Academic Advising: An Alternative Remedy to Student Retention and Persistence in Higher Educational Institutions

Abstract

Academic advising is an information exchange process between the academic advisor and students. The objective of academic advising is to enable students to discover their interests, potential, values, and priorities and how these connect to their academic experience and future career plans. The ever increasing number of students due to new intakes, transfers, international students, students changing majors and repeating students requires challenging and unique advice to enable the students’ retention and persistence. This study sought to define a theory of how Academic Advising can be effectively implemented in higher education. Qualitative research method and the case study research design were employed to build a theory in academic advising. Purposive sampling was adopted to select twelve respondents from four institutions of higher learning in Botswana. Unstructured interviews and document analysis were triangulated as data collection instruments. Further research was recommended to test the theory.

Keywords: academic advising, retention, perspective, attrition, counselling, mentoring.