Association for the Study of Higher Education

Although retaining students has always been important to institutions of higher education (Henderson, 1998; Rudolph, 1990/1962; Thelin, 2004), with the development of enrollment management as a distinct discipline over the past 30 years, scholarly contributions to understanding retention have grown (Henderson, 2001). During the same time, while both internal and external pressures have intensified the need for practical ideas for improving retention rates (Hossler, Ziskin, Moore, & Wakhungu, 2008), forging a bridge between the theoretical work on student retention and the effectiveness of specific programmatic initiatives has been challenging. Few research articles assessing campus retention programs (Patton, Morelon, Whitehead, & Hossler, 2006; Tinto, 2006-2007), for example, have been published. The sketchy empirical record limits practitioners and constrains policy makers from making rational, empirically grounded decisions about implementing new initiatives or maintaining existing ones. Researchers, too, are hobbled—not knowing how or in which institutional contexts these programs are implemented. The relationship between student behaviors, institutional practices, and student persistence has become somewhat clearer, however, in recent work by Braxton and colleague