Student Success and Retention
Get a person to the student while it still matters
The indicators are already in your systems. Argos gets them to the advisor, the faculty member, or the dean who can act, on a schedule, while there is still time in the term. No scoring, no new data layer.
Running Argos at community colleges, private institutions, and public universities
The situation
The sector is improving. The institutions improving fastest can see sooner.
Persistence is at a decade high. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center's Persistence and Retention report found that of the 2.62 million students who entered in fall 2024, nearly 86 percent returned for a second semester and more than 77 percent returned the following fall, with Black, Hispanic, and part-time students returning at the highest rates in over ten years.
The institutions moving those numbers are not the ones with the most sophisticated model. They are the ones where somebody sees a student's situation early enough to respond.
01
The indicators arrive after the decision
Midterm grades, attendance, aid status, and engagement are all signals. By the time they reach a report, the student has usually already made up their mind.
02
The person who could act has the least access
An advisor, coach, or faculty member owns the relationship and cannot pull a list. Giving them an ERP login is disproportionate, so they wait.
03
Everyone works their own version of the list
Advising, the registrar, and financial aid each pull who has not registered, on different days with different filters. Some students get three calls. Some get none.
04
Every committee follow-up question waits a month
The retention committee sees a trend but wants it by student population. They get the answer when they meet next month.
Timing
The list arrives. Nobody has to request it.
Argos separates who writes the query from who runs the report. Your team owns the indicator logic, the thresholds, and the permissions. Advisors, success coaches, and chairs can see how their own students are doing, without wading through everyone else's.
Because reports run against your data source directly instead of an extract somebody refreshes, a hold placed on Tuesday reaches the person as soon as the source has it. Scheduled delivery means the list arrives in an inbox instead of waiting behind a request, which is the difference between a retention program and a retention intention.
Advising teams build on top of it from there. Caseload views, at-risk identification, academic progress, and a record of who reached out and what came back, kept in the same place as the indicator that triggered the outreach.
- Indicators combining grades, attendance, aid status, holds, and engagement in one view
- Views built for advisors, coaches, and chairs, each permissioned to the people in that role
- Scheduled delivery to the person who owns the outreach
- No ERP seat or login required, with unlimited users under the institutional license
- Against your systems directly instead of an extract you maintain
“Being able to identify those students and give that list to deans and advisors allows them to provide the support students need to finish.”
Kelly Klimpt · VP of Information Technology · Alvin College
SELECT cohort, persistedFROM DataBlock: OutreachWHERE term = :termArgos X
See which indicators mattered
Look back at last year's students and see which signals preceded who left: midterm grades, holds, aid status, a drop in credits. Next year's list is built on what happened at your institution.
Argos Data Agent answers it in plain language against governed data and shows the SQL, so the definition can be checked before the finding informs a decision. Pivot Mode and Explore Data reshape the result without writing a query.
- Argos Data Agent for plain-language questions, with the SQL visible
- Pivot Mode and Explore Data for reshaping and exporting without a new request
- Cohort definitions saved once and run the same way in a future year, so the comparison holds
- Zero Data Retention, with masking and redaction available on sensitive fields
- Dashboard Designer, Explore Data, and Pivot Mode are included with Argos at no additional cost
- Argos Data Agent is licensed separately, in Core and Advanced tiers
Dashboard Designer
One view the committee and the cabinet both trust
Retention committees run on documents assembled between meetings, so the meeting spends its time on the data instead of the students.
Dashboard Designer publishes a shared view built on the same governed objects the advisor lists run on, so the committee, the provost, and the deans are looking at one set of definitions. It builds in a browser, embeds in your portal, and reads on a phone.
- Persistence, retention, and completion views built from your institution's own definitions
- Published to the committee, the cabinet, and unit leaders with scoping applied
- Current as of the data source rather than assembled between meetings
- Included with Argos at no additional cost
The indicators are already in your systems
Attendance, aid status, registration holds, and grades sit in the ERP today. See what changes when the people who can act on them see them in time.
Related
The offices that own the pieces
Registrar and Enrollment Services
Enrollment status, holds, grades, and the census that anchors every cohort.
Financial Aid
Aid status and disbursement, which move more students than most retention programs.
Institutional Research
The cohort definitions the indicators are built on, stored once and run the same way next year.
Admissions
Which channels and aid packages produce students who enroll and then stay.
How it fits
Where this sits relative to what you already run
With your ERP
Your ERP holds the grades, the holds, the enrollment status, and the aid record. Argos queries all of it directly through governed objects and gets the result to the person who can act, without giving them an ERP account.
With an early alert or case management tool
If you run one, keep it. Those tools are built for managing outreach and documenting a case. Argos supplies the institutional data underneath, on your definitions. They are complementary.
Versus your current process
Today the indicator reaches a report after the fact, the advisor cannot pull a list, and nobody has looked back at which signals preceded who left. Fixing it does not take a predictive model. It takes getting the data to the advisor sooner.
Trust and security
You take security seriously. So do we.
The Trust Center is published and the HECVAT is available on request, so a reviewer can start before anyone schedules a call.
Permissions are enforced, never overridden
A view built for advisors carries what advisors need and is permissioned to them, granted per folder and DataBlock instead of by a filter someone could remove.
FERPA
FERPA-aligned practices throughout. Views are built for the role that needs them and permissioned to it, so a legitimate educational interest does not become access to everything.
No student scoring
We surface facts and route them to a person. We do not assign risk scores, and there is no model to explain to a governance committee.
Data handling
Encryption in transit, and for Argos Data Agent, masking or redaction of sensitive fields including aid and disability-related data.
Authentication
LDAP group sync, SAML SSO, and permission tiers, configured once at the platform layer.
Documentation
Trust Center, and a HECVAT (the standard higher education security questionnaire) on request.
Frequently asked questions
Questions we get asked first
Do you do predictive risk scoring?
No. Argos surfaces indicators your systems already hold and routes them to a person. The judgment stays with someone who knows the student, which is both a product decision and a position we are comfortable defending.
What indicators can we use?
Whatever your systems hold: grades, midterm reports, attendance where captured, registration holds, aid status, balance, enrollment changes, and engagement data from connected systems. Your team decides which ones matter and where the thresholds sit.
Can advisors see only their own students?
Access is granted per folder and DataBlock, so a view built for one group is permissioned to that group and nobody else can open it. Your team controls that in one place, and the same model covers dashboards and Argos Data Agent. Argos security does not restrict a shared object to each person's own rows; the view is built for the audience that needs it. On Banner, an advisee list can be written to return the advisees assigned to whoever opened it, because Banner already holds that assignment.
Do advisors need a Banner or Colleague login?
No. Licensing is per institution with unlimited users, and report access does not require an ERP seat.
How current is the data?
Against your systems directly instead of an extract you maintain, which is the difference between acting this week and reading about it next month.
Do we need a data warehouse first?
No. Argos queries your systems directly through governed objects.
Does this replace our early alert or case management tool?
No. Those tools manage outreach and document a case. Argos supplies the institutional data underneath, on your definitions. Many institutions run both.
Can we combine academic data with aid and engagement data?
Yes. Argos sits above the ERP instead of inside one module, and connects to other systems through ODBC, REST, and API layers.
What is included with Argos, and what is licensed separately?
Dashboard Designer, Explore Data, and Pivot Mode are included with Argos at no additional cost. Argos Data Agent is licensed separately, in Core and Advanced tiers.
How do we handle sensitive fields in a shared view?
Masking and redaction are set on the DataBlock and its columns, so a caseload view can be answered without exposing an aid package or a disability accommodation.
We already have a retention or early alert platform.
Several institutions run both. Those platforms are built around case management and outreach workflow. What tends to be missing is the underlying data question: which indicators preceded the outcome at your institution, on your definitions, from the student record the platform does not read.
Can we start with one population instead of the whole institution?
That is the usual starting point. Pick one cohort, one program, or one term, get the indicators in front of the advisors who own it, and expand when the people using it ask for more.
How long does implementation take?
It depends on how many indicators and systems you want in scope on day one. Professional Services scopes it with you. The people doing that scoping ran campus IT and institutional reporting before they worked here.
What does it cost, and can we talk to an institution like ours?
Licensing is per institution rather than per user, and price is driven by institution size and product mix rather than headcount. Argos, Argos X, FormFusion, and IntelleCheck all carry unlimited users and unlimited connections, with no per-connection or per-report charge and nothing billed for people who only read reports. The one exception is Argos Data Agent Advanced, which is licensed per seat. Data Agent Core is unlimited. Tell us your FTE and which products you are weighing and we will give you a real figure on the first call, then put you in touch with an institution of roughly your size and ERP. Ask them about support while you are there. It is in-house, and it is the thing customers raise unprompted more than anything else.
Next step
Reach the student before the term is lost
Get a demo and see the indicators your systems already hold, delivered to the advisor who can act on them.
Ellucian Partner Award
2025: Customer First
Ethos Connected
since 2020
Ellucian partner
22 years