Student retention is great, but how about employee retention?

 

I am sure this article was widely seen, and in today’s economy, we are all curious about salaries.

Pay and Perks Creep Up for Private-College Presidents http://chronicle.com/article/PayPerks-Creep-Up-for/136187/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

 

I am certainly not going to begrudge anyone a large paycheck, especially if it has is earned. One of the main jobs of college presidents nowadays is fund raising, and some of these presidents are masters of raising money, so in some ways, they are raising the money for their own salaries and then some.

 

However, there are some huge disparities where there should not be, and I do not care whether you are a non-profit or a for-profit, retention of your staff should be as important as retention of your students. In my experience, staff pay has been a large contributor of staff turnover, especially at the front line level (I should add that having a competent HR department, which is not universally, feared is also important).

 

When you are paying student advisors (entry-level position) between $25K to $30K a year, plus they are expected to have a bachelors degree, work Saturdays, do community outreach, and their raises are a maximum of 3% a year, then it is no wonder people leave quickly as soon as possible! This creates further student retention problems because students form relationships with the people who are helping them and the turnover is sign of instability; students like stability during their program. There are documented cases of whole departments in some institutions turning over 100%, 3 times within a year!

 

I am going to keep this simple and say, find a way to retain your staff, they are the first impression your students’ get, and when they vanish without warning multiple times, your students start to vanish.

 

In the end, it is all about the student right?

 

Dr Flavius A B Akerele III

The ETeam