The start of a new year is a natural moment for reflection. In higher education, this often means revisiting enrollment goals, budget assumptions, and strategic priorities. It is also an ideal time to take a closer look at one of the most common and long-standing student success strategies on campus: tutoring.
Tutoring is widely viewed as essential to academic support, but longevity alone does not guarantee impact. A new year offers the opportunity to ask whether your current tutoring model is truly moving the needle on student success or simply maintaining the status quo.
Start With Outcomes, Not Assumptions
Begin by grounding reflection in data. What are your institution’s first-to-second year retention goals, and how do tutoring outcomes align with them?
- Has your retention rate remained steady for several years?
- Has it declined, particularly in gateway or high-enrollment courses?
- Are students who engage in tutoring persisting at higher rates than those who do not?
Graduation rates provide another critical lens. If tutoring is helping students master content in the short term, are those gains translating into long-term progress toward completion?
- Do students who use tutoring graduate at higher rates or on shorter timelines?
- Are there disparities in who benefits from tutoring across student populations?
- Are tutoring supports sustained as coursework becomes more advanced?
Looking at retention and graduation together helps reveal whether tutoring is supporting students across the full academic journey, not just helping them survive individual courses.
Question the Structure of Your Tutoring Model
Many institutions continue to operate tutoring programs much as they always have: fixed locations, limited hours, and a model that relies on students to self-identify and seek help. While these programs serve motivated students well, they may miss those who face time constraints, stigma, or uncertainty about when to ask for support.
Consider asking:
- Who uses tutoring consistently, and who does not?
- Are tutoring services accessible to ALL students and in ALL courses?
- Does your model scale to meet demand during peak academic stress points?
If usage patterns have remained flat despite ongoing investment, the issue may not be the quality of tutoring, but the structure through which it is delivered.
Ask What “More” Could Mean for Tutoring
Recognizing that tutoring may need to evolve does not mean abandoning what works. It means asking how tutoring could be expanded, integrated, or reimagined to better support today’s students.
This might include:
- Broadening peer tutoring models to increase reach and relatability
- Using flexible delivery options to reduce barriers to participation
- Strengthening data collection to connect tutoring engagement to retention and graduation outcomes
The goal is not more tutoring for its own sake, but more effective tutoring aligned with student needs and institutional priorities.
Make Tutoring Reflection a New Year’s Resolution
As the new year begins, consider making your tutoring program a focal point of student success reflection. Review retention and graduation trends, examine who tutoring serves and who it misses, and assess whether the model you offer today is equipped to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
Explore What’s Possible With Knack
If you are questioning whether your current tutoring model is doing enough, it may be time to explore new approaches. Knack partners with institutions to expand high-impact, peer-driven tutoring programs that scale, meet students where they are, and connect academic support to measurable outcomes like retention and graduation.
The new year is a chance to move beyond maintaining services toward strengthening impact. Explore how Knack can help your institution reimagine tutoring as a strategic driver of student success.
