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).