Building on keynotes by Raj Chetty and Michael Crow at the 2024 University Innovation Alliance National Summit, Dr. Tim Renick, Executive Director of the National Institute for Student Success (NISS) at Georgia State University, used his own presentation to share the nuts and bolts for enhancing student achievement at scale. He spoke about the proven effectiveness of gathering and applying data, reshaping student success through predictive analytics, how proactive advising starts with efficient outreach, and how a completion grant program can close the equity gap for low-income students.
A Data-Driven Fix for Higher Ed
Dr. Renick began his keynote by challenging the popular misconception that college graduation rates are declining. This is old news, he assured us, reinforcing his point with slides that illustrate a steady rise in degree completion from 2012, which he attributed to:
- Georgia State University’s 2011 launch of a completion grant program
- Georgia State’s 2012 introduction of predictive analytics and proactive advising
- The UIA’s student success focus since its 2014 founding
“There are things that scale and are highly effective,” he insisted. “We don't need to continue saying, ‘We don't know what we need to do,’ because there are a number of things that have been shown by these data sets, by randomized control trials, and by longitudinal studies.”
Dr. Renick pointed to the UIA’s scale projects during our first ten years:
- Using predictive analytics to understand which students are at risk and what supports they need
- Proactively structuring advising to reach out to students when they need support
- Using financial analytics to shape financial aid and financial wellness programs specific to each campus
- Employing AI tools to communicate with students in more responsive and coordinated ways
- Embedding these supports in the structure of every student’s academic experience
How Predictive Analytics Are Reshaping Student Success
Predictive analytics have changed the conversation around improving graduation rates and reducing equity gaps.
Dr. Renick noted that for decades, institutions would simply inform students that help was available without actively inviting those who needed it or showing them how to navigate the resources. He explained the new climate of support:
Many of the data-adopting schools are tracking students’ electronic footprint. It’s not always practical to depend on logins to our LMS platform to track attendance for 5,000 core sections every semester in a timely fashion. But we know there's a direct correlation in the data between students who are attending and engaged in their classes, and those who are not logging on and gaining access to electronic materials. We use that as a predictor of that student being at risk, and we charge our advisors with that information to reach out and help that student.
He also showed a strong correlation between a student’s first grade in their major and their chance of graduating on time. By working with those C students, he said, advisors can mitigate those early struggles that might otherwise sink them in their upper-level coursework.
Another benefit of examining the data sets of student performance is being able to identify what Dr. Renick called toxic combinations of courses:
If a student takes organic chemistry and calculus during the same semester, they may only have a 65% chance of passing both courses. If they take organic chemistry and calculus in successive semesters, they may have an 80% chance of passing both those classes. And nobody would doubt if you had this information in your pocket, it isn't worth sharing with your student.
This level of intervention, he said, has increased student success in some of the more challenging majors.
Proactive Advising via Improved Student Communications
Deploying a new, data-focused approach is possible without buying expensive new technology, said Dr. Renick. It could be as simple as rethinking what advisors currently do, examining procedures and practices already in place, and sharing information outside of the traditional silos. He described how some of this might be accomplished by coordinating how an institution communicates with its students:
Georgia State was facing huge problems with summer melt. Nineteen percent of our confirmed incoming first-year class never showed up. We looked at the data and found that what linked these students – who were almost 80% underrepresented, minority, low-income, and first-gen students – was the fact that they weren't navigating our bureaucratic processes: FASFA, transcripts, immunization records. So, we engaged in a design thinking exercise. We asked every office that was communicating with our first-year students to print out all the emails sent to the incoming class and bring them to a meeting. We're not just talking about financial aid and admissions, but rec center, library, athletics leadership, and so forth. And by putting the sticky notes on a whiteboard to track week-by-week emails, we began to realize that there was no coordination whatsoever.
Based on this experiment, Georgia State consolidated its communications model in 2016, prioritizing the information that students needed most and scaling the use of chatbot platforms to facilitate two-way conversations. Dr. Renick added:
The first four months we had the tool available, we had over 180,000 exchanges with students. Average response time to a question was six seconds. Use of the chatbot was heavier at midnight than at nine a.m. And that observation alone tells you something important. Your students who are working jobs, have child-rearing responsibilities, and have complicated lives will be easier to include when they have 24/7 access.
This strategy reduced the summer melt problem from 19% to 9% in just one year, with a major gain for some of the most vulnerable students.
Closing the Equity Gap for Low-Income Students
Dr. Renick described that first step of improving communication with students as a powerful illustration of what’s possible with aggregated data. Then he offered a dramatic example of how far too many students stop out for financial reasons and never return to complete their degree:
We looked at 75,000 bachelor students for an eight-year period and asked what is the difference in graduation rates for students who were barred from enrollment for a single semester for financial reasons? Well, their chances of graduating go down by 50 points. Most think they're coming back, but the reality is most don't. Only 24% of the students who stopped out for a single semester for financial reasons ever completed their degree.
These were mostly low-income students, for whom a $900 shortfall was a make-it-or-break-it moment. For a state university, however, those shortfalls can be addressed with completion grants, which are one-time micro-grants to help otherwise successful students across the finish line. Dr. Renick added:
We've overcome the negative impacts of stop-out. Their graduation rates go right back up to the level of other students. In fact, 85% of the senior recipients of these grants went on to graduate with far less debt.
Giving Students the Tools for Success
Dr. Renick insisted that financial aid is often a critical piece of student success, and therefore a collective responsibility extending well beyond an institution’s financial aid office. The people who need to know the information to advise students properly and identify early financial risk factors are the people who need access to that information. He cited one of NISS’ early projects with a cohort of seven schools, saying:
Over the first two years of this program, we saw an average increase in retention rates of almost nine percentage points. This need not take years. There are systematic changes that can make significant differences for your students almost immediately.
Dr. Renick concluded his keynote with the story of Austin, a first-gen student from a low-income family who was accepted at Georgia State and received a major scholarship. Then, several months before the start of fall classes, his first bill arrived, thousands of dollars more than he thought it would be. He immediately blamed himself and was embarrassed to tell his hardworking mother.
But he was not too embarrassed to go on the chatbot. He asked a lot of questions and found out that his scholarship wasn't being applied to his current bill because of a transcription error somewhere in the system. His mom insisted on physically coming to campus, standing in line at the bursar's office, and paying the bill with tears of happiness down to her face.
So, we talk about the hundreds of thousands of students that we've helped at our member campuses of the University Innovation Alliance, and each one of those students has a story like Austin’s. And what you're doing is more important than you can ever imagine.
Note: This episode of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast originally aired on April 14, 2025. The podcast appears live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Tim Renick
- National Institute for Student Success
- Steady rise in degree completion (“A System for Student Success,” UIA, 8/5/21)
- Completion grant (“Completion Grants: Innovative Financial Aid for Today’s Students,” UIA, 11/3/22)
- Predictive analytics: an approach for increasing student success via aggregated data
- Proactive advising (“The Future of Academic Advising,” UIA, 6/23/22)
- Student success (“Our First Decade of Innovation: The UIA’s 2024 Annual Report,” UIA, 1/29/25)
- University Innovation Alliance National Summit (“Innovate With Us at the University Innovation Alliance’s National Summit,” UIA, 4/11/24)
- Raj Chetty: Opportunity Insights Director (“The American Dream and the Science of Economic Opportunity,” UIA, 3/19/25)
- Michael Crow: Arizona State University President & UIA Board Chair (“No Excuses: The Urgent Responsibility of Public Higher Education,” UIA, 4/17/25)
Watch the Archive of the Keynote
Bios of Guest and Co-Host
Dr. Tim Renick, who has led Georgia State University’s student success efforts since 2008, is the founding executive director of Georgia State’s National Institute for Student Success, and Professor of Religious Studies at Georgia State. Previously, he served as Georgia State's Senior Vice President for Student Success, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and Director of the Honors Program. Between 2008 and 2020, he directed the university's student success efforts, overseeing one of America's fastest improving graduation rates and the elimination of all equity gaps based on students' race, ethnicity or income level. Dr. Renick has testified before the U.S. Senate on strategies for helping low-income university students succeed and has twice been invited to speak at the White House. His work has been covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, and CNN and cited by former President Barack Obama. He was named one the 16 Most Innovative People in Higher Education by Washington Monthly, and received the Award for National Leadership in Student Success and the McGraw Prize in Higher Education. He has served as principal investigator for more than $30 million in federal and private research grants in student success. A summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, Dr. Renick holds his M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton University.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
As a trusted advisor to university presidents and policymakers, Dr. Bridget Burns is on a mission to transform the way institutions think about and act on behalf of low-income, first-generation, and students of color. She is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, a multi-campus laboratory for student success innovation that helps university leaders dramatically accelerate the implementation of scalable solutions to increase the number of college graduates.
About Innovating Together
Innovating Together is an event series that happens live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a higher education luminary about student success innovations or a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of leadership. We hope these episodes will leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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