The Advising Paradigm Shift
Modern college campuses are increasingly updating their advising models. Academic advising, traditionally focused on helping students with course selection and degree planning is evolving into a more holistic support service that integrates career planning, personal development, and connecting students to internal and external resources that support student success.
A 2023 Voice of the Student Survey found that nearly half of undergraduate students lacked proper academic guidance on curriculum expectations. Are your advising services meeting students' needs?
Advising Models
Professional Advising Model
Utilizes dedicated staff members to provide consistent, full-time support focused on degree requirements, institutional navigation, and holistic development. This is a typically a centralized advising structure, where a single unit on campus oversees all advising operations.
Integrates professional advisors and faculty mentors to provide a seamless support experience. This approach balances institutional efficiency with disciplinary expertise through centralized or decentralized coordination.
Hybrid Advising Structures
Faculty Advising Model
A less resource-intensive model, as advising is usually part of a faculty member’s service responsibilities. Faculty benefit from having deeper understanding of the field of study and post-graduation pathways. However, this system tends to be decentralized and the service standards inconsistent.
From Opt-In to Proactive Advising
Traditional advising relies on students having some familiarity with institutional systems and reaching out for guidance. For many students, and especially first-generation or those from underrepresented minorities, the requirement to self-identify needs and navigate bureaucracies often creates a barrier to support. These students may not seek advising until academic or financial crises have already occurred, leading to lower retention rates and inequitable outcomes.
As a result, institutions are increasingly shifting to a proactive advising approach. Rather than waiting for students to schedule a meeting, advising is mandatory at certain points in the semester (e.g., once a semester to register for classes), while advisors also leverage student data and early-warning system to identify at-risk students and reach out to them to provide support. This shift ensures that every student, regardless of their background, receives early intervention and guidance, making academic success a structural shared responsibility rather than an individual student burden.
Spotlight: Georgia State University
Georgia State University is a majority-minority institution with large populations of first generation and pell-grant recipient students. It serves as a national exemplar of the positive impact proactive advising can have on student success. GSU analyzed its historic historic data to identify 800 at-risk indicators and developed an early-warning system for its advising staff called Graduation and Progression Success (GPS). The university also noticed that about 1,000 students annually stop out due to small financial balances and created a micro-grants program. These two initiatives supported a staggering 67% growth in degrees conferred within six years of implementing these programs.
The New Comprehensive Advising
Traditional advising has been operating in a transactional model wherein students arrive to clear an issue for one-off conversations. Conversely, experts recommend a relational model, where advisors and students build a relationship and trust, which has been shown to improve outcomes, especially for first-generation and minority students.
The topic of the conversations is also evolving. Traditionally, advising focuses on Academic Planning, including course selection and degree requirements. And advising KPIs are measured by grade point average (GPA) and academic gains. However, advising can additionally span developmental guidance, such as career preparation and life support, and resource referral, connecting students to campus supports such as mental health, financial aid, and tutoring. In tandem with shifting from prescriptive advising, which is more narrowly focused on academic planning, into a proactive approach, institutions have also expanded the scope of advising conversations to include life support and resource referral. Research has shown that holistic, comprehensive advising practices have tangible impact on student outcomes, such as improved sense of self-efficacy, grade point average, persistence, engagement, and timely graduation.
Breaking Silos in Student Support
Fragmented, office-by-office support systems prompt students to self-identify their needs across multiple disconnected offices. For first-generation and non-traditional students, who may lack the institutional capital to navigate these bureaucratic barriers, this burden can be particularly heavy and create gaps in support. By connecting academic, career, and financial support into a collaborative ecosystem, institutions can provide an improved experience where information flows between departments and students receive timely, relevant information to their needs.
Incorporate peer mentoring that can provide incoming students with significant benefits at a low cost.
Identifying and prioritizing at-risk populations for intrusive advising. Invest additional advising resources where there is the clearest path for return in investment (ROI)
Build a hybrid model of shared responsibility between faculty mentors and professional advisors to provide more comprehensive student support but offset increased requirements over advising
Paying for it All: Tactics for Sustainable Modernized Advising
The Challenge
Proactive and relational advising models are resource intensive: they ask advisors to spend time building relationships with students, conduct regular outreach, and overall require more advisor per student to sustain the volume of meetings. At a time of increasingly constrained budgets in higher education, this can hinder advising improvements.
The solution
Institutions can be cost-conscious while improving advising and boosting student outcomes.
Technological solutions can provide cost-effective ways to reduce costs. From AI chat bots that can answer fairly simple questions and reduce an advisor’s workload, early-alert systems and automated emails.
Identifying and prioritizing at-risk populations for intrusive advising. Invest additional advising resources where there is the clearest path for return in investment (ROI)
Build a hybrid model of shared responsibility between faculty mentors and professional advisors to provide more comprehensive student support but offset increased requirements over advising
Incorporate peer mentoring that can provide incoming students with significant benefits at a low cost.
Ultimately, improved advising is key to student success and that translates to revenue generation. Better advising can provide tangible return on investment outcomes.
Case Studies in Proactive Advising
Indiana University Bloomington
- Centralized and standardized academic advising and career coaching frameworks across the entire university.
- Made academic advising required and recurring. Undergraduate students are expected to meet with an advisor on a monthly basis.
- Redefined advising as holistic. The framework extends advising beyond registration and course selection to include goal setting, personal development, career exploration, and explaining the “hidden curriculum” of college.
- Integrated academic and career development. The framework sets shared expectations for advisors and career-center staff
Ohio University
- Implemented a professional advising model. The university reassigned responsibility for course selection, academic planning, and progress to degree monitoring form faculty to professional advisors.
- Centralized advising and distributed it by colleges.
- Incorporated proactive advising. Utilizing early-warning software to identify students who fall of the graduation plan.
- Introduced faculty mentorship as a complementary component of student success.
- Introduced individualized graduation plans. These plans' are tailored to students' goals and create a clear path to degree completion.
- Brought together advising, career, and experiential learning offices under the Provost's office into one student success hub.
Source: Plan launch; Guarantee+ program
Further Reading
Alloug, I et al (2026). "AI-Based Academic Advising Across the Student Lifecycle: A Systematic Literature Review." Information 17(4).
Karp et al. (2023). Effective Advising for Postsecondary Students: A Practice Guide for Educators. Institution of Education Sciences, Department of Education.
Hutson, B. & He, Y., (2024). "Future-Forming Research in Higher Education: A Review of Academic Advising Literature from the United States," Tertiary Education and Management, 30, 257–275.
Nguyen, E. & Salehi (2023). "Supporting First-Generation Student Experiences in Programs and Advising: Lessons from a Pandemic" NACADA Journal, 43(2). 1
Rust, M., & Willey E. (2024). "Defining and Institutionalizing Proactive Advising: Insights from a National Survey." NACADA Journal, 44(2).