One of the most work-intensive tasks of the academic adviser is assisting students who have been dismissed from an institution for poor scholarship. These students are usually distraught, dejected, and bewildered when they come to see you – and they always come to see you. More often than not, they do not understand why this has happened to them, despite the fact that the institution probably forewarned them. Such an advising situation can be compared to grief therapy, because these students can be in a stage of denial, anger, or resignation. If they are in denial or anger, you need to help them work through it somehow. If they are resigned to giving up and leaving the institution or higher education entirely, you need to give them some hope. This article is about finding hope and an optimistic prognosis for students confronting the ugly reality that they “flunked out.”

At my institution, dismissed students may be reinstated if they

  1. Significantly improve their grade-point average (GPA).
  2. Have a realistic goal, i.e., are focused toward a major in which they have a reasonable chance to succeed. More often than not, it is academic advisers who help them to fashion a feasible plan.
  3. Have the approval of the appropriate college dean, i.e., the assistant/associate dean of the college from which they intend to graduate. Departments facing high enrollment impacts tend to deny reentry.

At my institution, students who fulfill most of the requirements mentioned above may enroll in the Division of Undergraduate Studies (DUS). These students fall a little short of requirements needed for direct reinstatement to a college or major. For example, most of them are slightly below a 2.0 GPA or are missing a course or two required for entry to their intended major.

It is my responsibility to assess the academic records and plans of students seeking reinstatement into DUS. When first given this assignment, I was skeptical about approving reinstatement for students with course or grade-point deficiencies. Were we giving weak students false hopes? Were we setting them up to fail yet another time? After a few semesters of hands-on experience, it became apparent that the answer to both questions was a resounding “No!” Very few of these students returned to me or my DUS colleagues with subsequent academic problems.

However, because of the data-driven forces haunting contemporary academe, I wondered if I were too complacent with such an intuitive analysis. So I decided to look at the numbers. I looked at all students reinstated into DUS during the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2000 – all had 3 to 10 grade-point deficiencies (i.e., a GPA below a 2.0) – to see what their statuses were as of September 2001. The results were as follows:

N= 25

Students in good status in a major = 18

Students enrolled with less than a 2.0 = 4

Students no longer enrolled = 3

Although N was only 25, the outcomes of this study proved my intuition to be correct. A clear majority (72 percent) of these “at risk” students had fully recovered from their poor scholarship and were well on their way to completing their degrees. Only 17 percent were still struggling, but they remained with the university, obviously with the persistent hope that they were going to be successful. Only 12 percent had left the university, at least temporarily.

It can be reasonably argued that N provides little statistical value and that there is no doubt that the issue should be pursued in subsequent years with a larger database. However, I think the numbers help to make my point that students who are formally dismissed from our colleges and universities should not automatically be considered hopeless cases.

As advisers, we have the opportunity to give many academically deficient students hope for a second chance. It is a privilege to spend our days trying to make a difference in such students' lives – one person at a time.