What is Yale's advising system doing wrong?

Amid all the information heaped on freshmen during their first few weeks at Yale, the one thing rarely heard is solid academic advice. "At first, we tell freshmen the system is good. Then they go to their advisors and find they're not going to get the kind of help they need, so they come back to complain. We agree the system is lame and try to redirect them," a freshman counselor explains.

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Yale's freshmen, faced with an overwhelming array of classes, majors, and decisions, want guidance. They want their rules elucidated, their classes evaluated, and their lives organized. But an underwhelming academic advising system often leaves their questions unanswered. The advising system coordinated by residential colleges is, in the words of one senior, a waste of time. "The system is terrible—faculty members don't seem to care. There is no matching of interests or meaningful contact," he says.

Freshman counselors deal mostly with social adjustment and personal problems. Residential college Deans often cannot devote enough individual attention to academic needs that are supposed to be resolved through other channels. Could other universities offer Yale an alternative to its ailing advising program?

The way it could be

Norman Keul, Director of the Pre-Major Advising Center at Duke University and former Dean of Saybrook, welcomes his freshmen by introducing them to 125 trained academic advisors. "We tell our freshmen that they have 125 faculty members at their fingertips who are versed in all aspects of academic life at Duke and who are always accessible," he explains. "We tell them they will have two years to build a relationship with an advisor, and that every major academic decision they make will go through him."

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Duke's pre-major advising program, last revised in 1997 under Keul's supervision, hinges on the systematic training and evaluation of its advisors. Twelve incoming freshmen are matched up with each faculty member, based as much as possible on academic interest. These advisors receive annual training in university requirements and departmental policies and remain with the student through his sophomore year. The formal functions of the advisor are similar to those at Yale—they approve schedules and answer curricular questions. While the upside of Duke's centralized system is a more accessible and arguably more knowledgeable advising force, Keul admits that the nature of faculty-student contact tends to be largely administrative. "Advising does not equal mentoring. You can't legislate bonding. You can throw people together and hope they take the time to foster a relationship," he says. "But it's hard to formalize."

Mentoring aside, how does Duke's system handle the basics of advising? "It's luck of the draw whether you get a professor who really cares and knows what's going on," Emmanuel Chang '01 remembers. "I was assigned to a professor who was so focused on research that he just didn't offer any help. I had to find out everything on my own."

The residential college system, the linchpin of Yale's way of life, aims to breed mentoring relationships. The colleges were designed in the '30s to combat the impersonal atmosphere resulting from the University's burgeoning enrollment and to promote social interaction between faculty and students. "Of course we all know that the notion of fellows and students coming together in natural social intercourse is an imperfectly realized dream," Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, says.

What's missing?

Yale's freshmen are presented with three academic advising resources upon arrival—the residential college Dean, freshman counselors, and their college fellows, who are faculty members responsible for approving schedules and guiding students through course selection. According to the Yale College Program of Study, all three sources are geared towards ensuring that students do not "emerge from college with a collection of miscellaneous information but no wiser than when they entered."

In theory, the interaction between freshmen and their Deans, fellows, and freshman counselors provides a comfortable introduction to the academic culture of the University. However, its unstructured nature also accounts for the lack of consistency in academic advising. Residential college Deans are free to select faculty affiliated with their college to be freshman advisors and set standards for the advising process. That interaction can be a required bi-annual meeting covering distributional requirements or an informal barbecue doubling as an advising fair. Between the formality of schedule approval and the mentoring relationship envisioned by the Administration lies the gray area of undergraduate advising.

Courtney Costas', DC '02, relationship with her freshman advisor was literally non-existent. "There was an ice cream social shortly after I arrived, and we were supposed to meet our advisors afterwards. She never showed up, so we were given her name and told how to get in touch with her," she recalls. "Her office was at the Medical School, and she was always too busy to meet with us, so my suitemates and I never really got to talk to her. We ended up dropping our schedules in her mailbox, and she signed them and sent them to the Dean's Office. Second semester she wouldn't even return our phone calls, so she didn't sign our schedules."

While Costas' case is unusual, many freshmen complain about the unavailability of their advisors. Administrative responses vary, though most Deans maintain that they monitor their fellows' commitment and adjust accordingly. "I ask freshmen to report complaints to their counselors, and if a fellow repeatedly gets bad reports, I gracefully ask him to leave," Calhoun Dean Stephen Lassonde, GRD '89, says. Another Dean's policy is to wait until a negatively evaluated fellow takes his leave of absence every three years and not invite him back. However, students may be reluctant or too lazy to report discontent, and Deans may be loath to dismiss a long-standing fellow from service. Without formal assessment, is there a way to ensure consistency in advising?

Keul points to systematic evaluation as the key to Duke's healthy crop of advisors. Every year, first- and second-year students complete a survey on their advisor's knowledge, accessibility, personal interaction, and competency in specific advising areas—including "improving my study skills and habits" and "clarifying my life/career goals"—giving point values for each question. Keul publishes a report and then cleans up his advising center. "I'm becoming bolder and bolder about biting the bullet and letting people go. It's quite hurtful to these advisors to be terminated. I hate to do it, but it's best for the students," he sighs. This year, he estimates that 10 to 12 advisors will be asked to leave. Keul's "hard data" shows that in the past four years, students' assessments of how well advisors serve their needs rose from 3.2 to 3.9 on a five-point scale. "This system provides great feedback to advisors on everything from accessibility to personal warmth. It keeps them honest," he says.

Student and administrative judgments vary. "I think students will only take evaluations seriously if they actually can see it impact and be used by the departments," Chang says. "Duke struggles with this, because some department heads don't take evaluations seriously."

Somebody to lean on

What is the role of an academic advisor? Students complain that their freshman and sophomore advisors don't know the minutia of Yale's academic regulations—but is that to be expected from faculty members at a large research university?

Brodhead explains that there is a large and a little way to look at advising. "The large way is to see it as more than just a technical consultation. You sit down with a person and ask,`You are surrounded by all these resources—how are you going to take advantage of them? What high-minded purposes are you going to bring to your education?'" he explains. The little way involves calling one's advisor 10 minutes before sche-dules are due. "This isn't entirely a fault of the students," Brodhead says. "You put together the facts that students are super-busy and self-directed and you come up with the fact that by the time most students meet with their advisors to get their schedules signed, they already have their classes picked out."

The large view of the advising system, Brodhead agrees, is hard to realize. "We can't require people to have spiritually uplifting and mentally expanding relationships with their advisors. That would be nice, but at the end of the day, all we can require is that they have the appropriate signature on their paperwork."

Lassonde also sees a credibility problem with faculty advice. "The advisor is a person who represents the institution," he adds. "The freshman counselors would probably have more honest and worthwhile advice. However, as students, they may lack perspective."

At Princeton, whose system is almost identical to Yale's, students likewise question the role of faculty members in advising. Adam Friedman '01, a residential advisor, recalls that he met with his advisor for 15 minutes to go over his course choices, check on his core requirements, and sign his schedule. "Not much advising, but it is not really the faculty's fault—how are they supposed to know what the best intro English course is if they are in the chemistry department?" he asks. "Most of the advice about classes we receive is word-of-mouth, either from friends or the student-moderated course guide. I'm not sure students really would want the faculty's opinion on courses, because they will and should give the `official' responses to those kinds of questions."

A tradition of stagnation?

The benefits and drawbacks of the Yale way are clear. On one hand, the unstructured system provides possibilities for mentoring relationships between advisors and students. On the other hand, without formalized expectations for both students and faculty, there is no way to ensure quality advising—and students like Costas can slip through the cracks.

Brodhead sees two troublesome components in the advising formula. "It would be wonderful if more faculty were interested in the notion of educational advising. But the whole thrust of academic life, especially at a research institution like Yale, is immersion in one's field. So Yale tries to provide a counterthrust by demanding that faculty members also get involved in undergraduate life," he says. "There is another side to the situation: our whole undergraduate system is based on volunteerism. You do reach a point where someone says in frustration, `You should have made me do this.' But you can't make students have what the signature on their course selection sheet is supposed to symbolize—a serious discussion of their academic goals."

Ensuring the quality of advising is problematic. "The conversation always becomes `I'm taking these three classes and I have three sections, and what do you think I should do about my Group IV?' But advisors are supposed to be there to ask `How do you even begin to approach what classes you want to take?' By the time most students come to their advisors, they already know—or think they know—what they want to do," Brodhead says. "You can't send an e-mail from the central Administration to impart the importance of advising. That's what the colleges are trying to do by dividing students into smaller groups and allowing them the benefits of close contact with faculty members."

But even an interested student can't always engage his advisor in the conversation Brodhead envisions. "I went to see my sophomore advisor and the first thing he said was `You're here to get your schedule signed, right?'" Cy Brennan, JE '03, says. "He basically said that if I was filling all my requirements, I could call him later if I had a problem."

While these systemic flaws are easy to spot, they are much harder to solve. Duke's solution—centralizing advising—does not seem to fit at Yale. "Duke would like to establish a college system," Brodhead says. "If they could have residential college advising, don't you think they would? Why would you want to set up an advising system for 3,000 freshmen if you could have one for 400? There's the question of mass quality involved. It really wouldn't be in the Yale vein to have one central advising entity—can you imagine an advising hut in the middle of cross campus?"

And while residential college advising is not likely to be replaced, as one Dean says, "Unless there is a committed fellowship, there is not going to be a good advising system at Yale. Right now there is not a committed fellowship, so the students are not benefitting."

The Yale academic advising system is evaluated internally every few years, and the Committee on Teaching and Learning is currently monitoring a two-year experiment in Berkeley and Trumbull to reduce the number of advising fellows. The smaller group of advisors takes on more students but receives more training. According to Brodhead, the results are not conclusively positive. "There does not seem to be a rise in student satisfaction. I think students are not using the new system any more than usual," he says.

Brodhead attributes this phenomenon, as well as the more general kinks in the advising system, to the nature of Yale's students—and he sees virtues in the situation. "The kind of students we have here—very motivated, very self-directing—are going to pay attention to what they want. I've rarely had a student change his mind on the basis of what I advised," he explains. "I am not minimizing the problem. I would never say that our advising system is all that it could be. But some of the things that cause its problems are also in themselves virtues. If we had a more passive student body, we could arrange a more successful advising system."

Aside from recruiting docile students or eliminating the residential college system, the Administration does not see any clear-cut cures for the ailing advising system. Yale is reluctant to adopt radical measures. Keul, who proposed changes in the advising system during his tenure as Saybrook Dean, says, "There is always a strong sense of tradition at work at Yale. You are never going to get a number of people to agree on anything that requires a shift in Yale culture."

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