Advising has expanded at USC recently, and students still report issues from miscommunication to scheduling conflicts, which leads to the question: Where do we go from here?
Advising has expanded, especially the past couple of years. According to statistics from the University Advising Center, 95% of undergraduate students now have an assigned academic adviser, compared with only 30% in 2014.
The center has also worked on standardizing procedures university-wide, including implementing adviser training, according to Claire Robinson, the director of the University Advising Center.
“It is a five-level tier program, and it focuses on seven competency areas," Robinson said. "If you're a new adviser, or a seasoned adviser, these are the seven areas we want you to focus on: So how does advising work at USC, policies and procedures, academic programs and requirements, technology, campus resources, undergraduate students ... and the advising profession at large."
The University Advising Center was created in 2015. According to the latest EAB (formerly the Education Advisory Board) report published in 2018, the four-year graduation rate at USC went from 54.4% in 2014 to 58.1% in 2017.
The amount of students who said they were “satisfied” or “extremely satisfied” on the advising survey increased five percentage points since 2014. Even with these changes, students are still facing issues.
One of these students is Mollie Solomon, a third-year nursing student. Solomon said she had scheduling issues this semester and last semester.
“This semester we didn't get our schedules until the day that classes started, which makes life super hard to plan with activities and work, and I had to quit my job last semester because I couldn’t tell them a schedule," Solomon said. "It just wouldn’t have worked out."
Solomon said she also had conflicts between her clinical schedule and her band rehearsals, which she needed to attend to retain her band scholarship. Solomon said she was able to resolve the issue after speaking with her band directors and the nursing department.
“It just wasn’t in my situation to be able to stop doing band this year, which also made things really stressful, but it’s all good now,” Solomon said.
Wendy Troxel, the director of the National Academic Advising Association Center for Research at Kansas State University, said communication issues are “unfortunately common” at universities of USC’s size. This is intensified when advising centers are restructuring to cover more of their student population, like USC is, Troxel said.
Caitlin Ferguson, a fourth-year criminology student, said she has struggled to even get an advising appointment and that an error message pops up when she tries to make one. Some students in one of her criminology classes have experienced the same issue.
“They’ve been talking about it for at least a few weeks now. A lot of people are having the same issues I am, [which] is, they just can’t get an appointment,” Ferguson said.
Ashley Schutz, a sophomore pre-nursing student, said that her former adviser told her to take both pathophysiology and speech in the same semester, and that she was advised for 17 credits in total. This semester, Schutz said her new adviser was surprised she was advised this way previously.
“It was just too much, and I should not have been advised like that,” Schutz said.
How can universities succeed with advising? Troxel said it is important to treat advisers like educators.
“UCLA, for example, has started a program of professional development that gets advisers in the literature, and in kind of doing some writing and doing some deep reading," Troxel said. "That’s only because the administration has made room for it and have made that a priority on their campus."
This kind of environment, along with having a culture of appreciation towards advisers, encourages advisers to stay longer and to continue cultivating their skills, Troxel said. She said some universities do not treat advising as seriously as educating.
“If you’re seen as, ‘Well, we could get anybody to do this job, it’s easy. We can get a pool of 100 people applying for your job tomorrow, so why should we pay you more?’" Troxel said. "I’m not saying that's happening at South Carolina, but I’ve certainly heard it happening at other places; you know, they just see it as an entry level position, and that's the kind of commitment you’re going to get.”
Robinson said if students are looking for added support, they can try academic coaching, which is housed in exploratory advising.
"We have academic coaches there, and they are trained in all 140 majors, all 11 colleges," Robinson said. "They do things like take a look at where students' interests lie, maybe what their career goals are. They have hour-long appointments, and you can have multiple hour-long appointments if you'd like."
She said that if students have issues they need to report, they can reach out to their individual college or email advising@sc.edu.
“Now, we still have work to do," Robinson said. "We want to do that work. We want to hear from students. We want to know where we can improve. We want to know where the gaps are.”