Retention Practices And Graduation Practices

The purpose of Guiffrida’s (2006) paper is to provide empirical research evidences to support Tinto’s (1993) theory of student departure and highlighted the limitation of the theory by recognizing its failure to incorporate the study of psychological and cultural variables; therefore, it becomes incomplete and inappropriate when applying the theory to deal with minority students.

As a current Retention Specialist, for the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), I have mastered group counseling. For instance, I have conducted over 100 academic advisement workshops. Aside from holding group counseling, I have prevented ECS Hispanic and Black American students from dropping out of California State University, Fullerton. Nonetheless, I am the face of a first-generation scholar who can relate to some challenges first-generation college students’ experience. These challenges may entail, working while pursuing an advanced degree, culture shock with the university environment, and overcoming learning disabilities. Remarkably, I have surmounted obstacles such as having a slight Reading Disability and successfully completing remediation courses during my freshman year in college.

College student degree non-completion and attrition is a pressing issue for higher education institutions. Nearly 20% of first-time, full time students failed to return to campus for their sophomore year among the 2012 cohort. Further, the 6-year graduation rate among the fall 2007 cohort of students seeking bachelor’s degrees was approximately 59 percent (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2015) The vulnerability of groups of students were identified by O'Keeffe (2013), who pointed out that part time students, first year students, first generation

Retention data over the past six to seven years is used to predict the type of student who may be at risk of attrition in the incoming freshman class. Of the predicted at risk population, students are paired with an individual who reaches out to them within the first two weeks of classes. The “mentor”

These institutions play a significant role in the academic, social, political, and economic future of our nation. As historically open admission institutions, with a primary focus on providing access to higher education, they have been pressed in recent decades--as has all of higher education--to be more accountable and demonstrate the benefits they offer and at what cost. A common measure of accountability is student retention. What role do admission officers play in student retention? While the admission processes may be quite different between four-year institutions and community colleges, the purposes are similar. Insofar as they set the stage for what it takes to be successful in college, admission officers play a crucial role in the broader student life cycle that extends from prospect to

Student retention is an issue that has been plaguing college and universities for a very long time. Retention of students in higher education in itself has many facets some of which follow a positive order such as when students go from a two year institution to a four year institution and a negative when students just drop out of school. Either event can cause an economic disruption unless this is something that is expected or planned for. Institution with formula funding is very sensitive to such swing in student demographics. While not desirable it is a fact that some institution have grown to accept.

Based on what I have learned this week about NCU’s library, I was able to formulate a topic and find articles based on my area of interest. The topic of interest that I would like to focus on is the effects of academic advising on student development in higher education. This topic is important to me because there are many students who go through college not knowing who their academic advisor is,

Yorke, M., & Longden, B. (2004). Retention and student success in higher education. Berkshire, England: Open University

First I will discuss the facts around academic advising using the journal article titled, “The Effects of Academic Advising on College Student Development in Higher Education.” Then, I will use the book, Academic Advising for Student Success: A system of Shared Responsibility by Susan Frost, to discuss how important academic advising is to transfer students different. After that I will dive into the interviews that I conducted from two students that transferred to University of Colorado Denver after their sophomore year. Lastly, I will discuss the recommendations on certain plans and practices that were found effective

Research has shown that retaining a student can often point them in a negative direction. Students can experience bad impacts in all areas

You are so right about student retention being effected so much by life happening. I would tell my nursing students in their second week “expect life to happen, and get crazy”. It seems that life gets even harder when you start school, negative things happen all around, like there is a force trying to get you to quit. Some of these life issues university staff can help a student with, some only the student can deal with on their own. The number one cause of student loss was due to life events in those students lives. I had one student that was homeless, he said this was his one last chance of changing his life, it got to the point where it was getting to be too much for him so I stepped in to help. I would pick this student up for class, help

The student success team covered how to keep freshman first year students after the first year. The team then went over the things that the freshman like and what attracted them to Northeastern to better understand what NEIU can continue to do to keep the freshman after their first year. We then went on to discuss what are some of the downfalls of Northeastern that push students away after their first year so that we can work on improving them. We discussed how if a student has someone they can go to a mentor on campus, then when things are hard they will have someone they can talk to and can get help from to help better the situation. We looked into why first and second year student retention rates are so low compared to the students who

This is a review of the dissertation A Comparative Study of Traditional and Nontraditional Characteristics Predicting Retention among First Time in College Students researched by C. Joseph (2015). This dissertation looks closely at the retention and completion of first time college students and their persistence to obtain their educational goals. The dissertation also looks at programs and services that support and assist students’ needs and that reduce the risk of stopping-out or dropping-out of college. Joseph’s (2015) research identifies 68% of students coming out of high school enroll into college. These students face immediate challenges of higher education and the curricular demands they encounter. Many institutions put first-time students through orientation programs in an attempt to familiarize the student with all the resources available to them, to help aid in their success. Additionally, these orientation programs usually contain team building components and activities so students have the opportunity to interact and bond with their peers. Students who develop a network of peers feel connected to an institution and utilize the resources available to them. Joseph’s (2015) research states that these students have a much higher success rate persisting through their programs of study and reaching completion.

This approach emphasizes the need to target underrepresented students. Studies have shown that 40 percent of students who enroll at four-year institutions fail to earn a degree. Of that group, nearly 57 percent do not retain in their programs during the following semester (Abelman & Molina, 2002).

Student retention has become a priority in public and private institutions of higher education. Using student retention as a performance indicator has provided an increase in data reporting of overall university student retention as well as retention rates within academic programs. This data has shown a trend in decreasing retention rates among college music majors at many universities (Fitzpatrick, Henninger, & Taylor, 2014; Gavin, 2012). Recent studies attribute this decrease to career uncertainty and student burnout (Bernhard, 2005; Gavin, 2012; Orzel, 2010).