Getting Serious about Institutional Performance in Student Retention: Research-Based Lessons on Effective Policies and Practices

Given tightening fiscal constraints, growing pressure from public policymakers to improve student persistence and graduation rates, and the ever-present imperative to cultivate institutional quality and prestige, the conversation about student persistence is shifting from the abstract and theoretical to the concrete and actionable. of greatest concern is the human toll that attrition takes on those who leave college without achieving their goals. students who do not persist, especially if they leave for reasons an institution can control, are cheated of important opportunities to learn in college and to reap the benefits of that learning after graduation.Despite increasing college enrollments and the pressure to improve student achievement, completion rates have remained fairly constant over the past thirty years, according to the national center for education statistics. recognizing the importance and complexity of issues associated with student persistence now comes with the territory for concerned educators, but getting serious about these issues—serious enough to significantly improve learning, success, persistence, and graduation rates for all students—requires more than a serious mind-set. Getting serious about student persistence requires that educators connect what they know about institutional retention practices with an empirically grounded sense of what works