I’m increasingly convinced that one of the most important survival skills for working in higher education is being able to hold (at least) two mutually incompatible ideas in your head at the same time. I think the issue arises because we try and apply rules, principles and realities at an institutional level with thousands of students, or sectoral level with hundreds of thousands of students. I’d argue that it’s utter madness to believe that there’s one single version of the truth for every single student in the sector, or every student belonging to a particular group. And yet we try.

For example, my team produces a monthly engagement report for the institution. It shows the distribution of engagement each month for our new, continuing and repeating students. In essence, it shows that this month X% of our students had ‘High’ average engagement, Y% had ‘Good’ average engagement etc. It’s not perfect, the engagement that we show is a proxy; we can’t know if a student is highly engaged, only that they are doing lots of relevant activity (logging in to the VLE, attending classes etc.). The correlation between engagement and both retention and attainment is very, very strong (as you would expect), but it’s never going to be perfect. One useful thing that we can show is how overall engagement this year looks compared to last year. If engagement is about the same as last year, it’s fair to suggest that the outcomes are likely to be the same, and if it’s lower we should be concerned. This data is discussed at senior levels, and we have started to encounter are real challenges about its validity.

“This data can’t be right, the campus feels busy at the moment. I see lots more students around than last year.”

Apocryphal senior manager quote based on an amalgam of feedback

This problem is as old as the hills, I’m sure we’ve all sat in meetings where one anecdote well made carries equal weight to extensive tables of analysis. But a senior manager’s comments about the campus being busier isn’t necessarily wrong.

Similarly, my team reaches out to students who have generated ‘no-engagement’ alerts. If a student has no engagement for 10 days during term time, the team emails them and then rings them to offer support. At the start of each term, the system needs 10 days of no-activity before an alert can be generated and so we start the term with calling campaigns based on background, not engagement. At the start of our second term (January), the callers contacted students who had entered the University through the clearing route with an email and a phone call. Immediately, the callers reported differences between the clearing students and the students that they normally communicated with. We prioritised students who appeared to have very low engagement, then the callers contacted students with normal or even high levels of engagement. The callers reported that those students with higher engagement had usually read the email sent to them and were expecting a call. Their behaviour during the call was often quite different. During a normal ‘no-engagement’ call, students can be defensive (for very understandable reasons, this is not a criticism of them), the clearing students were typically more open and grateful for the call. The pick up rate also improved, in our normal calls to students with low engagement around 1/3 pick up the phone, amongst the clearing students, around 1/2 picked up.

The callers reported that it was really enjoyable reaching out to students who were actually thriving at university, often really enjoying their studies and felt that they fitted in. The students that they normally call are often struggling to cope, not quite sure why they are at university, or sometimes, not even aware that there’s a problem. These are two completely different tribes of students.

I think I understand why we are always looking for single versions of the truth when it comes to student retention, engagement and success. We only have so much space in our heads, having a simple implementable plan is far better than one the length of a mobile phone contract. There’s at least a fighting chance that the former will get done. However, I think contributes to dangerous myths that we can reduce complex problems to simple solutions. We instinctively want nudges to work, they’re simple, quick and seductive, but we are facing wicked problems that I’m not sure can be reduced to such simple fixes.

One of the problems is that probably every form of engagement or retention intervention works. If you concentrate on belonging, mattering, formative assessment, deconstructing assessment, peer mentoring, block model teaching, blended learning etc., they’ll all have an effect. It’s just that the effect size is likely to be small and will only work with some students some of the time.

I would want colleagues to hold multiple retention and engagement strategies in place at the same time, but I recognise that it’s unrealistic. I’m going to suggest a compromise: the Pareto Principle. The Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) was based on the observation that 80% of the land in Italy and numerous other states was owned by 20% of the population. The idea has been developed where other observations noted factors such as 80% of sales came from 20% of customers. There are various attempts to turn this into a universal rule, 80% of successful outcomes will come from 20% of effort (you just need to choose the right 20% to prioritise).

I’m not sure that many people believe the Pareto Principle is literally true, more that it’s a useful thought experiment. I want to suggest the following variation. When it comes to engagement, retention, student success etc., what you are doing already will work for most students (80%). Yes, you could always teach better, induct better, assess better, etc., but essentially what you are doing works. But expect that for a minority of students (20%) that’s not good enough. These 20% of students need more, they’ll need more support, earlier points to diagnose problems, extra attempts at communication. And assuming that you are dealing with two tribes may be a far more practical approach than carrying round a multitude of strategies.

And if you don’t want to call it the Pareto Principle, the Frankie Goes to Hollywood Principle is fine by me.