Should Advising Be Centralized or Faculty-Led?

I asked AI to create an image of a professor and a college advisor squaring off. This was it's first pass... and I don't know if I could be happier

No two schools are organized the same way. I'm always surprised — given any number of student support resources like advising, tutoring, and orientation — by the number of different permutations schools find for where those resources should live.

When resources are housed in academic affairs, I generally find a "college readiness" vibe to them. Faculty want to make sure that when students show up to class, they're in the best possible condition to learn: they have the strategies they need, we've gotten all the mishigas out of the way, and faculty can just get to teaching and learning.

I'm a little less critical of the student affairs side because, well, those are my people. Sure, being the assessment person in student affairs is kind of like being the accountant for a professional sports team, but I'm fully aware that some perceive student affairs-based resources as touchy-feely, squishy, or just generally not focused on academics, learning, or "the things that matter."

Of course, these are broad generalizations about the way one side of the spectrum looks at the other. And yes — before you raise your hand — there are countless hybrid iterations between these two poles. Sometimes faculty handle traditional academic advising while others (typically with titles like coach or counselor) manage the more general student success work. In other instances, general advising handles the early stages of a student's path before handing them off to more dedicated advisors within their discipline.

There is no single answer as to which model is best. But as we begin some exciting new advising work this summer, I want to take a few minutes to explore both ends of the spectrum — not to declare a winner, but to honestly examine the strengths and limitations of each approach, and then make the case for where I think the evidence is pointing.

It Depends on the Goals

One day while on campus, my boss (the VP of Student Affairs) came in and asked how we should structure orientation. One faction was pushing for a multi-day, residential experience; the other didn't think such an extensive design was necessary. He asked if there was any research comparing the two approaches.

"What are the goals of orientation?" I asked. He looked at me somewhat perplexed. "Look," I said, "if orientation is just about meeting your advisor, taking a campus tour, and filling out forms, we can do that in one day. But if the goals include building belonging, fostering help-seeking, and launching momentum into the first semester, then we probably need something more substantial."

At that early point in my career, I had no idea how often that same conversation would repeat itself. Someone asks which approach is better, and I have to ask: better at what? Advising is no exception. As Miller and Irons (2014) pointed out, the question of "who does advising?" can't be answered without first asking:

1. What should be the focus and outcomes of advising?

2. When should advising occur?

3. How will advising be conducted — one-on-one, in groups, virtually, in-person?

Worth noting: what's striking is that there is relatively scant research that directly compares centralized and faculty-led advising approaches. While texts describing various models exist (e.g., Habley, 1997; Miller & Irons, 2014), direct head-to-head comparisons are hard to come by. That may be precisely because the question can't be cleanly answered without answering the ones above first.

The Faculty View

The faculty perspective on advising tends to be shaped by two things. First, faculty are experts in their fields who undertook long, dedicated paths to get where they are. For some, this can create a blind spot around the struggles students face — not total ignorance, but perhaps a gap in the particular kind of empathy that only comes from having felt those challenges yourself.

This can be tough because all faculty are successful students - look where they made it! Even if they did confront the same challenges, the clearly found a way to overcome them. A similar argument is often made as to why great athletes don't always make the best coaches: I figured it out, why can't you?

Second, faculty's primary relationship with students is organized around learning and academic success. Issues that are less proximal to that work — financial stress, family obligations, mental health, sense of belonging — may feel less central to the advising conversation, even when they are exactly what's driving a student's academic struggles.

There's also the matter of training. Faculty are credentialed as disciplinary experts, not as coaches or counselors. Many faculty I've spoken with over the years have expressed genuine concern about their ability to handle issues that fall outside the classroom. That's not a criticism; it's an honest acknowledgment of role boundaries.

When faculty want to lead advising, it's typically because they view it as an academic enterprise: curriculum management, course selection, degree navigation, and, at its best, academic mentoring — connecting students to career pathways, research opportunities, and professional networks within the discipline. That is genuinely valuable work, and I don't want to minimize it.

The Broader View

Other approaches have taken various names, such as holistic advising, appreciative advising, strengths-based advising, and proactive advising. The common thread running through all of them is a shift in focus: less about helping students navigate institutional requirements, and more about building the skills, confidence, and connections students need to do so successfully on their own — ideally before problems arise.

Each of these models carries its own nuances, but one framework we've found particularly compelling is the SSIPP model, developed by the Community College Research Center (Klempin et al., 2019). Emerging from a multi-year study of advising reform efforts across dozens of institutions, SSIPP argues that effective student support must transcend traditional advising transactions. The framework emphasizes five principles:

• Sustained support offered to students throughout their entire time at the institution — not just at orientation or during registration crunch.

• Strategic deployment of advising resources through systems that differentiate support based on student needs and interests.

• Integrated advising that connects with other student supports and with the broader college experience, rather than operating in silos.

• Proactive outreach that reaches students before they fall through the cracks — because the students who most need support are often the least likely to come ask for it.

• Personalized advising delivered by someone who actually knows the student and is attuned to their individual circumstances and goals.

So Which Model Wins?

Here's my honest answer: faculty advising, on its own, is not enough.

That's not a knock on faculty. It's a structural observation. The evidence — and frankly, decades of stubbornly low completion rates — tells us that traditional advising models, including purely faculty-led ones, are not adequately serving today's students. As Klempin et al. (2019) note, only about 39% of students who entered two-year public colleges in fall 2012 completed a degree or certificate within six years (Shapiro et al., 2018). That's not a student motivation problem. That's a systems problem.

What the SSIPP framework makes clear is that the question was never really "faculty or professional advisors?" The better question is: does your institution have a system that sustains, integrates, proactively reaches, and personalizes support for students? If yes — fantastic. Build in whatever role makes sense for faculty within that system. If no — then it doesn't much matter how credentialed or well-intentioned your advisors are.

Faculty can and should play a meaningful advising role, particularly in the areas where they genuinely excel: academic mentoring, disciplinary socialization, connecting students to professional networks, and helping students understand what a career in a given field actually looks like. That's irreplaceable.

But that work sits on top of a foundation of sustained, proactive, integrated support. Building that foundation requires dedicated infrastructure, professional training, and institutional commitment that goes well beyond what most faculty advising models provide. The two aren't in competition. They're complementary. The institutions getting advising right tend to be the ones that have stopped treating this as an either/or question and started building systems where each type of support reinforces the other in an intentional and collaborative way.

The goal isn't to pick a side. It's to make sure that somewhere in your institution, all five of those SSIPP functions are actually happening — reliably, for every student, not just the ones who know to ask.

References

• Habley, W. R. (Ed.). (1997). The status of academic advising: Findings from the ACT fifth national survey. National Academic Advising Association. (Please verify edition/year against your copy.)

• Klempin, S., Kalamkarian, H. S., Pellegrino, L., & Barnett, E. A. (2019). A framework for advising reform (CCRC Working Paper No. 111). Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University.

• Miller, M. A., & Irons, J. G. (2014). Academic advising: A comprehensive handbook. (I am not fully certain of the exact publication details for this entry — please verify before using formally.)

• Shapiro, D., Dundar, A., Huie, F., Wakhungu, P. K., Bhimdiwala, A., & Wilson, S. E. (2018). Completing college: A national view of student completion rates — Fall 2012 cohort (Signature Report No. 16). National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.