Episode 66: Melissa Erazik on Listening to Students to Inform Decision-Making
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How can you capture students' voices? What are the success stories that spark change? How can you act on this information and inspiration? We discuss these questions with Melissa Ezarik, Editor at Inside Higher Ed leading their Student Voice surveys and Student Success News Hub.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education, the traditional methods of supporting students are being challenged by new data and shifting expectations. To explore these changes, Elliot Felix sat down with Melissa Erazik from Inside Higher Ed. Melissa, who leads the Student Success News Hub and the Student Voice surveys, brings a wealth of national data on what undergraduate students actually care about—and how those needs differ from what administrators often assume.
Defining a Holistic Approach to Student Success
Student success is no longer just about a GPA or a graduation rate. It is a multi-dimensional concept that spans academic achievement, campus engagement, mental and physical wellness, and post-graduation readiness. Melissa explains that these four "buckets" are deeply interconnected. For example, a student’s sense of belonging on campus can directly impact their academic performance, and their financial or spiritual health can be the deciding factor in whether they stay enrolled or stop out.
Moving toward a holistic definition means acknowledging that success is individualized. A part-time student juggling a family and a full-time job has a different path to success than a traditional four-year bachelor’s student. Institutions must adapt their support systems to meet students where they are, rather than forcing them into a one-size-fits-all mold.
The Power of the Student Voice in Decision-Making
One of the most significant barriers to student success is the "assumption gap"—the distance between what leaders think students need and what students actually experience. Melissa’s work with the Student Voice surveys highlights this gap vividly. In one survey regarding student wellness, administrators prioritized increased counseling resources, while students pointed to high-stakes exams as their primary source of stress.
By actively gathering student input through national surveys and local touchpoints, colleges can uncover these root causes. It isn't enough to speak only with student government leaders. True insight comes from "walking the campus"—engaging with students in dining halls, during club activities, or even through informal traditions like a "Sunday run" with the president. These interactions build trust and ensure that institutional decisions are grounded in the lived reality of the student body.
Breaking Down Silos Through Data Collaboration
If student success is holistic, then the administration must be integrated. Melissa emphasizes that "silos don't work in a student success world." When data is trapped within individual departments, the institution loses the ability to see the "whole student."
Modern student success strategies require cross-functional committees that meet regularly to dive into data. This means sharing information across academic affairs, student life, financial aid, and facilities. By breaking down these silos, leaders can identify who is "falling through the cracks" and intervene before a student chooses to stop out.
Emerging Trends: Students as Customers and Career Integration
The relationship between students and their institutions is shifting. Data shows that about four in ten students now view themselves as "customers" of their college. While the term "customer" is often met with resistance in academia, it signals a desire for clear expectations, transparency in grading, and high-quality service in administrative offices like financial aid.
Furthermore, there is a growing demand for career integration within the curriculum. Students are looking for a clear link between what they learn in the classroom and their future professional goals. This trend requires faculty and career services to work together more closely, ensuring that every degree program has a clear value proposition for life after graduation.
Moving Forward: From Data to Action
The ultimate goal of gathering student voice data is to drive actionable change. Whether it's realizing that a student didn't seek tutoring because they mistakenly thought it cost extra, or understanding that facilities maintenance can impact a student's ability to focus, these insights provide a roadmap for improvement.
To succeed in this new era, colleges must move beyond "average" retention and graduation rates. They need to analyze demographic breakdowns and use specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of their programs. By combining rigorous data analysis with a genuine commitment to listening, institutions can create an environment where every student feels seen, heard, and supported.
Episode 66 Transcript
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Melissa: I think that the most important thing is to always be collaborating. Silos don't work in a student success world. They're a huge problem when it comes to student success. You have to have. Awareness of the data that other departments have. You have to have the ability to share data and discuss it. We're hearing more and more about schools having, committees that meet regularly just to dive into the data
Elliot Felix: That was Melissa Azarek from Inside Higher Ed, who runs their Student Success News Hub with tons of case studies and success stories, as well as their student voice surveys, which provide great insights taking the pulse of students nationally on what they care about and how it's changing. We had a great conversation about all this, and in particular the role that student voice can and should play in institutional decision making. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Connected College Podcast. I'm your host, Elliot Felix. I've helped more than a hundred colleges and universities change what they offer, how they operate, and how they're organized to enable student success. And if you're a leader in higher ed, and you think that the silos and separations get in the way of student success, then this podcast and my upcoming book, The Connected College, are for you. We're here to learn and work together to bust silos, question tradition, and forge partnerships so that students feel connected to their college, their community. Their coursework and their careers. Welcome, Melissa. Thank you. Nice to be here. Would love to hear a little bit about how you got started in higher ed or I should say how you got inside higher ed.
Melissa: I've got my own bad joke coming to you. Yes, please. Please. I started actually in K 12 education journalism dabbled a little bit, but a full time job starting in 2001 and was a features editor for five years there before I switched over to our higher ed publication. So my bad joke is that I graduated to higher ed at that point.
Elliot Felix: Nice.
Melissa: So the K 12 publication was for superintendents so I learned a lot about leadership at the school district level and then in terms of higher ed it's a kind of a broader coverage area because there's so many different facets of operations and lots of cool things to cover. So I did that for almost. 20 years before coming to Inside Higher Ed in 2021. And at that point I came to launch our student voice series of surveys for undergraduate students because, you should not be making decisions without having a pulse on what the students have to say.
Elliot Felix: I love that. And what made you go into education? Journalism and what sparked this passion for the student voice?
Melissa: So I knew I was going into journalism when I was in college. And Yeah, it's just always an interest area. It's so important to our society, education, and just always something that I have enjoyed taking a deeper look at.
Elliot Felix: That's great. And I I share your passion for student success. I love the student success news hub and the student voice . I quote a lot of those studies In the book, and I remember things about disparities or differences in student involvement between types of institution or types of students, student demographics. Those really jumped off the page. The ones about, student use and satisfaction with career services. So I think it's such a great resource for people that are trying to better understand how students succeed and what they can do to enable it. Thank you for that.
Melissa: Yeah, it's so much fun to be able to delve into our data. We have visualizations and we can play around, someone who answered a to question one, what did they say to question three? And, dividing not just by first gen students, but also by first gen students at public institutions. And, you can play around for hours. And then all of a sudden, you see this, It's amazing differential and data like, Whoa, that's my story. It's a lot of fun.
Elliot Felix: Tell us about a time when you were playing around, you got lost in the data. And uncovered an insight like that. . I
Melissa: initially did 24 surveys in 23 months and that was during COVID and so interesting because it was truly at this point in time, uncovering how students are doing. And sometimes, even if we had surveyed people two weeks later, it would have been a different story. Unfortunately, that happened. We were doing a how did fall 2021 semester go now that things are pretty much opened back up and we surveyed them about two weeks before the Omicron Variants bumped up and closed them early for the semester. So all the people that said things were going great might have changed their mind by then. But yeah, it's I think the best data that we can uncover is when it really makes it clear what actions could be taken to help students. All of our surveys has some kind of, what do you think your school should be doing on this front?
Elliot Felix: Oh, that's interesting.
Melissa: Yeah, so those are probably my favorite. questions.
Elliot Felix: What's a great suggestion you got from a student in one of those? What should your school be doing?
Melissa: Oh even just How could my school better help me with wellness? And we actually asked student success administrators the same question in a separate survey. And the administrators were like, oh, to improve wellness, we need to get, more counseling services and resources in there. Students top response was that they needed to have less high stakes exams. So when they were thinking of wellness, they were thinking of the academic side of things, even though that was a separate question. And, it's just interesting to see you can't make any assumptions on. What students think and feel
Elliot Felix: right, somebody might be thinking about treating the symptom of stress, whereas another person might be thinking about, like, how do I remove the root cause or something?
Melissa: Yeah, or thinking of stress to generally. We did a survey on facilities once where I think it was 4 and 10 had said that, problems with facilities maintenance. Cause them to not be able to focus in class.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, or it was like distracting them on a test. I remember that one. Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. So yeah, everything is so interconnected.
Elliot Felix: Yeah. That's so interesting. Given that you've collected all these success stories and gathered all this data and done all this great reporting on student success. I'd love to hear how you define it.
Melissa: That is a million dollar question because we're always discussing it with sources and at our Student Success U. S. Conference we defined it very holistically. Our entire news hub is set up to cover four different areas. They intersect a lot, there's the academic side of student success. There's the student campus experience side of things. There's the wellness piece and we think of all the dimensions of wellness, everything from Emotionally and mental health to financial health spiritual health even and then the fourth piece is getting ready for after college. So everything's very connected. Mental health, physical health, stress have prevented students from doing well in class. If you don't feel like you belong, that's going to impact, how you feel anytime you're on campus in class or not. I don't think students are necessarily aware that if they get involved on campus in extracurriculars that promotes their own success. I think it's important that people in all these different areas be speaking to each other. Constantly. And I think that teams on campuses should have a similar way of talking about student success. But I think everyone has to realize and they pretty much do that. It's still a very individualized thing. It's gonna be based on life experience. An example I'll give is That, students of course you want them to complete in four years if they're going for a bachelor's degree, you have your students going part time who that's never going to work for, or students who are, juggling family and work at the same time and going to school full time and, realizing that it's probably going to take them a couple extra semesters or something like that. So I don't think you can ever take away the fact that individual situations also impact how students feel if they're successful or not. And that kind of has to be part of everything and part of individual discussions within universities,
Elliot Felix: Yeah, no matter what there's always going to be differences from student to student in terms of how they define it and what their situation is. But I like the areas you're defining. If they're having a positive experience where they're engaged, involved, feel like they belong, if they're healthy, mentally, physically, spiritually, financially if they are succeeding academically, and if they're prepared for what's next. That sounds like success to me. That's great. Yeah, no, it definitely has all the dimensions. And those were it. developed when we came up with our student success hub in 2023, I looked back on the 24 surveys I had done in the prior two years and put everything into buckets. And it became really clear that there are these four buckets, of course. And so it made sense to organize in that way. But as I said, when, when we're choosing which bucket does something sit on our website and we have to make that choice, it's tough because there's a lot of overlap.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, and sometimes the most powerful ideas or the most pernicious problems are the ones that cut across those different things.
Melissa: Yeah, exactly.
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Elliot Felix: I'd love to hear given the focus of the Student Success News Hub and the Student Voice what role does gathering students input, what role does understanding students voice play? In enabling their success.
Melissa: Yeah, this is, definitely why we started student voice and why we started student success, which incorporates student voice. , you have to understand that the way students experience things is not going to be necessarily the way you assume they're experiencing things. If a president is. Speaking regularly to a student government president, as they tend to do, you can't assume that is the student voice that is, one student leaders voice and opinion and experiences those who are out on campus and just like sitting down with students in dining halls or walking with them to a class and Asking them what's going what's going wrong for you? You're definitely getting more of a sense in what problems need to be solved for individuals and for groups. So with our surveys, they were a national snapshot but we had some colleges, trying to repeat some of the same questions and their own surveys, and then that tells you something too. How does you know national outlook compare to our individual student body and what they're thinking and feeling? I mentioned exams before and the idea of limiting them and, that was students top choice when we asked them about various things that could influence their academic success, but it also came out as a top choice about what could influence their wellness overall whereas, administrators were more thinking about, Oh, let's get more advising in there and let's strengthen our advising, but students themselves, are more thinking about the fact that, they could bomb one test and there goes their entire grade. And then, but then we also saw a lot of overlap between different things that. Administrators and students are thinking and feeling and, that's definitely a thumbs up kind of moment. For example, both groups see value in encouraging faculty members to help students connect what they're learning in class to what's outside the classroom or to their career goals. And that came out high for both administrators and students.
Elliot Felix: You did something recently about who students trust, right? It was very interesting to see how much more students trust faculty versus senior leadership. Perhaps not surprising given that you have different kinds of relationships between your professor and your president. But I thought that was interesting as well.
Melissa: Yeah, hopefully it gives presidents pause and, what can I do to build up more trust and, again, those presidents that are out walking the campuses are much more likely to have any kind of relationship with students or, I know of one president who was, I think he was hosting like 40 luncheons a year with student groups at his home and obviously he was building trust and, it, it takes very deliberate effort and probably not something presidents generally feel like they have time for, but if you if it comes right down to it, this is the most important reason why we're all within higher ed.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, and I think about little things you can do, they could have a big impact. Like I went to U. V. A. And President Jim Ryan, who's there now he does these Sunday runs with students that have gotten so popular. Now it's like hundreds of students running in a running in a clump, but I don't know, it's pretty cool to go for a run with the president and, you can't talk to 100 people while you're running, but you can be with 100 people while you're running. And I think it just, it sends a message about being accessible. It also sends a message about self care and health and wellness and getting outdoors and one of the amazing leaders I interviewed for my book Dan Maxwell has this tradition of doughnuts with Dr. Dan where he has, frequent touch points with cross sections of students, which I get is, I'm taking away from your comment is so important. Yes, you want to work within your governance and work with your student leaders. But you also want to be talking to a whole mix of students in a whole bunch of different ways. Some informal, some formal. And in addition to the surveys, these ways that you get in a rhythm of getting feedback and connecting with students and. Getting out there as a leader. I think you're so so cool.
Melissa: Absolutely. And, I think that, in these surveys, we can also look at those that students trust the most. And, what are they doing? Okay. Yes. Easy professors. They see them the most. But a few years ago, we did a survey asking students who gets you the most on campus. And of course, presidents came out low because not that many people knew their president and professors were up there. But, I remember Specifically that dining hall workers was a really strong response from students. And, they know how you like your sandwich. Yeah. That is important because mom knew how you liked your sandwich. If you're a traditional student. Yeah. Or relating more to janitors than to deans and, I hope that people that gave people pause and, just making connections is so important and that's why you have efforts like, professors, Putting out a sticker that they're a first generation college student themselves, and it opens up the door for students to talk about how they're first gen.
Elliot Felix: Yeah, it's not unlike the person who may shape your experience going to a museum could be just as likely a security guard as a curator, and I remember going to a museum once when, as we were leaving, the security guard told us about something that was happening that night, and it was awesome. And I think, the people on the front line are doing hard work, but they're, also making a huge impact.
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Elliot Felix: I would love to hear some of the trends you're seeing about student voice, how is that changing? Are there changes in methods of gathering? Are students still taking surveys? Are there changes in sentiment? How is it trending? How is it changing?
Melissa: Luckily we've worked with really strong survey partners. Currently we're working with Generation Lab and, so they're the ones that kind of take care of making sure that we not only hit the number of students, but also make sure all the different demographic factors are represented so we can, slice and dice the data later. One thing that we asked a few years ago, and that we also more recently asked was whether students consider themselves customers of their institution. And I think this is an interesting evolving area that, there's lots to talk about here. So in our last student voice annual survey four in 10 students believe that they're a customer of their institution in some way, whether that means across campus and various offices or in classrooms even, and I think it was like 13%. Actually only believe their customer within classrooms. And then you start to say what does that mean? Does that mean, hey, I'm paying your salary. You have to bump this B to an A and I, in talking this over with various people within higher ed, it sounds like that's not the norm of Why they and how they consider themselves customers. But maybe it's more about do you have a clear syllabus that, puts out the expectations? Are you making, clear how you're grading assignments? Also, then you have Offices on campus like housing where, you technically are paying for some services and, of course, in a way, you're a customer and, higher ed has debated this for decades and most people hate the word customer and but, when it comes down to it, you think about just being treated well and nicely and, are you greeted with a smile when you come into the financial aid office? Or a scowl. And we've also asked students which offices they've had positive and negative experiences with in past surveys. . Financial aid came out top for positive experiences and negative experiences. One of those high stakes offices where, it can be whether you feel like you continue with schooling or not.
Elliot Felix: Yeah.
Melissa: And then when you have short staffed offices too, like, how are you supposed to maintain that when, you know you can't get back to someone for two days. But maybe it's that when someone emails you, there is an auto reply saying the average response is 48 hours. So people don't think that it went into a black hole.
Elliot Felix: That's interesting. So one of the things that's changing, it sounds like, is maybe students relationships to their institutions. Maybe they feel differently than they once did about what they're a part of, or if they're a part of it, or if they're a customer, or if they belong. Maybe that's tied into some broader trends about how people, relate to trust, feel like they're a part of other institutions or other groups.
Melissa: I do think there is some shifting going on in the perception of the relationship between students and their institutions. And, there's still some amount of pushback of institutions, preparing students for jobs and yeah. There's a real mindset change that has to go on and, embedding career within all curriculum is a hard thing to do, and we're seeing more and more schools do it, but it's still unique enough that we're writing about it when it happens.
Elliot Felix: It definitely varies from institution to institution. I was on a webinar not too long ago that had deans from different real estate programs and one Dean got on there and he said something like, candidly, if I talk too much about. Jobs and careers, I get in trouble with my faculty and then the other Dean was like, how can you not talk about jobs and careers and, some people see a hard line between getting education and a job. And then other others say if students, don't get jobs, we haven't done ours and, I wonder how that relates to the whole idea of are your students, your customers, or is there a better word to describe the relationship you're trying to have
Melissa: and where does student accountability and, response come into play? You can't expect if you're not utilizing the services.
Elliot Felix: I think it's you can provide support and you can create the conditions for success. And you can provide guidance and build trust and relationships, but students have to play their role. They have to play their part as well.
Melissa: I did a story, I think, in December where it was looking at students who had stopped out of school versus our main respondents on some of the similar questions. And there's definitely student involvement was way less among those who had dropped out. What's the connection with that? And I know there's been other research on students who have stopped out, not even realizing something basic, like that there's counseling services connected to campus. And, you assume again that we tell them about an orientation we tell them in an email
Elliot Felix: one of the things that, blew me away years ago, we had a student advisory board at my former company. And one of the students who was a student body president. Super switched on, super connected, super driven person was saying in his first year, he didn't go to tutoring because he thought it cost money and he didn't have the money for it. And then, if you think about it in high school, tutoring is this extra thing that you pay for, like the idea that you can go to the library or go to the tutoring center and they'll teach you how to take notes or teach you how to make a presentation or they'll teach you how to manage your time or they'll work through the calculus problem set with you and that's the help you're paying for in your tuition was a new thing. So sometimes there are these, whether it's the hidden curriculum or whatever, there's, there's lots of help out there, but people don't think it's for them or don't know that it's free or whatever, whatever it might be
Melissa: which is never over message on these things. I don't think.
Elliot Felix: I think as a general rule for leaders and for everybody in higher ed, that's, I feel like when you get sick of saying something and you think people are sick of hearing it is probably right at the moment when you've just starting to say it enough,
Melissa: exactly.
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Elliot Felix: So given these changes students relating to their. Institution differently, students demographics changing and students having different needs and institutions trying to adapt. What's your advice for colleges and universities to adapt and to make changes based on what they're hearing from students.
Melissa: I think that the most important thing is to always be collaborating. Silos don't work in a student success world. They're a huge problem when it comes to student success. You have to have. Awareness of the data that other departments have. You have to have the ability to share data and discuss it. We're hearing more and more about schools having, committees that meet regularly just to dive into the data . You could have issues with Data sharing across some systems, which makes it difficult. Or, you need to consider privacy laws and what can be shared where. But having demographic breakdowns by different experiences, too, is just so key to figuring out who's falling through the cracks. It's been nice to see in the student success world that I live in that while colleges themselves, are out there touting like their most positive numbers I think student success administrators are focused more on the negative percentages and what can they do to turn that around. Even if 95 percent of students are doing a great job with XYZ, what about those 5%? Who are they? How can we reach them? And I think that's when, they really start to realize they can make a difference in these lives by figuring out who they need to reach out to more, who, may not be aware of services or utilizing them. I would say that the data piece is really key. And, even when it comes to individual student success programs, I think that, Colleges are still struggling to necessarily plan out what are their KPIs? How are they going to know this is successful? How do we know if it's time to scale it up and to reach more students? That's a little bit unfortunate because you think by now everybody would have that nailed, but I think people are still struggling a little bit to reach beyond the more obvious. retention, graduation, data, sorts of things. And, really looking more deeply at the information we have, even within the CMS about, attendance or missed assignments.
Elliot Felix: So it sounds like communication, collaboration, sharing the data. And then being clear about the KPIs and going beyond, so many students get lost in the average. So going beyond the average and breaking things down and also coming up with more specific KPIs give you a better sense of whether something's working or not working or how and when and why to scale it up.
Melissa: Yep, absolutely.
Elliot Felix: That's all really good advice.
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Elliot Felix: As we wrap up Melissa, I'd love to hear some success stories of institutions that are doing this great work that are adapting that are. Listening to students, making better decisions, helping them succeed.
Melissa: Sure. There's so many that we're reporting on all the time, which is great. There's really no shortage of ideas for us to get to at some point, which is saying a lot. I think that there is a lot of positive things going on out there. When I think about student success. I think about success at an institution. I often think about individual students that I've talked to and how their institution has supported that. When I was covering the results of our student voice data on campus involvement in extracurriculars I interviewed this amazing woman at a community college in North Carolina who was going back to finish her nursing degree after many years of working in the medical field but hadn't gotten that degree. I think she'd had a family and then more recently She was taking care of a sick husband and a sick parent and, just a lot going on. So she decided to go back to school right around the same time her son was entering school as a freshman. And, it is incredible. She continued to work and take care of her family and, I think she might be 50 years old and she went back and she just kicked it out of the park in terms of involvement outside class. The. school was looking for someone to make sure that each of their branch campuses had the same involvement opportunities as the main campus. And she became the lead student on that project. And when I asked if they might have a picture of her doing something on campus, they sent me about a hundred photos of her doing various things on campus.
Elliot Felix: That's great.
Melissa: It's just that I don't know how much the school had to actually push and encourage that. Definitely some, a lot of it was, self driven, but just hearing about a student doing what you, a non traditional student doing what you might think that only out of high school students are doing in college was really inspiring. And she ends up being like the mom to students in her study group and they benefit too from getting to know someone in a different generation in a different way and it's just, it's all good.
Elliot Felix: That's great. Thank you so much, Melissa. These great insights on the role that student voice plays and student success and all the great work so many institutions are doing and how your news hub is informing and empowering them. So thank you so much.
Melissa: Thank you for the opportunity. It was great to talk with you about some of my favorite subjects and always nice to revisit past stories and surveys. I may not have even thought about in a while
Elliot Felix: Thanks for listening to the connected college podcast. Subscribe to my Connected College Newsletter at ElliotFelix. com for insights and excerpts from my upcoming book, tools you can download, and special offers. You can also find more information about talks I've given, articles I've written, and upcoming events there, and please support the podcast by rating and reviewing it wherever you're listening. Let's create connected colleges where students will succeed.