The Retention Problem
Student retention at U.S. postsecondary institutions is a costly and problematic issue. While postsecondary enrollment has increased ten-fold since the mid 1900s to approxi-mately 14 million students each year, our ability to keep students in school remains a difficult challenge. Congress has clung on to this issue because the institutional graduation rate has held at a constant 50 percent for most of the past half century. Put another way, half of all students that enter the gates of higher education fail to realize the dreams and aspirations that led them there in the first place. These students may have found other successes and altered their goals during that time, but it is somewhat disturbing, from a business and personal sense, that we don’t do a better job graduating students.

Part of the problem is that “going to college” has changed drastically over time. As the doors of higher education have been opened up to the masses, so has the nature of the student body and the pathways to and through postsecondary education. New data from the Beginning Postsecondary Student survey (BPS:96/01) give us insight into the chal-lenges facing students, educators, and policymakers in the retention debate:

• One quarter of all students who enter postsecondary education for the first time end up at another institution before attaining a postsecondary degree.
• Almost half (46 percent) of first-time students who left their initial institution by the end of the first year never came back to postsecondary education.
• Students who attend full-time or whose attendance was continuous were much more likely to achieve their degree goals than other students. However, only about two-thirds of students were continuously enrolled.
• 50 percent of four-year students who did not delay entry into PSE earned their de-gree at their first institution, compared to only 27 percent of students who were delayed entrants.
• 42 percent of students whose first-year grade point average was 2.25 or less left postsecondary education permanently.

Thus, data convincingly suggest that continuous enrollment, remaining at the initial institu-tion, full-time attendance, and prior academic preparation are important factors related to student persistence. But note that these factors are almost always inextricably linked to socio-economic conditions and student finances, and less related to the ability of the insti-tution to change reality. The result, as verified by BPS data, is that students from higher-income backgrounds were significantly more likely to achieve a bachelor’s degree than those from lower-income backgrounds.

Many institutions work hard to retain students, using strategies that generally hinge around the first-year experience. This is undoubtedly an important time for most students, especially considering the social issues related for resident students moving from home for the first time, but also related to the academic side of the equation where students are busy “finding” themselves and defining who they want to be when they grow up. However, we are only now learning that retention is a multi-year issue.

As illustrated in Exhibit 1, approximately 14 percent of four-year students, or 1 in 7, leave their initial institution after the first year. However, 13 percent will leave the following year, and a total of 24 percent of four-year students leave their initial institution during or after the sophomore year. Thus, only one-third of the retention problem occurs at the “tradi-tional” time of departure.

Of course, these “averages” protect the most damaging information. Students of color and from low-income backgrounds do much worse than white, Asian, and affluent students. As illustrated, approximately 1 in 6 Black, Hispanic, and low-income four-year students left their initial institution after the first year; one-third left by the end of the second year. Com-paratively, a more affluent, White, or Asian student was far less likely to leave after year one or year two. In fact, in each postsecondary year, Black, Hispanics, and low-income stu-dents left their first institution at higher rates than all other students.

SOURCE: Berkner, Lutz, He, Shirley, and Cataldi, Emily Forrest (2002). Descriptive Summary of 1995 –96 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Six Years Later. U.S.Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, NCES 2003

Some of the students described through the BPS data did manage to transfer from their initial institution to succeed at other institutions. But not many. Of the 58 percent of four-year students that received BAs within 6 years, only 8 percent, or 1 in 7, earned their de-gree at an institution other than their institution of initial postsecondary entry. The first institution matters.

A Complex Problem
Of course, to be fair, the challenge of student retention and persistence is complex. Not all students are alike, nor are institutions. Resources play a huge part in the ability of a cam-pus to provide the support services necessary to engage and save students. And students most certainly bring with them baggage from home and community. Many students come to college for the first time psychologically unprepared to navigate the murky waters of higher education. A quick flip through U.S. News and World Report’s College Rankings finds that certain institutions, such as Harvard and MIT, graduate almost all of their stu-dents—an astonishing accomplishment given all the barriers, personal and otherwise, that get in the way of graduation. And while these institutions certainly get the best and the brightest the world has to offer, they also provide outstanding resources to ensure that students have all the tools to make their way through the labyrinth of higher education. These institutions assign tutors to students rather than force students to seek them out, they have smaller class sizes and labs, and provide extensive and often proactive supple-mentary support services. These types of services are considered “specialized” at most institutions. At the upper echelon of higher education in America, these are standard prac-tices made possible by a large pool of institutional resources and wealth.

At the other end of the educational spectrum are institutions with limited resources; those that don’t have $7 billion endowment chests at their disposal. These are more often than not the open admission institutions, which, unlike Harvard and MIT, don’t necessarily get the best and brightest the world has to offer. These institutions fight regionally and locally for students with combined SAT scores of 900 instead of 1450. The context is radically dif-ferent.

While top schools tend to graduate 9 out of 10 of their entering students, these schools are more likely to see three quarters of their students leave before graduation, and as many as one quarter or even a half of their students leave by the end of the freshman year.
The logical question is whether these institutions are doing something inherently wrong or whether they are doing as well as expected under the circumstances?

A Study of Retention
In 2002, in a study conducted for the Lumina for Education Foundation, we looked at re-tention practices at 19 public and private institutions that serve low-income students; half had a high six-year graduation rate and half had a low six-year graduation rate. We met with presidents and CEOs, faculty, staff, and, most importantly, students. We visited spe-cial programs and tried to get a feel for the “climate” and atmosphere on campus.
Bias aside, we expected to find that schools with high graduation rates would have dedi-cated staff, were committed to retaining students, and utilized tried-and-true teaching and learning strategies that make a difference in the learning atmosphere and social climate of the institution. And we found what we expected.

However, we were astonished to find what we really didn’t want to find: resources trumped all other factors. Regardless of the factors noted above, schools with money were able to secure additional resources as necessary, could implement almost any strategy they wanted to, and, perhaps more importantly in the retention debate, were able to attract more qualified and competitive students—students that were almost surely going to graduate from college, even if they were from low-income backgrounds.
Important to note is that these low-performing schools had staff as or more dedicated than those at better performing schools, and offered a quality education. It’s just that other schools were able to pile on resource after resource to make the difference in who comes, who stays, and who completes.

Changing practice on a postsecondary campus is always challenging, and the bigger the campus, the larger the challenge. Changing the quantity of resources is an infinitely greater challenge. It is possible that Congress and the states could craft policy to alter the resource capital at institutions, but current conversations suggest that this is not the direc-tion of policymakers. It is more possible that institutions could lose resources rather than gain them.