Lessons From Canada on Student Success

Student success in higher education starts from a learner’s very first day, and a new monograph on student success efforts at Canadian universities paints a picture of the present opportunities and challenges to promoting student retention and completion.

The publication, “The Evolving Landscape of Post-Secondary Student Transitions in Canada: Striving for Best Practices,” authored by Steven M. Smith, Tom Brophy, Adam Daniels and Amy McEvoy, highlights trends among different demographics of learners, the value of assessment and looming challenges for the field.

Course Strat spoke with Brophy, who serves as the associate vice president of student affairs and services, and Smith, professor of psychology, both at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, about the book, the landscape of higher education in Canada and future considerations for student success work. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Course Strat: The book is the first comprehensive look at first-year student and students in transition success since 1970 in Canada. As you were researching and understanding student success in today’s context, how would you say the definition of student success has changed?

Smith: For me, it really struck me when I was first tasked, along with Tom, to develop our strategic enrollment management plan [at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax] that there really is no definition of student success. I realized that student success is an individual definition. But when we were trying to put it together, we had to think about it in the context of, what does the university deem as student success?

Fundamentally, I think it’s around students’ retention and persistence, and [those are] the key pieces that we measure long-term. But we also look at things like sense of belonging, sense that we’ve created an inclusive environment for the students, their own sense of self-efficacy, their ability to find their way around campus and that sort of thing. And I look at it that way, because those are the things that I can measure and then I can compare across groups.

Brophy: I agree very much with Steve; it really is a personal thing. It’s personal to the institution, it’s personal to the person and that resonates with you. It’s almost like saying, “define happiness”—well, happiness to me may mean something different to the both of you.

It is very much reflective of what you value, what you prioritize. If your value is on the business model, then it’s definitely the graduation rate. If your value was on growth and development, then it’s absolutely more resonating along the lines of what Steve [said]: Even if it’s not with us, you’re moving in the right direction to where you need to be going.

I think success has changed from how many students are graduating to how our subpopulations of students are doing. That drilling down of what we mean by success is changed. When I first started in this ball game about 25 years ago, it was really about, over all, how are your students doing? And then it started to change—how are your commuter students doing versus your resident students? And how are your rural students doing versus your urban students? And then it just continued to the diaspora. The definition really continued to evolve—some will say devolve—depending on how you wanted to look at it.

It’s been an interesting journey in that regard, as far as the how the complexity of what student success means, because if we can say our student success rates have improved, but our Black student performance hasn’t, well, then, OK, is that really success?

Course Strat: We are seeing an increased focus on these subpopulations within campus communities, whether that’s, like you mentioned, racial and ethnic groups, or the book talks about LGBTQ+ students and students with disabilities. How has that focus on equity evolved?

Brophy: It’s really interesting to look at the history of how that’s changed over time reflected in that chapter where we kind of look at the history of orientation and how that’s very much influenced by the United States in that regard. One of our other chapters talks about how it’s a reflection of the society that you’re in and what your society values.

I always say, if you want to understand your own culture, look at somebody else’s. We see a lot of emphasis when we go to U.S. conferences about the transition of Hispanic students into the college and university system. Not so much an emphasis in Canada—not that we don’t have [Hispanic students], but it’s just less of a historic reflection of the values of the society.

We just came back from the FYE conference, and some conversations related to the national situation right now in the United States with the new president, and how that’s impacting the work that’s being done, and even the funding that’s available to support our EDIA communities. And it’s been really interesting to see how, and once again, what was a standard, all of a sudden, changes as a standard.

At the beginning of our presentation, we do an Indigenous land acknowledgment, both for New Orleans, where the conference happened, and from our own lands where we’re from. I did not see that in one other presentation, and that’s, I think, a little bit more of the cultural emphasis within Canada on reconciliation, more so than what we’re seeing more broadly within the U.S. system. Within Canada, it is very much about—and certainly within the university environment—it is very much about that inclusivity emphasis, probably more than you’re probably even seeing in the private sector.

Smith: I’d agree. I think there, and you always see ebbs and flows within that, too.

Typically, in the U.S. it’s called DEI—here we have about six different acronyms we can use depending on the context—but “EDIA” is sort of what people have fallen down on. That accessibility piece often gets forgotten, right, the “A” in EDIA.

That’s something that we very purposefully made … the focus of the book, because we wanted to highlight that. That is something that is particularly important, something that has actually received a pretty decent amount of attention, but it’s not something that’s really thought about a great deal when we think about inclusivity. It’s not just about visible diversity. It’s about invisible diversity and making sure that everyone feels included in that context.

Course Strat: International students are also a focus in the book, and in Canada there’s been some changes to the visa process and anticipated additional challenges coming for some international student populations. What’s the need to further support these students in transition?

Brody: For about two decades or longer … the provincial governments and the federal government in Canada have been cutting back their funding for institutions. Unlike the U.S., we’re more primarily public-funded. We’ve seen this decline in support from the government financially, and we’ve offset that with revenue from international students and a very active, intentional strategy nationally and regionally, provincially, to get more international students.

In some ways, I’ve been using the metaphor, we became dependent on a different drug, and the new drug source, the new revenue source, was international tuition. With that scaling back now with the different federal policies, I think the narrative has changed around international students, whereas five years ago, it would have been “We have so many coming, we need to do this right.” And now it’s almost, “We have so few coming. We need to do this right.”

The narrative has changed; they’ve now become almost like a precious metal that we really need to be careful that we’re safeguarding how we’re handling the students, because we’re getting less of them, and we still very much need them.

That chapter allows us to kind of talk about, well, how do we do that? And how do we do that as best we can, and what are the best practices to make sure that, with getting less of them, that we make sure that we’re keeping those that we get?

Smith: One of the side effects of being primarily government-funded is that, what we have now is so [reliant] on the revenue from international students and domestic students, because our numbers have been just going down population-wise. Anyway, when that hits, the provinces are not backfilling, and the federal government only funds universities by sending transfers to the province. So there’s no real opportunity for us to make that [revenue] back, and because what the governments are also pressured on is by students and parents saying university is too expensive. What they can do, because we are all public, is say, “This is your cap on tuition. You can’t increase it.” Or if you can increase it, you can only increase it by a small percentage every year.

That makes it that much more difficult, and again, really highlights why there really is that return on investment for student success initiatives. Because you can really make a difference in terms of the bottom line for the institution by keeping your students and making them successful.

Course Strat: Funding was also noted in the book and the value of student success initiatives, as well as the need for data to demonstrate value and gain support. Many student success efforts are being asked to do more with less resources. How have you seen practitioners balance effective strategies that cost less but impact students more?

Smith: The way I would look at it is, you have to be able to demonstrate return on investment for the university or the college so that they can actually say, “Hey, we’re going to put this money in. We know this is going to result in this much additional revenue.”

But in order to demonstrate return on investment, you must have assessment systems in place, because if you’re not assessing the outcomes, you cannot justify a return on investment. But … one of the challenges with that is you have to have the money and the time to do the assessment. And if you don’t have the money and the time to do the assessment, it’s a vicious circle, and it makes it really, really hard for you to justify what you’re doing, because you can’t evaluate it properly. Unfortunately, budget cycles are very short at universities, and memory is very fleeting.

Brophy: Steve’s dead-on. The only thing I would add onto it is, I’ve worked at three institutions in Canada—small, medium and large, in three different provinces. One thing that I’ve seen that’s very consistent is when you talk about enrollment, everyone defaults to recruitment. I don’t know if that’s a narrative that’s as much the case in the United States as it is in Canada, but certainly, people get enrollment and recruitment because it’s easy, like, there’s less fingers in that pie, and people get it.

The cause and effect is a little bit clearer than when we do programs and we roll them out and we’ll say, “OK, well, look at the increase in business costs. Well, oh, but wait, it wasn’t just this program. They were also getting better academic advice, and they were also getting this.” The lines get a little bit murkier, and because of that … everyone kind of loses track of the fact that it got better.

I think that’s one of the things that seems to get lost in the postsecondary environment. And that’s really one of the things that we’ve tried to drive through with, having the diversity of chapters that we have, is that there’s plenty of things that you can do, and maybe one of these is not the silver bullet, but combined, the potential is so much higher.

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