College is more than coursework.
A college education is often measured by grades, completed credits, and graduation rates. While those benchmarks matter, they tell only part of the story. Long before students earn a degree, they must learn how to function within an unfamiliar system. Understanding course requirements is important, but so is knowing how to ask for help, build relationships with professors, use campus resources, and make informed academic decisions.
Many colleges assume students arrive with these skills. In reality, they often do not.
The difference between earning good grades and thriving in college is frequently the ability to navigate the institution itself. That ability is rarely taught in a structured way, even though it influences nearly every part of the student experience.
David Shein has spent much of his career focused on this overlooked challenge. His work has consistently emphasized that helping students understand how college works is just as important as teaching the material found in textbooks.
Hidden Curricula Shape Student Success
The Rules That Are Never Written Down
Every college has expectations that are rarely explained. Students are expected to understand office hours, interpret syllabi, communicate professionally with faculty, seek tutoring when needed, and balance competing priorities without much instruction.
These expectations form what educators often call the hidden curriculum. Unlike a chemistry lesson or a philosophy seminar, these lessons are not listed in the course catalog. Students are expected to discover them on their own.
For some, this happens naturally because family members or mentors have already introduced them to college life. Others arrive with no prior exposure and must learn through trial and error.
That gap has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with familiarity.
Small Questions Become Big Obstacles
Students often hesitate to ask questions they believe they should already know the answers. Something as simple as understanding how to approach a professor after class or when to visit an academic advisor can feel intimidating.
These small uncertainties can grow into larger challenges. A student who avoids asking questions may also avoid seeking tutoring, career counseling, or mental health support. Over time, those missed opportunities affect confidence, engagement, and academic performance.
Teaching students how to navigate college removes unnecessary barriers before they become lasting problems.
Academic Success Depends on Institutional Understanding
Support Is Only Helpful If Students Can Find It
Most colleges offer tutoring centers, writing support, academic advising, career services, and wellness programs. The problem is not always a lack of resources. The problem is that students may not know when or how to use them.
Simply listing services on a website or mentioning them during orientation is rarely enough.
Students benefit most when support is introduced repeatedly throughout their college experience. Faculty, advisors, and staff all play a role in helping students understand not only what resources exist but also why using them is a normal part of college life.
The strongest support systems remove confusion instead of expecting students to figure everything out independently.
Advising Should Be More Than Scheduling Classes
Academic advising is often reduced to selecting courses and checking graduation requirements. While those tasks are important, effective advising reaches much further.
A meaningful advising relationship helps students understand how academic decisions connect to long-term goals. It provides a place to ask questions, discuss setbacks, and explore opportunities that students may not discover on their own.
Good advising also helps students develop confidence. When students understand why they are making certain choices, they become more engaged in their own education.
Faculty Play a Bigger Role Than They Realize
Every Interaction Matters
Students often remember small moments that made them feel welcome or discouraged. A professor who learns students’ names, explains expectations clearly, or encourages office hour visits can have a lasting impact.
These actions require little extra time, but they communicate something important. They tell students that asking questions is encouraged and that support is available.
Faculty members are not expected to solve every challenge a student faces. However, they are often the first people students turn to when they encounter uncertainty.
Creating an environment where questions are welcomed helps students become more confident learners.
Clear Communication Reduces Unnecessary Stress
College can feel overwhelming when expectations remain unclear.
Simple improvements make a significant difference. Clearly written syllabi, transparent grading policies, practical assignment instructions, and consistent communication help students focus on learning instead of decoding expectations.
Clarity benefits every student, regardless of background or academic preparation.
Colleges Should Teach Navigation as an Essential Skill
Orientation Is Only the Beginning
Many institutions devote significant energy to orientation programs. These introductions are valuable, but they cannot prepare students for every situation they will encounter over the next four years.
Learning how college works should continue throughout a student’s academic journey.
Workshops, advising conversations, classroom discussions, peer mentoring, and first-year seminars all provide opportunities to reinforce important skills. Students should repeatedly encounter guidance about topics such as communicating with faculty, managing workloads, finding campus resources, and planning for internships or graduate school.
Like any skill, navigation improves through practice.
Normalize Asking for Help
One of the most valuable lessons colleges can teach is that successful students ask for help.
There is still a misconception that seeking assistance signals weakness or poor preparation. In reality, students who build strong support networks often develop greater confidence and resilience.
Normalizing help-seeking changes campus culture. Students begin viewing advising, tutoring, and mentoring as ordinary parts of learning rather than emergency measures.
That shift benefits everyone.
Student Success Requires Institutional Responsibility
Colleges often encourage students to become independent learners, and that goal is important. Independence, however, should not mean isolation.
Institutions have a responsibility to examine whether their systems are understandable, accessible, and student-centered. If students repeatedly struggle to navigate common processes, the solution is not simply to encourage them to try harder. It is also to ask whether those processes can be improved.
This perspective represents a shift from asking whether students are prepared for college to asking whether colleges are prepared for today’s students.
That question becomes increasingly important as student populations grow more diverse in age, background, work experience, and family responsibilities.
According to David Shein, colleges achieve better outcomes when they recognize that navigation is a learned skill rather than an assumed one. Students should not have to rely on luck or prior experience to understand how their institution works.
Building More Inclusive Campuses
Teaching students how to navigate college benefits everyone, not only first-generation students.
Returning adult learners, transfer students, international students, veterans, and students balancing work and family responsibilities all encounter unfamiliar systems. Clear guidance creates a more welcoming environment for every member of the campus community.
It also strengthens retention, improves student engagement, and helps students take fuller advantage of the opportunities available to them.
When institutions reduce confusion, students can spend more time focusing on learning, building relationships, and preparing for life after graduation.
A Better Definition of Student Success
Higher education should not assume that students arrive already knowing how to succeed within its structures. Colleges exist to teach, and that responsibility extends beyond academic content.
Students deserve to learn not only biology, economics, literature, or philosophy, but also how to navigate advising, communicate with faculty, find opportunities, and become active participants in their own education.
David Shein has long argued that student success is shaped by both academic learning and institutional understanding. When colleges make the hidden curriculum visible, they remove barriers that have little to do with ability and everything to do with access.
Teaching students how to navigate college does more than improve academic outcomes. It creates a learning environment where more students feel confident, supported, and prepared to make the most of their college experience.
