: The lack of a campus-wide recruitment philosophy.
The absence of a long-range strategic plan for recruitment.
The difficulty of identifying all those units and individuals responsible for, and involved in, the recruitment process.
Lack of coordination among campus units formally responsible for recruitment (see below).
Lack of coordination among campus units responsible for public relations/institutional advancement and its impact on attracting students to KU.
Lack of resources needed to improve the monitoring and tracking of prospective and admitted KU students.
Lack of adequate scholarship/fellowship offerings.
The difficulty of attracting and retaining personnel responsible for recruitment and admissions.
An admissions application processing unit that will become increasingly overburdened with the advent of qualified admissions.

What are the perceived problems with Retention?: The inability to identify all those units and individuals responsible for, and involved in, the retention of students.
Lack of coordination among campus units formally responsible for retention (see below).
The inability to prioritize resources allocated to student retention.

What appears to be working well?: Individual offices responsible for campus-wide recruitment, admissions, and retention have experienced varying degrees of success.
Some individual academic units have highly effective recruitment and retention mechanisms in place.

What is the evidence of the process(es) problems? Consumer input, relevant data?: The Freshman/Sophomore Academic Experience Committee Report
1992 Senior Survey
Individual interviews with key Student Affairs administrators
Interviews with senior administrators, September-October 1995
Letters from campus community, Fall 1995
Student Affairs Leadership Focus Group transcript, October 1995
Student Leadership Focus Group transcript, October 1995

What additional information and/or data are needed?: More feedback from current and former students on issues of recruitment, admissions, and retention.
More abundant and reliable information on why students leave the University of Kansas (through the development of a centralized exit system).

Who are the stakeholders in the Recruitment and Admissions process? Who should be involved in its improvement?: Students
Faculty and staff
Academic units
Office of Admissions
Graduate School
Systems Development, Department of Educational Services
Office of New Student Orientation
Office of Student Financial Aid
University Scholarship Center
Office of Minority Affairs

Who are the stakeholders in the Retention process? Who should be involved in its improvement?: Students
Faculty and staff
CLAS Undergraduate Center
Advising offices in individual academic units
Office of Student Financial Aid
Student Assistance Center
Office of Minority Affairs
Counseling and Psychological Services
Organization and Activities Center
International Student Services
Student Health Services
Student Housing Department
Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center
Supportive Educational Services

Who are related providers?: Enrollment Center
Office of the University Registrar
Academic Affairs
Endowment Association

Is the improvement of this process likely to be a short-term or long-term task?

Short term:: The identification of the primary stakeholders of these processes.
The identification of a strategic plan (identification of priorities, key players, and outcomes as well as the development of a time line) to coordinate campus-wide recruitment, admissions, and retention activities.

Long-term:: Actual coordination and/or consolidation efforts along with appropriate staffing, budget, etc.

What is the desired outcome of the improvement of this process?: A more proactive approach to the recruitment, admission, and retention of an academically high-achieving, diverse student body.

2. Enrollment and Advising

Define process to be improved:: Enrollment constitutes a cluster of linked subprocesses, including enrollment advising (as distinguished from other forms of academic advising), main enrollment, and course drop-add. Additional subprocesses include fee payment, clearing "holds" on enrollment, and so forth. The primary focus of this analysis is on the set of subprocesses that constitute the flow from the issuance of enrollment permits to enrollment advising, main enrollment, and course drop-add. There are likely to be some variations in how these processes are experienced depending upon the student's academic status (e.g., graduate or undergraduate student; student in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences [CLAS] or in one of the Schools); and a special, distinctive process applies to incoming freshman who enroll during freshman orientation. This report focuses primarily on the processes for enrolling undergraduates other than incoming freshman, with the CLAS student experience treated as the prototype.

What are the perceived problems?: There is a perception that the existing system, which involves students queuing up each semester (sometimes repeatedly) is archaic, inconvenient, and difficult to justify in an age in which technological solutions such as telephone enrollment or enrollment at satellite computer sites are available and in use at other universities. Some students do not object to the relatively minimal waiting in line at the main enrollment time, while others find it more objectionable, especially if their assigned appointment date conflicts with off-campus obligations. The drop-add period appears to elicit longer waits and correspondingly more aggravation on the part of students.
There are also perceptions that the enrollment process is not as streamlined and coordinated as it should be. Students may wait in line at the Enrollment Center only to discover that they will need to go elsewhere for a closed class opener, or a clarification of their student records.
There are perceptions that those providing enrollment services lack an appropriately consumer-oriented attitude. Students have indicated that front-line staff at the Enrollment Center, for example, may want to help by making phone calls for a student who has already experienced the "run-around," but are restrained from doing so by supervisors who do not see such special services as part of their unit's function.
Enrollment advising is widely viewed as being problematic. Academic departments are pressed to have their faculty do such advising, but find that the questions that they are expected to answer are either obviously available in the catalog and timetable or involve technical minutiae and administrative changes that relatively few faculty keep up-to-date on; and relatively few students show up for enrollment advising in any case. Correspondingly, students find enrollment advising to be a disappointment, and tend to bypass it (many students openly admit to having forged an advisor's signature when they were required to have one) because they believe the information they needed was available from other sources; or the advisor to whom they were referred was not in their area of interest and seemed to have nothing to offer besides a pro forma review of their schedule. In addition, stories abound of students who have been given erroneous advice. There seems to be a de facto stand-down from enrollment advising on the part of many students and faculty, and a perception that this narrow form of advising could best be handled in other ways; meanwhile, calls for reform in advising need to carefully distinguish enrollment advising from the broader, more in-depth and more personal academic advising that many students and faculty alike would like to foster.

What is the evidence of the process(es) problems? Consumer input, relevant data?: Focus group transcripts, October 1995
Interviews with senior administrators, September-October 1995
Letters from campus community, Fall 1995
Freshman/Sophomore Academic Experience Committee Report
1992 Senior Survey comments on advising
Informal student interviews conducted by the study group on enrollment and advising processes
Data to assess the relative costs and benefits of alternative solutions such as telephone enrollment systems (automated or not) and various forms of self-enrollment at satellite computer sites will be needed.

Who are the stakeholders in this process? Who should be involved in its improvement?: Primary stakeholders are students attempting to enroll
Academic units
Enrollment Center
Offices responsible for management and oversight of academic units and the Enrollment Center

Who are related providers?: Office of the University Registrar
Networking and Telecommunication Services
Computing

Is the improvement of this process likely to be a short-term or long-term task?: Whether improvements are likely to be long- or short-term depends upon the improvements sought and upon the nature of the commitment to reform. Some relatively small process improvements, such as eliminating the "Dean's stamp", have already been done with little fanfare. Additional changes of this kind also might allow for short-term improvements. However, more substantial changes, such as moving to a system of enrollment by telephone or a distributed enrollment system, are likely to be longer-term tasks.

What is the desired outcome of the improvement of this process?: The desired outcome of an improved enrollment process is: to provide for all students' enrollment in an appropriate class schedule, maximally responsive to their preferences, with the minimum of inconvenience to the student and administrative cost to the university.

Are administrative savings likely to result? How?: If technology-based improvements such as enrollment by telephone or self-enrollment at satellite computer stations are adopted, there would presumably be up-front costs in equipment and software, but expect longer-term administrative savings because of a reduction in need for some personnel.

3. Financial Aid

Define process to be improved:: Financial Aid is responsible for determining eligibility and awarding financial aid to students. Tracking academic progress of students receiving financial aid is essential for students to continue to receive aid.

Note: The Director of the Office of Student Financial Aid was interviewed for this report since there was limited student input via invited solicitation for comments last fall and only two focus groups of students were conducted.

What are the perceived problems?: In the new organizational structure of the University, Financial Aid is no longer formally tied to the group of offices that recruit and enroll students and promote retention. Financial Aid and Admissions need to coordinate activities. Furthermore, Financial Aid is concerned about the possible gaps in communication and technical support implied by the new structure.
Timeliness of notices of financial aid (or work study grants) awards to students.
Guidelines for qualification for financial aid, allocation process, and notification process could be clearer.
Technical support is limited due to many competing priorities. Financial Aid currently operates in a Mac environment while the mainstream is PC; other related offices are moving to PC-based systems.
U.S. Department of Education regulations regarding "satisfactory academic progress" differ from KU regulations. Students may be "triggered" by Financial Aid before the College probationary criteria are activated.
Phone access is impossible/difficult during certain times.
Staff retention due to low salaries is problematic.

What appears to be working well?: Financial Aid reports that they receive many positive comments from students. Complaints most likely will focus on "not enough money" rather than "poor customer service."

What is the evidence of the process(es) problems? Consumer input, relevant data?: Financial Aid prominently displays comment cards for students to fill out regarding customer service. Data are used to assess ongoing customer relations and identify areas for staff training.
A committee of KU staff review student appeals regarding academic progress requirements; this strategy helps educate others in the University community regarding financial aid issues.

What additional information and/or data are needed?: There are perceptions that Financial Aid may not be accessible to students (e.g., some complaints focus on the phone system). Additional information needs to be collected systematically from the students about their experiences with Financial Aid.

Who are the stakeholders in this process? Who should be involved in its improvement?: Students
Academic units
Departments employing work-study students
Office of Student Financial Aid

Who are related providers?: Office of Admissions
Office of the University Registrar
Systems Development, Department of Educational Services

Is the improvement of this process likely to be a short-term or long-term task?: Organizational issues could be short-term. Adequate aid to award students is long-term. Systems to support the process may be long-term.

What is the desired outcome of the improvement of this process?: Getting aid to the people where it will have the greatest impact when there is discretionary aid.
Help students remain academically eligible to receive financial aid. (This involves numbers of hours in which a student enrolls, among other things.)
Data bases that readily support the operational and management needs of the office. Currently cannot provide data by certain student characteristics (e.g., residency).

Are administrative savings likely to result? How?: Do not know.