This study examined the patterns of student perception regarding academic advising in an undergraduate program in a privately operated school. Participants were 156 students enrolled in fall 2004 term and were asked to respond to both a 15 structured question questionnaire and an open-ended questionnaire. In the former format students were asked to rate their current advisor on each question using a scale from 1 to 4, where I indicated that student was very dissatisfied and 4 indicated that student was very satisfied. Our findings revealed that student’s satisfaction varied from question to question. Students were most satisfied with those questions that measured their social and personal needs and the advisor’s attitudinal skill. The major source of student’s dissatisfaction came from advisor’s lack of knowledge and information related to both institutional and non-institutional issues.
This study examined whether, and to what extent, students’ personal and cultural variables have an impact on the advising process. 225 students in an urban, private university were asked to complete twenty-nine structured questions in the Fall 2005. Each question asked the student to rank on a scale of one to five the importance of a characteristic/responsibility of an academic advisor. These twenty-nine characteristics/responsibilities were those most often cited in the literature as critical for an effective academic advisor. In addition, the students were asked to provide some cultural, personal, and academic information on themselves including class status, GPA, age, gender, school, and ethnicity. We used the chi-square testing technique. This method of testing the hypothesis allowed us not only to identify which of the advisor’s characteristics and/or responsibilities were significant but also to identify which personal and cultural trait of the student a particular characteristic was most consistent with. We found that students with different variables had quite different perceptions of the advising process. Students’ perceptions varied by age, class status, GPA, gender, school, and ethnicity. While there has been an increasing number of studies devoted to examining student satisfaction with academic advising, few of these studies have considered the student’s cultural, personal, and academic background as determinant factors in a successful academic advising process.
Numerous studies have described the importance of the quality of academic advising in student retention. Some studies have explored the impact of effective academic advising on student retention rates while others have explored the correlation between student retention/satisfaction and advisor-student interaction. Recent studies have also demonstrated the range of students’ expectations about academic advising. However, there are not very many studies to indicate what factors affect an advisor’s effectiveness and success in their performance. Our study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by incorporating these issues in an academic advising effectiveness process. For the purpose of this study, a sample of 225 students in an urban, private university was used to assess the excellence in academic advising. We found that excellence in academic advising is greatly linked to such factors as students’ personal, cultural, and academic background, including the quality of their relationship with their advisor.
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