OPINION & EDITORIAL
Importance of good advising cannot be underestimated
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by Badger Herald Editorial Board
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
On a campus with approximately 40,000 students, advising is a critical link in making sure each student is academically on track and having a successful college experience. Instead of finding supportive, knowledgeable advisers that have a reasonable amount of time to spend with individual students, many UW students find it difficult to get an appointment with their advisers and even more difficult to obtain helpful and accurate advice. This is serious problem that administrators and advisers need to work harder to correct.
Campus advising is an issue that affects every student. Students who receive great advising often have a clear focus, more tangible goals, are more satisfied with their collegiate experience and are more likely to graduate in four years. Students who receive substandard advising often feel unsure of their direction or major and are far less likely to graduate in four years. Poor advising also leads to frustration and resentment on the part of students.
In an Oct. 31 interview, Dean of Students Luoluo Hong noted that many students have approached her with concerns about advising and to recount their own tales of advising woe. In the absence of a valuable advising experience, some students even seek her advice or suggestions.
Additionally, taking a random poll on any street on campus will almost assuredly yield stories from students about poor advising experiences or a complete lack of advising experiences altogether. It seems as though every UW student has had at least one bad advising experience sometime between SOAR and graduation.
While the issue of advising on campus is complex, it certainly can be improved. According to Dean Hong, the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences receives few complaints from students about its advising services. On the other hand, the advising in both College of Letters and Sciences and Cross-College Advising Services are common sources of grumbling from students. Part of this seems to be due to the fact that L&S is so large. As the largest college on campus and the one in to which most freshmen are tentatively enrolled when they arrive, it is somewhat understandable why L&S advisers aren’t completely knowledgeable about all of the 70 or more majors offered in the college. Advisers in CCAS face a similar problem. They must be knowledgeable about majors in all the colleges across campus to offer useful advice.
Yet students still deserve better. Advising service coordinators on campus need to work together to figure out how to allow certain advisers, especially those in L&S, to gain expertise about a reasonable number of programs and spend more time with students. Most students don’t see an adviser in a specific program until they decide what they’re majoring in (which, in many cases, may not be until junior or senior year). With an L&S or CCAS adviser as the only campus adviser many students see for the first few years, poor advising can be catastrophic.
Administrators and other University officials, constantly stressing how important it is that more students graduate in four years, owe it to those very same students to provide helpful, insightful advising experiences. Thus far, that has largely not been the case.
