Joe
Cuseo - Only about one-third of college campuses provide
training for faculty advisors; less than one-quarter require faculty
training; and the vast majority of institutions offering training programs
focus solely on dissemination of factual information, without devoting
significant attention to the identification of the goals or objectives of
advising, and the development of effective advising strategies or relationship
skills (Habley, 1988).
The
upshot of the foregoing findings is encapsulated in the following conclusion
reached by Habley (2000), based on his review of
findings from five national surveys of academic advising: “A recurrent theme,
found in all five ACT surveys, is that training, evaluation, and recognition
and reward have been, and continue to be, the weakest links in academic
advising throughout the nation. These important institutional
practices in support of quality advising are at best unsystematic and at worst
nonexistent” (p. 40). This conclusion, based on national surveys, is
reinforced by national reports on the status of American higher education. For
instance, a blue-ribbon panel of higher education scholars working under the
auspices of the National Institute of Education (1984),
concluded that, “Advisement is one of the weakest links in the education of
college students” (p. 31). Similarly, a national report issued by the Carnegie
Foundation, based on three years of campus visits and extensive national survey
research, arrived at the following conclusion: “We have found advising to be
one of the weakest links in the undergraduate experience. Only about a third of
the colleges in our study had a quality advisement program that helped students think carefully about their academic options”
(Boyer, 1987, p. 51).