Student Persistence

Student Persistence What do We Know about What Makes a Difference? Don Hossler, Vic Borden, and Ty Cruce

Student Success: Ultimate Goal Academic success Social Growth and Satisfaction Post Graduate Success/or Meets Academic Objectives Long term affiliation with the campus/Repeat Customer Does the campus deliver? Is it worth the cost?

Factors Associated with Persistence • Broad Considerations • A continuous decision, especially at commuting institutions • How students choose colleges • Family support and encouragement • Academic integration • Social integration • Financial aid

Faculty – Student interaction Close peers, significant others Responsive campus Working on campus Living on campus Student activities Counseling Academic advising Programs for undecided students Career counseling Enhancing family support Mentoring Academic support - learning centers Early warning Orientation, transition programs, & freshman year experience programs Gateway courses Student diversity culture centers Financial aid The Retention Literature – A Propositional Field

Surprise? • Lots of propositions • Very little evaluation or empirical research

Why Do We Know So Little? Why is There a Gap? • Different people doing the research and interventions • Lack of time, resources, and training • Hard to assess a moving target • Too many interventions to isolate effects • Too many confounding variables?? • Self-selection as an intractable problem

The “Gap” • Interventions • Orientation  First-year experience • Supplemental instruction • Freshman learning communities and interest groups • Interventions follow from research and conceptual models • Relatively little is done to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of interventions • Even less is done to learn from our efforts and improve our approaches

Reasons for Closing the Gap • To see if what we are doing works • To figure out ways of doing things better • To use resources efficiently and effectively • Doing the right thing v. doing it right

Little research and lots of assertions Most of loosely linked to theory driven research or “this is what I think based upon my experience and opinion” Scant Support for…. Academic, career, peer & personal counseling/ advising So….. Do We Know Anything? • Impact of intentional efforts to increase student involvement in social activities • Academic and learning centers • Living Learning Centers • Efforts to provide specific, targeted support for students of color

Consistent if Limited Support for… Instruction-based academic support programs Programs to enhance student-faculty interaction Transition, orientation, and university 101 programs However, in the areas related to orientation, transition, and University 101 programs, the amount of published existing research is underwhelming in the context of the claims made Key Findings (continued)

Where Does This Leave Us? • IHEs nationally spend a lot of money on retention programs • We administrators are pretty free to associate our efforts and requests for money because we assert they will improve student success and persistence • Do we lead with assertions or evidence? • How much clothing is there on the emperor?

What We Have Learned About Unsuccessful Efforts • What does not work – launching programs with… • Too little administrative attention allocated to it • Few resources • No training • Little follow-up • Reliance on part-time staff • Little evidence that institutions assess the effectiveness of retention efforts

The Missing Piece What do we know about how institutions are organizing themselves to enhance persistence? To what extent are they organizing themselves? Little is known

What Does Work? Management 101 • Devote time and attention to issues that are important • Have a plan for issues of importance • Have individuals assigned to work on the issue • Provide them the resources to do the job • Assess outcomes of the efforts

What We Have Learned About the Intensity of Organizational Efforts Percent of a FTEs Time Devoted to the “Retention Coordinator” Role

What We Have Learned About the Intensity of Organizational Efforts Authority of the "retention coordinator“ to fund new programs without having to seek permission from other campus administrators

What We Have Learned About the Intensity of Organizational Efforts? The Extent that an Institution Coordinate Retention Programs Across its Campus

Summing Up • Serious questions about how institutions develop, implement, and assess their retention efforts. • Perhaps not surprising, there is surprisingly little evidence of the efficacy of retention interventions. • Preliminary efforts to examine institutional efforts to enhance student success suggests are at best modest. • Campus policy makers need to do more benchmarking so they can better gauge their own efforts to enhance student success.

Moving Forward • Making strategic choices • Corralling current efforts • Devoting sufficient resources • Assessing efforts Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Making Strategic Choices • Assessing potential impacts • Understanding how changing persistence among certain groups will affect overall rates • Setting objectives • Persistence v. degree production • Focus populations: beginners/transfers/adults • Treatment v. selection • Identifying interventions approaches • Level: campus-wide/division-based • Program-based, financial support or both Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Corralling Current Efforts: Less is More • Growth by substitution • IHEs are notorious for cumulating programs, spreading resources thinly and often finding unit efforts interfering with each other • Inventory current efforts • Who all is doing what? • Pare down and align those efforts with strategic choices Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Devoting Sufficient Resources • Human, fiscal, physical, and time • Why would we expect a program with little or no resources & reliance solely on PT people to work? • Strength through mutual support • Organizational learning facilitated through common goals, objectives, and efforts • Promote communication Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Assessing Efforts • All campuses have experts in assessment among faculty and staff • Multidisciplinary approach is well suited to this field • Multi-trait, multi-method • Quantitative and qualitative serve complimentary purposes • Faculty buy-in through participation (fellowships?) • But whatever you do….do something Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Discussion Customize footer: View menu/Header and Footer

Student Persistence