Survey of Best Practices in Academic Advising 100+ page study presents data from 45 colleges and universities about their academic advising efforts.  The report helps its readers to answer questions such as:  how large are academic advising staffs and how fast are they growing, if at all?  How many students seek academic advising? What kind of workshops are being offered by academic advising units and how effective are they?  How do academic advising departments assess their own performance, or train their employees? How much do they spend on employee training? How do colleges relate academic advising to student retention? How many colleges have been able to significantly increase their student retention through new approaches to academic advising? How important a priority does the college administration view academic advising?

Just a few of the study’s many findings are that:  

• Colleges with between 3,000 and 6,000 FTE enrolled students had a mean academic advising staff size of 4.4. 

• Workshops for students in time management were among the most popular and effective.

• The higher tuition charged by the college, the greater the number of peer mentors used, irrespective of college size or other characteristics.

• About 37% of academic advising sessions are completed in less than 20 minutes.

• Mean annual spending for training the academic advising staff was approximately $3,500.