Academic Advisory Services of Bavarian Higher Education Institutions Visiting Bayreuth
Twice a year, the academic advisory services of Bavarian universities and universities of applied sciences meet for a joint staff conference. The focus is on exchanging views on current developments, topics, and challenges. This November, the University of Bayreuth hosted the meeting – with advisory teams travelling from Deggendorf, Bamberg, Coburg, Eichstätt, Erlangen, Hof, Munich, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Weiden, and Würzburg.
For years, it had been a recurring topic at these meetings, and now an initial assessment could be made: the exceptionally small cohort of school-leavers in Bavaria has reached the universities and is noticeable everywhere in lower student numbers. However, the general consensus was that the decline was less severe than originally expected. Although some undergraduate programmes have seen a drop in enrolments, this has often been offset at Master’s level or through international students. Some institutions are responding to the increased workload of processing international applications by introducing application fees. At the University of Bayreuth, prospective students from non-EU countries can apply to any number of degree programmes free of charge; only the preliminary certificate check via uni-assist incurs a processing fee.
In addition to advising current students, a key responsibility of academic advisory services is informing and advising prospective students, for example through school visits and higher education fairs. Some advisory teams are reaching the limits of their capacity in this area. Discussions therefore focused on the criteria used locally to decide on participation and the factors considered in cost-benefit analyses. At institutions that conduct systematic entry surveys, fairs tend to play only a minor role in students’ own perception.
Advisory services are currently noticing a marked increase in requests from surrounding schools. This is linked to changes in the curriculum for study and career orientation following the transition from eight to nine years of secondary education (G8 to G9), including the introduction of several project days in the upper school, often in cooperation with external partners such as employment agencies and universities. The new Science Week in Year 11 also offers fresh opportunities for collaboration between schools and universities, with cross-disciplinary themes explored in small groups and basic principles of academic work introduced.
Artificial intelligence and its use in the advisory field is another topic of interest. At the welcome session, potential applications in administration were discussed with Chancellor Dr Nicole Kaiser. Meanwhile, the first universities and colleges are reporting positive experiences with the response quality of internally or externally developed chatbots for prospective and current students. The number of simple queries that could be answered via search engines – or now via chatbots – is noticeably decreasing. However, the personnel effort required to train and maintain AI systems is considerable. For complex issues, personal contact remains essential and irreplaceable. Advising often means recognising the real question behind the question or considering hidden implications. The meeting also made clear that staffing needs, for example for a university-wide information centre to manage enquiries, are significant.
In discussions with the professional association, it became evident that the role of academic advisory services as an independent and open-ended counselling resource within universities is of particular importance. Only by clearly distinguishing between advising and marketing can advisory services be perceived as equal and client-oriented contact points for prospective students, alongside other actors in study orientation such as the employment agency.