Sep 21, 2026 · 26 min · 12 segments
Why are some higher education institutions struggling to improve persistence and completion despite widespread investment in student success efforts? Kristin Brooks, strategy director at Complete…
Kelli RaineyGuest
Kristin BrooksGuest
Bryan DicksonHost
So for years, higher education has invested, again, heavily in student success, yet we see institutions struggling to improve persistence and completion.
I know we have a limited amount of time here, but in a nutshell, why is that, and what's been kind of missing from this conversation?
Where do we begin? You know, I think on a really basic level, it's just the continued silos that we have in higher education, the academic area, the student success area, the what they call the back office finance space, right? And those three areas working together can be incredibly challenging.
Yeah, and I'll double down on that, too, because we have heard over the years that this lack of inter-institutional collaboration has been really the part of the pains that institutions have been struggling with, with thinking about scaling and sustaining student success.
saying why are we seeing the same type of proposals being submitted to us to not only advance student success, but to really just get it started and what's missing from the equation.
And part of what our research has seen over the last few years is really that not only integration of the business and finance side of the house being a part of the conversations, but also understanding student success.
And so we've been working at Akubo for several years now to really help to educate, but also to be able to show how we can do this.
It's really giving people the resources to understand how to enter into this and to sustain and grow it.
So for years, higher education has invested, again, heavily in student success, yet we see institutions struggling to improve persistence and completion.
I know we have a limited amount of time here, but in a nutshell, why is that, and what's been kind of missing from this conversation?
Where do we begin? You know, I think on a really basic level, it's just the continued silos that we have in higher education, the academic area, the student success area, the what they call the back office finance space, right? And those three areas working together can be incredibly challenging.
Yeah, and I'll double down on that, too, because we have heard over the years that this lack of inter-institutional collaboration has been really the part of the pains that institutions have been struggling with, with thinking about scaling and sustaining student success.
saying why are we seeing the same type of proposals being submitted to us to not only advance student success, but to really just get it started and what's missing from the equation.
And part of what our research has seen over the last few years is really that not only integration of the business and finance side of the house being a part of the conversations, but also understanding student success.
And so we've been working at Akubo for several years now to really help to educate, but also to be able to show how we can do this.
It's really giving people the resources to understand how to enter into this and to sustain and grow it.
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