UNM and its peer institutions are finding themselves with an influx of students who need advisement, but the universities don’t have the money to hire more advisers.
UNM’s University College student-to-adviser ratio of 770-to-1 is the highest of 16 peer institutions that had data readily available, and it is more than twice the last recorded national average.
“We have a higher student-adviser ratio than most. That’s a given. We know that,” said Vanessa Harris, University College Advisement Center director. “The University is working toward decreasing that ratio for students.”
Harris said UCAC, which has 10 advisers, is struggling to advise the college’s 7,700 students. She said the center is also allocating new money from the Board of Regents to hire more advisers.
Charlie Nutt, executive director of the National Academic Advising Association, said that because UCAC does not offer online advising, has limited phone and e-mail advising, and requires advisement every semester, 770-to-1 is a high ratio.
“Seven hundred-to-one is a large ratio, especially with the limited
other avenues of advice and experience open to the students in the University College,” he said.
However, Nutt said such ratios are common.
“Unfortunately, New Mexico is not unique in those high ratio numbers for a university of your size,” he said. “That doesn’t make you (at UNM) feel any better.”
Nutt said NACADA asked universities to report their student-to-adviser ratios in 2003, and the average was 300-to-1. NACADA is compiling data now to update the survey, and Nutt said the ratio will go up.
“I personally am predicting that it probably will have changed significantly and probably has increased because of the … economy and increase in student population,” he said.
Wynn Goering, vice provost of academic affairs, said he will present a way to ease UCAC’s burden to the Academic/Student Affairs and Research committee of the Board of Regents at their Oct. 28 meeting. He said his plan would streamline all methods of new student advisement throughout the University.
“When enrollment’s grown faster than the funds to keep up, those are just the natural consequences,” Goering said.
He said that on top of the 10 advisers provided by UCAC, another 10 are available through other campus-wide institutions, like the ethnic centers and athletics, so streamlining these makeshift advising centers will cut the ratio in half.
“Because we have a system where students by and large self-select where they want to get their advice … if a student walks through three different doorways and says, ‘What should I take?’ they ought to get basically the same answer,” Goering said.
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A comprehensive and consistent advising network would be created by making accessible an electronic advising history for all students, Goering said, and it will prevent students from “adviser-shopping.”
“They go to one and they say, ‘Well, you really should do this’ and they say, ‘No, I really don’t like that,’” Goering said. “And they go to other (advisers) until they finally find someone who will tell them what they want to hear.”
Goering also said the new LOBO Trax online progress report might mean students need less advisement.
At their last meeting, the Board of Regents allocated $500,000 of new money to advising at UNM. Of that, $160,000 goes to UCAC, Goering said.
Since UCAC’s operating budget is roughly $400,000, Harris said the money will ease the burden placed on UCAC advisers.
“The budget is relatively small. Every department is in a budget crunch at this point,” she said. “Hopefully, with this funding, we’ll be able to hire more advisers.”
