Increased enrollment and student activism has created a situation within student personnel services that almost defies most management systems. A systems approach can enable student personnel services to evaluate what they are doing to determine if counselors are making a difference in the lives of students. The characteristics of this approach are: (1) state the real needs, (2) define objectives behaviorally, (3) define constraints, (4) identify and analyze alternatives, (5) identify milestones, (6) implementation, (7) evaluation of the system, and (8) feedback and modification. Systems analysis offers several advantages among which are: (1) it focuses on process with a major emphasis on operations research, (2) it provides for adequate allocation of resources to best get the job done, (3) it provides a systematic and rational approach to analyzing the problematic situation, (4) it forces analyzers to think through the flow of the problem, and (5) it forces a comparison of alternatives in a complex situation. (Author/KJ)