Vincent Tinto's Student Integration Model Of Attrition

In Durkheim's opinion a whole is not identical to the sum of its parts, thus society is not just a mere sum of individuals.

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.

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist in the late 1800s and early 1900s who came up with the concepts of social regulation and integration. These concepts have to do with the state of societies and how they work. More specifically, social regulation is the norms created by either formal laws or social pressure. The way people are expected to live and perform their daily tasks or jobs are somewhat decided by social regulation. In its most basic form, it’s what is and isn’t deemed acceptable by societies standards. Social integration on the other hand is the extent to which the group or society matters. This brings up the importance of the individual as opposed to the importance of the society. Strength of social ties within the community are big influences on how socially integrated a society is. These two concepts helped Durkheim better form an understanding for things such as suicide rates.

Student attrition is a growing issue among community college administrators but there’s been little research into how community colleges’ policies and practices reflect this concern, or how they affect student attrition rates. Research has shown that students in online courses continue to experience higher attrition rates than their counterparts in traditional face-to-face classes despite the advantages offered by web-based technology (Shea & Bidjerano, 2014). In prior studies, researchers have found a multitude of factors contributing to high attrition rates among college students in online classes. A number of studies found that certain environmental/life circumstance factors can affect student attrition rates in online classes (Aragon & Johnson, 2008; Atchley et al., 2013; Harrell & Bower, 2011; Park & Choi, 2009; Wigenbach, & Akers, 2013: Shea and Bidjerano, 2014; Xu and Jaggars, 2013; Xu and Jaggars, 2014). These factors include:

When students feel excluded or not part of, academic achievement decreases (Brown, 2007). The importance of a positive student-to-teacher relationship is critical in order for students to succeed and find themselves fit in the world of academia (Anderson, Nelson, Richardson, Web, & Young, 2011). Interestingly, the data gathered from this study is consistent with previous research on barriers to student achievement. Anderson et al., (2011) goes on to suggest that there is a direct correlation between student behavior, positive or negative, and the teacher’s relationship with a student. When considering this, it must be understood that the relationship between the student and teacher, whether positive or negative, contribute to students’ academic outcomes and sense of belonging.

The relevance to this study was important because it examines factors that cause withdrawals and my assist with increasing retention rates. The information collected is significant to all stakeholders who wish to retain minority students in higher education. Both public and private universities can stand to increase their knowledge base of how to improve higher education retention for minority students.

As students enter into their first year of college, they have so many questions flowing through their heads concerning fitting in and belonging. “will I fit in?”

Vincent Tinto's Student Integration Theory of Persistence (1975, 1993) poses that students who feel involved with their institution are more likely to stay with and graduate from their institution of higher education. Tinto developed

The seminal works of Spady (1970) first focused on the precursor concept of integration in higher education by adapting Durkheim’s (1951) social causation theory to create a model for college dropouts. Later, Tinto’s (1993) theory of student departure was developed to provide a framework for understanding what factors and environments impact a student’s decision to drop out. Tinto (1993) theorized that the first-year semester is a prime environment for students to consider social integration and campus engagement. Tinto’s (1993) theory of student departure is a longitudinal model that explains the interaction between the student and the institution which results in individuals dropping out, and identifies the factors that result in different types of dropout behavior.

Attrition is the rate in which students disenroll from a post-secondary institution, which was defined in O’Keeffe’s (2013) article. Past research has suggested that the lack of participation and the culture shock of some students have contributed in such high attrition rates (O 'Keeffe, 2013). From the outcomes of these researches, universities have implemented programs to retain and increase retention rates. However, when it comes to attrition rates, it seems that one population of students goes unnoticed.

There are special laws and regulations that will set the rules on how to manage records and clear retention schedules, but most state laws are usually who govern how long medical records will be retained. Regarding retention requirements, it all will be related to the organization’s needs. In a high risk facility the retention periods might be longer than in a small community hospital that is expected just to reach the minimum requirement, so regulations will provide specific time frames. The Texas Medical Board’s rule 165.1(b), directs physicians to retain medical records seven years, counting from the date of last treatment. In the case of a patient younger than 18 years old, these records are going to be kept until the patient reaches age 21, or for seven years after the last treatment, whichever is longer. Additionally, if the medical records are related to any civil, criminal, or administrative

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

At first glance it might appear that a study of first generation students would naturally reflect a racial relationship and race would be the “ism” that is most influential on first generation students’ university attrition. This is especially true when the focus of the study is turned toward historically black colleges and universities. Additionally, a case could be built for the racial “ism” aspect of the study by focusing on the history of HBCU and the large concentration of first generation African Americans that attend predominately Black schools. However, in developing the idea for the proposed research, the “ism” which has the most meaning and connectivity to the topic is classism.

Many colleges and universities throughout the United States and several other countries face a common problem. Student retention is a growing problem across the nation for all ethnic groups and all ages. Each individual who chooses to drop out of school has their own personal reasons as to why they do. However, many drops out can be completely avoided. When students drop out they are not clearly thinking about how it’s going to affect their future, the future of their children and even grandchildren. Although there are several reasons as to why students drop out of school, we will be exploring a few as it relates to why student retention is a growing problem.

The merger of a smaller college into a larger one, is bound to bring inevitable change to student life and activities. Sandra Grey (2015) discusses the loss of autonomy in her analysis of university mergers and noted that many mergers require constant dialogue between the administration and the students, which is usually absent. The amount of teaching resources most often decrease because professors have increased responsibilities; creating new curriculum and teaching more courses; during times of college mergers and often are not able to dedicate as much time into their class as they would like to. During involuntary mergers (those done for financial reasons), the alumni network of a university decreases, which in turn has an adverse effect on student life. “Consequently, individual students in merged colleges may feel more alienated, which reduces attainment and increases the risk of dropout.” (Capuccinello, 2014). Lisa Wolf-Wendel (2009) explains an opposite phenomenon in her work,