Academic Coaching is the Future of College Support — But What’s Missing?
With a name and model adapted from the world of executive coaching, academic coaching has been on the rise in higher education. However, the implementation of academic coaching is far from uniform and its effectiveness remains unproven.
What Academic Coaching Isn’t
Coaching of any sort is an important source of structure, accountability, and insight. A good coach helps clients explore their strengths and create realistic success plans. Academic Coaching was born in the year 2000 and has become widespread at colleges and universities in the United States since that time.
- Not to be confused with academic advisors, professional academic coaches don’t offer help in curriculum planning.
- Academic coaching also typically eschews course content, leaving this to designated content tutors.
- And though it may touch on personal issues as obstacles to academic progress, academic coaching doesn’t venture into mental health issues, typically referring students to campus counseling centers (Academic/Success Coaching).
What Academic Coaching Is
Also known as college life coaching or academic success coaching, academic coaching employs the inquiry-based approach of life and career coaching to guide students in creatively solving academic problems and reaching their own goals. Academic coaching at rigorous institutions such as Stanford offers assistance with time management and procrastination; motivation; exam preparation; and reading, writing, and note-taking strategies (Academic Coaching |stanford.edu). Most students who seek out academic coaching don’t meet with their academic coach every week, but schedule appointments as needed (Academic/Success Coaching).
Higher Ed Issues
The national six-year completion rate for students starting college or university studies in the fall 2012 cohort was only 58.3 percent. This means that there is a lot of work to do to increase retention and graduation rates (nscresearchcenter.org). It’s unclear how well academic coaching is helping students to stay in school and graduate.
Faculty and administrators have observed that many students emerge from their high school college-prep curriculum unprepared for the academic rigors of college. Many do not know why they are in college, so they lack the motivation to do the hard work (files.eric.ed.gov.pdf).
Some of the compounding challenges faced by new college freshmen include:
- Attendance: Going to class daily without parental pushing and prodding
- Executive functioning: Being aware of and organizing assignments and priorities without parental involvement, often with little structure from courses and instructors
- Time management: Making time to do homework and study
- Learning and study strategies: Using homework and study time well
What is Missing? A Focus on Executive Functioning
Academic coaching may be well-posed to meet with students to talk about how they are using their time and how to take advantage of learning strategies and skills. Academic coaching can also help students to identify their personal goals and work toward them. However, many implementations of academic coaching miss the executive functioning part. Students entering college have grown used to a lifetime of parents and teachers telling them what to do. All of a sudden, they are expected to be self-directed. They have to keep track of what they need to do and when. This is called executive functioning and it is a huge undertaking to learn this skill. Executive functioning is also key to many of the issues already addressed by academic coaching, including time management, procrastination, exam preparation, writing, and note-taking strategies.
Grades and Performance
When students meet with an academic coach, whether it’s once a week or once a semester, the main impetus for seeking coaching may likely be poor grades. Therefore, academic coaching should address students’ grades.
However, most academic coaches don’t look at students’ grades and don’t get involved in helping students to organize their assignments. That would require a different role from the business world, that of secretary, administrative aide, or personal assistant. Business people rely on personal assistants to organize their correspondence (similarly to student email), appointments (with its analog being courses and other class and non-class meetings), and to offer an extra set of eyes to catch crucial details. Academic coaching, if expanded to include the personal assistant role, could be so much more effective.
