Enhancing Student Success: What We’re Learning About Effective Advising Models

Enhancing Student Success: What We’re Learning About Effective Advising Models

Student advising is currently at the forefront of higher education practice. Across UK higher education, long‑standing assumptions about tutoring, academic support and pastoral care are being tested by financial constraint, changing student demographics, regulatory pressure and rising expectations of what universities should provide.

Against this backdrop, a cross-institutional project brought together universities at different stages of redesigning their advising models, alongside sector expertise, to explore what effective student advising now looks like in practice. The resulting discussion surfaced some clear and, in many cases, challenging lessons for the sector.

Advising is moving from the margins to the mainstream

One of the strongest themes to emerge is that student advising is no longer a secondary or “supporting” function. Students increasingly experience support as integral to the value of their degree, as this statement from Professor Edward Peck in his pre-appointment hearing to be Chair of the Office for Students shows: “Student support is as important to many students as the academic input that they receive.”

This shift has significant implications. Advising is now deeply entangled with continuation, progression, student outcomes and regulatory scrutiny. It features in NSS results, TEF narratives and the emerging integrated quality framework from the Office for Students. Institutions can no longer afford advising models that rely on goodwill, informal practice or heroic individual effort.

For some institutions, this shift is reflected in a professionalisation of and investment in the advising role:

Accepting that student advising is actually quite specialist is really important. To do this well requires time, expertise and clarity of responsibility. … We developed a new model for support … it is quite an expensive model … But crudely, we’ve reduced our withdrawal rate by 12%. We’re returning margin on our investment. I don’t like to have to put it in those terms but it is important. There are lots of really strong moral drivers for what we’ve done, but actually we have to learn to speak to our university’s bottom line sometimes and accept that that’s a really key driver as well as the moral and ethical dimension.

(Professor Nicky King)

Proactivity, not availability, is the differentiator

Across the project, institutions emphasised that the challenge is not the absence of support, but the timing and visibility of it. Students are more likely to disengage quietly than to actively ask for help.

At both Exeter and Teesside, proactive outreach based on changes in engagement patterns has become central. Rather than waiting for a student to fail, miss assessments or withdraw, staff intervene earlier, using data as a prompt for human contact – not as a surveillance mechanism.

This approach reframes advising as anticipatory and relational. As Nicky King noted, rising student complexity makes this unavoidable: institutions must “be more proactive to stop students falling through the cracks”.

Data only works when it is anchored in people and purpose

A consistent message from the project was that data alone does not improve advising. What matters is how data is interpreted, who acts on it, and why.

The Data–People–Theory framework (McVitty and Maxwell 2024) provided a shared language for these discussions. Engagement dashboards, attendance data and system logs are only useful when staff understand their role, have time to respond, and are working within a coherent institutional philosophy of advising.

Professor Janice Kay captured this succinctly: “It isn’t just data per se – it’s linking it to how you identify need, intervene, and then track impact over time.”

At Teesside, this alignment enabled targeted academic intervention at scale, with demonstrable effects on continuation. Crucially, the focus was not on cohort norms, but on deviation from an individual student’s usual pattern of engagement

Clarity and consistency matter – especially in complex institutions

Highly devolved institutions often pride themselves on local autonomy, but the project highlighted the risks this poses for student understanding and equity.

At UCL, extensive consultation revealed strong support for academic-led tutoring, but also widespread confusion about purpose, entitlement and process. Students compared experiences across departments and questioned fairness.

The response was not to over-standardise, but to establish a clear baseline offer, supported by policy, role definition and shared expectations. As Kathryn Woods explained, one of the most powerful drivers for change has been a simple question from students: “How do you know it’s actually happening?”

That question cuts to the heart of contemporary quality assurance: institutions must be able to evidence not just intent, but delivery.

We knew what good practice was. We understood the theory.  What we didn’t necessarily have is the visibility of the impact it was all making. So data has become a central driver in a lot of what we’re doing here.
(Dr Nicola Watchman Smith)

Evaluation is becoming unavoidable – and useful

Finally, the project underscored the growing importance of evaluation. Advising models are increasingly expected to demonstrate impact: on engagement, continuation, student experience and staff workload

Importantly, evaluation was framed not as punitive accountability, but as a learning tool. By building evaluation into system design from the outset, institutions could refine models, justify investment and adapt to constraint.

This includes tracking whether meetings occur, whether engagement improves after intervention, and whether students are routed to appropriate support. In an era of limited resources, being able to show what works is fast becoming essential.

A relational core remains

.. really this is about a relationship between two people where one supports the other and one feels open enough to talk to the other. And so [our approach] needed to be based on how staff and students felt
comfortable around what that conversation should include and what they really valued and how to be supported in it. (Professor Kathryn Woods)

Despite the emphasis on systems, metrics and frameworks, the project consistently returned to one central truth: advising is fundamentally relational.

It involves emotion, trust and vulnerability – for students and staff alike. Successful change, participants argued, depends on acknowledging that emotional labour, supporting staff through discomfort, and working genuinely in partnership with students.

As institutions continue to redesign advising in response to external pressure, this may be the most important learning of all.

Watch the full webinar [UKAT to add link]

This project was funded and led by Kortext. Kortext stream provides institutions with a sector-leading student engagement analytics platform. Book a demo for your institution here.

References

McVitty, D. and Maxwell, R. (2024) From Support to Success: Building effective academic support systems around students. Available online: https://kortext.com/stream/white-papers/support-to-success/

Peck, E., McCarthy, B. and Shaw, J. (2025) The future of the campus university: 10 trends that will change higher education. HEPI Policy Note 64. Available from: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/The-future-of-the-campus-university.pdf