(2164) THE BENEFITS OF BENCHMARKING NON-TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS TO INCREASE RETENTION ON HIGHER EDUCATION CONTINUING EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

摘要

Adult learner retention in non-traditional institutions of higher learning is a continued concern forcolleges and universities in all types of educational programs. Even though the causes students leaveprograms and the approaches to maintain adult enrollment differ, the aim of retention is the same, thatis to maintain learners in programs. For adult learners to remain in continuing education programs isviable to the community, businesses and organizations, plus colleges and universities. Continuingeducation program theories and methodologies learned are valuable in terms of specific studentlearning outcomes for the programs.Continuing education programs need to adjust campaign strategies directed towards marketingenhanced features and benefits of educational programs. Creating phased and long-term marketingstrategies for existing as well as new programs will enhance students' perspectives. These strategieswill provide students with a viable institutional driven impression of the colleges anduniversities. Determining such phased long-term marketing strategies can be effectively done throughbenchmarking. These tactics focus on promoting a predetermined brand and the level at which thestrategy should tout the specific benefits particular to the outcome that is to control the enrollment ofstudents. In turn, this long-term strategy should increase institutional benefits received from focusedmarketing campaigns. The quality of such marketing programs can be developed through datacollected from benchmarking partners, coupled with the return on this investment.Benchmarking has the power to legitimize business goals based on high external operations insteadof extracting from internal practices and past trends that could be outdated. With externalenvironments constantly changing, new focused ideas are needed for plans to successfully enableassets to conform new expectations to retain adult learners. The importance of this study on nontraditionalmanagement programs to increase retention in higher education continuing programs is todraw significance to benchmarking in non-traditional education. Benchmarking data points can becompared to best practices of nontraditional and traditional institutions.The importance of benchmarking can help increase retention in continuing educational programs byutilizing defined practices and qualified metrics. Benchmarking is one of the most powerful businesspractice tools adapted into metrics of standardized process improvement practices. Researchersperformed a literature review in search of data on the different types benchmarking. The purpose ofthe study is to determine the appropriate benchmarking activity for non-traditional institutions of highereducation in an effort towards business process improvement.