Benchworks and Pharos Resources Partner to Offer Powerful Student Retention Support

Partnership provides college administrators a view into the end-to-end student experience using New Student Survey

Springfield, MO. March 11, 2019. Skyfactor, a Macmillan Learning Company, announced today during the annual NAPSA conference in Los Angeles, a new partnership with Pharos Resources to provide stronger identification, assessment, and solutions to improve student retention and success. Recent data from The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center revealed that approximately 40% of students leave college before their second year, confirming that student retention remains an ongoing pressing challenge for colleges and institutions.

The partnership will integrate Skyfactor's product Benchworks' New Student Survey which provides insight into how new students are acclimating to college with Pharos 360, a tool that enables colleges to take action on what they've learned. Together, these solutions will provide administrators the ability to expertly assess, monitor, and manage the student experience.

"Benchworks and Pharos share the common focus and passion of helping students successfully make the transition to college. We hope combining these solutions will better allow institutions to close the gap of students leaving after their first year by more simply identifying points of struggle and then connecting them with the means to navigate that critical first year," said Craig Bleyer, General Manager of Skyfactor.

Both programs offer a powerful combination of research, identification and assessment tools. Benchworks' New Student Survey is built on more than 20 years of proprietary research and provides industry-leading assessment data. Pharos 360 can identify at-risk students, manage their interventions, and build campus-wide collaboration, allowing institutions to help students stay in school and graduate. Together, these programs represent a significant step forward in better supporting a student's overall success in college.

"Since 2010, Pharos has been focused on developing powerful tools to enhance the important work of engaging at-risk students. Our partnership with SkyFactor now provides the seamless integration of their research-driven assessments and our Relational Retention technology. This is a truly unique system for Higher Education to improve student outcomes," said Rachel Phillips-Buck, Vice President of Student Success for Pharos Resources.

Skyfactor
Formerly known as EBI, Skyfactor is a Macmillan Learning company that provides research-based program assessments and benchmarking for a variety of Student Affairs programs, as well as Business Education, Engineering, Nursing, and Teacher Education. The robust analytics Benchworks provides empowers programs to identify areas of improvement for maximum impact on program success. Benchworks assessments are rooted in research and mapped to accreditation and professional standards.

Pharos Resources
Pharos Resources provides a comprehensive approach to student success, early alert, and case management for Higher Education. Our intuitive platform, Pharos 360, provides the powerful integration of Relational Retention practices with Retention Intelligence services to identify at-risk students, eliminate campus silos, increase student engagement, provide institution-specific outcomes analytics, and enrich a culture of student care.