Questions to Ask Higher Education Professionals
For graduate students in higher education or student affairs programs who have to interview a practitioner for class, and for anyone weighing a staff career on a campus. The questions follow the order such a conversation tends to take, whether the person works in admissions, advising, residence life, financial aid or a dean's office: how they got there, what the work is, the students, campus politics and money, pay and promotion, and last the master's degree and the first job. Nobody gets through all of them in half an hour, so the guide after the list covers which to bring to which office.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Their path
How did you end up working at a college, and was it ever the plan?
Why ask it
Hardly anyone sets out at eighteen to work in a registrar's office, so expect a story about a campus job or a mentor who suggested it. Listen for the moment it became a career and stopped being a stopgap, then ask what they would be doing otherwise.
What was your first full-time job in higher education, and how did you find it?
Why ask it
Their first job is the kind you would be applying for, so write down the title, the office and how the opening reached them. If that was ten or more years ago, check whether the same door is still open before you count on it.
What surprised you when you saw a campus from the staff side instead of the student side?
Why ask it
Students see the tour, the classroom and the residence hall. Staff see the deadline calendar, the committees and the budget behind all three. Whatever they name first is the part of the job a program brochure leaves out, and a fair test of whether you would mind it.
Which job you held as a student did the most to get you hired later?
Why ask it
Resident assistant, tour guide, orientation leader, front desk worker: one of these often turns out to be the real start. If you are still enrolled, their answer points to the campus job to apply for this term.
Have you worked at more than one type of institution, and what changed when you moved?
Why ask it
A community college, a small private college and a large public university can give one job title three different days. If they have only known one type, say so in your notes and look for someone from another type for your next conversation.
How easy is it to move from one functional area to another, say from residence life to advising?
Why ask it
Some people spend a career in one office and others cross over two or three times. The detail to get is what carried across and what had to be learned from scratch, because it shows how far a first job narrows the later ones.
Who taught you how to do the job once you were in it?
Why ask it
It might be a supervisor, a long-serving colleague two desks over, or nobody at all. Whichever it is shows how much training a newcomer can count on, and hands you a question for your own first job interview.
Is the job you have now one you knew existed when you were a student?
Why ask it
Campuses have offices most students never notice: institutional research, student conduct, accessibility services, the bursar. A no is your cue to ask which of the less visible offices they would point a newcomer toward.
What has come closest to making you leave campus work, and why are you still here?
Why ask it
Save this for someone who has warmed up, and keep any hint of gossip out of your voice. The reasons for going and the reasons for staying are both things you would inherit, so write down each side in their words.
The work
What does a week look like for you in the middle of a term?
Why ask it
Asking for mid-term gets you the ordinary job and keeps opening week and finals out of it. Note the proportions they give for appointments, meetings, email and evening programs. That list describes the job better than the title does.
What is the most rewarding part of your job, and how often does it come around?
Why ask it
Commencement, a student who comes back to say thanks, a file that finally clears: the answers tend to be small and specific. The second half matters more than the first. A reward that turns up weekly and one that turns up each May make for different jobs.
Which skills does your job lean on most, and where did you pick them up?
Why ask it
Expect a mix you would not guess from the title: reading a regulation, calming an angry caller, building a spreadsheet, holding a room of two hundred new students. Where each one was learned tells you whether to look for it in a course, an assistantship or a first job.
How many nights and weekends does the work take, and which months are the worst?
Why ask it
Each office peaks on its own schedule: admissions around travel season and deadlines, housing at move-in, advising at registration, student activities most evenings after five. Get a count for an ordinary month and for the heaviest one. Whether that time is paid, given back or simply expected is the employer's call, so find out which it is on their campus.
Have you held a live-in or on-call position, and what was it like to live where you work?
Why ask it
This one is for anyone weighing residence life, where an apartment in the hall and a turn carrying the duty phone can be part of the offer. Privacy, partners, pets and how they got away from the building on a day off are all fair to raise. Leave it out with someone who has only had an office job.
What do you do every week that appears nowhere in your job description?
Why ask it
College staff get pulled into commencement, move-in day, search committees and whatever the division needs hands for. Notice whether they describe it as a perk or a tax. It is a quick reading of how stretched the office is.
Which decisions are yours alone, and which have to go up to someone else?
Why ask it
An advisor who can approve an exception and one who can only forward the request hold different jobs under the same title. Find out how their own authority grew between the first year and now.
What numbers is your office judged on, and who looks at them?
Why ask it
Applications and yield, retention, appointments kept, occupancy, days to process a file: every office is counted somehow. The figure their vice president asks about first is the one that sets the pressure on the staff.
What is the hard conversation you have most often?
Why ask it
For one person it is a denial, for another an aid offer that falls short, a conduct finding, or a schedule that will not get the student out on time. The follow-up is how they learned to deliver it: from a course, from a supervisor, or from getting it wrong the first few times.
What part of the job follows you home?
Why ask it
It could be a student they are worried about, an inbox, or a rule they had to enforce and did not agree with. Accept a short answer if that is all you get. If they say more, whatever helps them put it down at night is worth taking down word for word.
Students
Who are the students you see most, and who almost never comes in?
Why ask it
The ones an office misses are often the ones it most wants: commuters, part-timers, online students, the first in a family to attend, those holding a full-time job. What the office tried in order to reach them, and what fell flat, usually makes a better paper than the students who do show up.
What do students most often get wrong about what your office can do for them?
Why ask it
A financial aid counselor cannot create money and an advisor cannot waive a requirement the faculty set, though students arrive hoping for both. The misunderstanding they name is the one you would spend your own days correcting.
How have the students changed since you started?
Why ask it
Someone with ten or twenty years in can compare what students ask for, what worries them and how they want to be reached. Treat it as one view from one campus, and follow up with what the office changed in response.
What do you do when a student brings you a problem your office cannot fix?
Why ask it
Housing, food, a family emergency and an unpaid balance all land on whichever staff member the student trusts. Their reply shows how well the offices on that campus pass a student along, and how much of the weight stays with the listener.
Is there a student whose situation changed how you do the job?
Why ask it
Ask for the lesson and leave the name out: staff are expected to keep student records private, and a careful professional will blur the details anyway. For a class paper, this story is often the passage worth quoting.
How do you hold to a policy when you sympathize with the student in front of you?
Why ask it
Deadlines, aid rules and conduct codes do not bend because a staff member wishes they would. You are listening for how they stay kind while saying no, and whether there is an appeal route they can point the student to.
How much do you deal with parents and families, and what are you able to tell them?
Why ask it
Admissions and orientation staff may talk with families every day, and a registrar almost never. What a college can share about an enrolled student rests on privacy law and on its own policy, so treat the answer as true of that campus and no further.
What happens when you are the first person to learn a student is in crisis?
Why ask it
Many campuses have a set route for this, such as a care team, a counseling referral or a report form. How they were trained in it, and what the campus expects of front-line staff, would apply to you from your first week in a similar job.
How do you stay helpful to a student without becoming the one person they lean on for everything?
Why ask it
New professionals close in age to their students can find this line hard to see. Listen for practical habits: office hours instead of a personal phone number, a referral walked over together, a supervisor to think out loud with.
The campus
Where does your office sit on the organization chart, and what difference does that make?
Why ask it
One function can report to student affairs on one campus and to academic affairs or enrollment management on another. Whoever sits above an office sets its goals, so ask how the work would change under a different division.
From where you sit, what is the biggest problem colleges face over the next few years?
Why ask it
A financial aid director, a hall director and a registrar will each name something different, which is the reason to put it to more than one person. Follow with how the problem has already reached their own desk. In a class assignment, this is the answer to set beside your course readings.
How do staff and faculty work together here, and where does it get difficult?
Why ask it
Faculty generally own the curriculum and staff carry out much of what follows from it, which can produce a partnership or two separate worlds. One recent example of each tells you more than a general verdict, and both belong in an assignment on campus culture.
Who really decides things on your campus, and how long did it take you to work that out?
Why ask it
The chart shows titles. What you are after is the budget officer, the long-serving associate dean or the committee everything waits on. Expect discretion here and do not push for names.
What did your office give up the last time the budget was cut?
Why ask it
Travel, student workers and a vacant position left unfilled are common first losses, and each lands on the people who remain. Where the money comes from, whether tuition, public funding, student fees, housing revenue or a grant, is particular to the institution and decides how exposed the office is next time.
How directly does your office feel it when enrollment rises or falls?
Why ask it
Admissions and housing may feel it within a term, and other offices a budget cycle later. If they describe a decline, ask how staff were told about it. That part of the story says a lot about the place as an employer.
What changed in your office the last time a new president or vice president arrived?
Why ask it
New leaders can bring a new structure, new priorities or their own people, and mid-level staff live with the result. Notice how they tell it: as a threat, an opening, or weather to be waited out.
When you have an idea that costs money, what does it take to get a yes?
Why ask it
Have them walk you through a real one: who they asked first, which form or committee it went to, how long it sat. A month and a year describe two very different campuses to work on.
Which office do you call most often, and is it an easy call to make?
Why ask it
Admissions leans on financial aid, advising on the registrar, housing on facilities. A good deal of what gets called campus politics is two offices with different deadlines, so the thing to get is what has made that one relationship better or worse.
Pay and moving up
What should someone starting in your area expect to earn, and what comes with the salary?
Why ask it
Word it as the range for their functional area and region, never their own pay. Housing, a meal plan, a tuition benefit or retirement contributions can be part of the package at one employer and absent at the next, so check current postings afterwards.
Has your own pay grown more from staying in one place or from changing jobs?
Why ask it
It opens the subject of raises without asking for a number. Institutions settle raises in very different ways, so the follow-up is which system theirs uses and whether it has kept pace with their rent.
What are the steps between an entry-level job and a director's chair, and how long do people spend on each?
Why ask it
Coordinator, assistant director and associate director mean different things from campus to campus, so have them say what each one does at theirs. Pay attention to the middle rungs, where there can be more people ready than seats open.
Do people here get promoted where they are, or do they change campuses to move up?
Why ask it
In a small office the only way up may be for the director to leave. If moving is the norm, ask how many times they have done it and what it asked of a partner or children.
At what level does moving up mean you stop working with students, and how do you feel about that?
Why ask it
Senior roles tend to fill with budgets, supervision and meetings. If students are your reason for entering the field, this tells you how high you would want to climb before the job stops being the one you came for.
Is a doctorate expected for the jobs above yours?
Why ask it
Some senior postings list one as preferred or required and others weigh experience more heavily, depending on the institution and the area. Whether they are planning on one themselves, and who would pay for it, shows how much weight to give the answer.
When colleagues leave higher education, where do they go?
Why ask it
Listen for the kinds of employer: nonprofits, corporate training, human resources, schools, education technology. It shows which campus skills the outside world recognizes, a comfort if you worry about being locked into one sector.
Degree and first job
Was your master's degree worth what it cost you in money and time?
Why ask it
For many readers this is the question the whole conversation is for, so give them room to think. Two follow-ups sharpen it: what the degree got them that experience alone would not have, and whether they would pick the same program again.
Is a master's required for the jobs in your office, or only preferred?
Why ask it
Requirements vary by institution, by functional area and by the level of the job, and some offices hire with a bachelor's. Ask to see a recent posting from their office, then read ten more from campuses where you would actually work.
Does it matter whether the degree is in higher education or student affairs, or would another field do?
Why ask it
One office wants the field's own degree and the next is glad of counseling, social work, business or a subject background. A person who has read applications for their office can say what gets screened for on that campus.
How did you pay for graduate school?
Why ask it
An assistantship that waives tuition, an employee tuition benefit and loans lead to three different verdicts on whether the degree was worth it. If theirs was an assistantship, ask how they found it and how early they applied.
What should I look for in a graduate assistantship?
Why ask it
It is funding and first-job experience at once, so the office matters as much as the stipend. Hours, supervision and whether the role carried real responsibility or mostly desk coverage are the three things to compare, and every program you apply to should get the same three questions.
What did your program teach well, and what did you only learn on the job?
Why ask it
Student development theory, law and research methods may come from the classroom, while budgets, supervising people and campus politics may not. Use the second list to choose your practicum site and electives.
Could I take an entry-level staff job first and earn the degree later as an employee?
Why ask it
Some people study part-time on a tuition benefit and finish with little debt and several years of experience. Whether that is open to you depends on the employer's benefit and the program's schedule. Someone who has watched colleagues try it can tell you what the evenings were like.
When you sit on a search committee, what makes a new professional's application stand out?
Why ask it
This is the hiring side of the table talking: what gets skimmed, what gets scored, what sinks a file. If they have never served on a search, ask who in the office has and whether that person would spare ten minutes.
When does your area hire, and where are the openings posted?
Why ask it
Some functions recruit on a cycle tied to the academic year and others only when someone leaves. Get the names of the job boards, association sites or conferences that carry the postings, so you are looking in the right place in the right month.
Which professional association or conference is worth a student's money?
Why ask it
Most functional areas have their own. In the United States, for example, NASPA and ACPA cover student affairs broadly, NACADA advising, NASFAA financial aid and ACUHO-I campus housing, and several have a student rate. What you want to learn is which meeting people in their office really attend, and whether anyone there was hired through it.
What one thing would you tell someone in my position to do this year?
Why ask it
Say where you are first: in the first year of a program, a senior deciding whether to apply, or changing careers. Advice that fits one is wrong for the others. Write down the single thing they name and tell them when you have done it, which is the best reason to email them again.
Who on this campus works in an office I have not thought of, and would you introduce me?
Why ask it
One conversation shows you one office. An introduction to someone in conduct, institutional research or accessibility services widens the picture, and it is an easier favor to grant than general advice. Thank them within a day and let them know how the next meeting went.
How to interview someone who works at a college
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Setting up the conversation
Pick the office, then the person
Higher education is a few dozen different jobs under one roof. Decide which two or three offices you are curious about, read each one's staff page, and write to someone a step or two ahead of where you would start. A coordinator or assistant director still remembers being new, and a vice president can give you the long view. If your assignment asks for one interview, do a second anyway in a different office, because the contrast between the two teaches more than either does alone.
Work around their calendar
Campus offices have weeks when nobody has twenty minutes to spare: move-in, the start of term, registration, an application deadline, commencement. You do not need to guess which ones apply. Offer a window of two or three weeks and say you are happy to wait until the office is quieter.
Say what the interview is for
If it is a class assignment, say so, name the course, and mention whether you will write it up or present it. If you are weighing the career, say that instead. Either way, state how long you need and keep to it. People who work with students for a living are inclined to say yes to one, which is no reason to waste the half hour.
Bring eight to ten questions
Thirty minutes holds about that many once follow-ups are counted. Take one or two from each group and add more from the group that bears on your decision: Degree and first job if you are choosing a program, Pay and moving up if you are deciding whether the career can support you. Cut anything the office's own web page already answers.
Which questions suit which office
Admissions and recruitment
Lead with travel, evenings and the numbers the office is judged on, since recruiting is seasonal and closely counted. Counselor roles are often entry-level, which makes the people in them good sources on first jobs and on where colleagues go next.
Advising and student success
Ask about caseload when you ask about the week, then about holding a policy line and working with faculty. Advisors can also tell you whether their campus asks for a master's at the entry level, which is far from uniform.
Residence life and student activities
The live-in and on-call questions belong here, along with crisis response and boundaries with students. These offices often take on graduate assistants, so bring everything you want to know about assistantships.
Financial aid, the registrar and the bursar
These offices run on regulation and deadlines. Ask what training the job required, which conversations are hardest and how much of the day is spent inside a records system. Few people plan a career in them, so the story of how each person arrived is usually worth the time.
Directors, deans and vice presidents
Spend the time on The campus and Pay and moving up: budgets, reporting lines, what they look for when they hire and whether a doctorate mattered. Skip the daily detail of an entry-level job they left years ago.
What to do with the answers
One campus is not the field
Everything you hear is true of one person at one institution. Pay, benefits, titles, who reports to whom and what staff may tell a parent all differ by employer and by place. Write each of those down as 'how it works there', and ask again at any campus you apply to.
Notice what comes up unprompted
The subject a person returns to without being asked, whether a student, a budget cut or a supervisor, is usually the center of their working life. Mark it in your notes apart from the answers you drew out.
Set two interviews side by side
After a second or third conversation, line up what each person said about hours, pay and the master's. Where people in different offices agree, you have probably found something true of the field. Where they differ, you have found a choice that is yours to make.
Writing it up for a class
A reflection paper usually wants more than a transcript. Pick two or three answers that connect to what the course has covered, such as how an office is organized or how staff make decisions about students, and build the paper around those. Leave out anything they asked you to keep private, and send a thank-you note that names one specific thing you took away.
What to steer clear of
Asking what they earn
Ask for the range a newcomer should expect in their area and leave their own salary alone. Some public institutions publish staff pay, and where that is so you can look it up without putting anyone on the spot.
Pressing for stories about named students
Staff are expected to keep student records private, under rules set by law and by the institution. A professional will change details or decline, and neither is evasion. Ask what they learned and let the particulars go.
Turning the meeting into an application
If their office has an opening or an assistantship, they now know you exist and will mention it if they want to. Asking outright changes what they feel free to say about the place. Should they raise it themselves, thank them and ask how to apply.
Mistaking a hard week for the career
Someone you catch in the middle of registration or just after a budget meeting may sound worn out. Ask whether this is a typical month before you draw conclusions, and weigh it against whatever has kept them in the work.