Helping more students achieve their dreams involves identifying a wider set of student needs--including financial challenges and family responsibilities--and offering redesigned support services to meet them holistically. This holistic student supports approach emphasizes the need for colleges to redefine the way they understand, design, integrate…

A systems approach that stresses functional relationships among persons and units and examines transactions and processes provides a useful foundation for understanding, assessing, and improving academic advising. Implications of this approach in college advising for fostering system quality and meeting the institution's mission are examined. (MSE)

Quality Function Deployment, a set of concepts and tools used in manufacturing engineering to link consumer needs with product design, can also improve academic advising systems and processes. The technique promotes structured, logical examination of students' advising needs and their relationship to advising system design, processes, methods,…

Program descriptions, articles, an annotated bibliography, and a survey report on programs and services for students who are underprepared for college work as freshmen are presented. The survey report considers program design and delivery strategies at about 300 colleges, and the program descriptions concern: advising, basic skills instruction and…

The role of honors programs as models and resources for all college education is described, and a comprehensive set of 22 recommendations for fostering excellence in every higher education unit is provided. (Author)