Probably the most serious problem colleges and universities face these days is how to keep their students. The number of students enrolling each year continues to decrease and because of that, administrators are in constant battle to look for ways to effectively run their school. Although there may be other reasons why students drop out of school. These reasons aren't important because the fact remains that educational institutions can still do a lot of things so that their students will stay regardless of the personal problems that they are dealing with.
An academic institution is made up of educators and students and a relationship exists between the two. This fact alone is enough proof that there are still many unexplored avenues to make their relationship even better. Just like any other relationship, communication is important.
In any organization, just like academic institutions, the importance of communication can't be stressed enough. A clear illustration of communication being shown is when a student has a plan of dropping out of school. For example, when financial problems are preventing someone from finishing his degree, the existence of a direct channel between the student and the administration will provide everyone a means to come up with a suitable arrangement. So the student does not have to quit school because a compromise has been reached between him and the school altogether. This compromise allows the student to stay in school and pay his fees on a mutually agreeable manner. This might delay the profit of the school but this scenario is way better than seeing only a few number of enrollees in their master list.
To make this communication channel effective, the administration should make sure that those people behind it behave in an appropriate manner. No matter how well laid out the system is, if the staff implementing it displays an arrogant and demeaning behavior, it will not work. All human relationships depend significantly on their natural need not only to be heard but also to be heard while understanding that one is welcome for whatever he has to say.
After all, education is not just about increasing people's knowledge on the various disciplines. It also invovles providing a healthy environment so that wisdom can grow both on the educators and the students. All relationship needs a healthy communication for it to be effective and to last.
Common sense dictates that the quality of relationships between an institution of higher learning and its key publics determines the success or failure of that institution. In particular, we know that students who feel valued as more than "just a number" and perceive that their needs are being met are most likely to continue their program of study through graduation. The public relations practitioner can play a key role in developing and maintaining relationships among college administration, faculty, staff, students, and the community. What we are less certain about, however, is how to tangibly evaluate these relationships. Thus, the current study involved mining multiple disciplines' literatures to discover specific means for advancing a "relationship-centered" approach to student persistence in a higher education setting.
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Conducting students survey regularly can be effective in spotting the factors that contribute to student attrition and determining concrete steps that promote students retention.
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