Advice on concern about students' dissertation project performance

An education centre asks me for advice about poor academic performance on final-year dissertation projects. I organize my thinking and come up with the following advice:

The problem probably about these students (and elsewhere too) is due to:

1. Low intellectual ability... (not easy to improve quickly); even English writing skill is a problem.

2. Not suffiiciently interested in intellectual learning

3. Life style (priority of intellectual learning is low) and time-orientation is not conducive to intellectual learning (e.g. not patient; belief in quick-fix, and too busy with other things)

4. Do not hold much respect to educational centres and teachers anyway (because they are VIP customers)

Subsequently, (a) the outcome is their own life-choice related to academic qualification pursuit [my perspective] and (b) poor academic performance, from their perspective, is primarily the responsibility of the education centres and the teaching staff.

Undeniably, quite many of the students are nice people; but their profiles match some of the points above in various  extent.

What the education centre and teachers can do:

1. Teachers' part: establish a role model as superb scholar-practitioner;

2. Make use of social media and other channels to create an engaging and accessible learning atmosphere;

3. Clarify with students why and how the academic study can integrate with their life-style, life-goal;  as well as improve their employability and self-actualization;

4. Explain clearly that, while we are willing to help students, there is also quite a clear academic standard they need to achieve in order to graduate;

5. Tie teaching/ admin support, etc to pay-to-use charging scheme;

6. Keep promoting the brand, qualification offered by the universities and the alumni network to potential/ existing students;

7. Figure out meaningful "alumni" relationship mgt after students have graduated;

8. Consider running academic programmes that do not involve dissertation project works;

9. Explain to students that intellectual learning, if done right, can be quite engaging and rewarding.