Student Retention and Advising: an Interinstitutional Comparison and Case Study.

This study sought to determine whether colleges could improve student retention by improved advising programs. The study had two stages. The first examined the advising/retention relationship and retention patterns of a sample of 31 colleges. The second examined in-depth a case of an improved freshman advising program. The research questions of the first stage were: Do institutions exhibit distinctive retention patterns? Are these patterns stable over successive cohorts? How are graduation rates related to institutional characteristics? Did advising improvements affect retention patterns? In the case study the questions were: Did the new advising program have an important effect on retention? What were the effective factors? Did the relationship between student characteristics and persistence change because of the advising program? The theory developed suggested that a college must do two things to increase retention: (1) increase its capacity to provide students with the experience of being personally appreciated as able and worthy, and (2) increase its capacity to enable students to define and achieve goals. For the interinstitutional comparison, data were collected from 31 four-year, teaching-oriented institutions that had developed retention data. In the case study, a cohort comparison strategy was employed. The study findings suggested that improved advising programs can substantially increase retention. After introducing a new program, the case study institution reduced its first-year attrition from a 35 percent loss to a 25 percent loss. Three other colleges reduced attrition after improving their advising programs. The case study suggested that four factors were important: (a) faculty responsibility for the well-being and advising of specific freshmen, (b) teaching those students in a small class which provided, (c) the opportunity to see advisees thrice weekly, and (d) a capacity on the part of participating faculty to express support. Other findings, from the institutional study, were that institutional retention patterns are stable over successive cohorts and are distinctive. In general, about 85 percent of those dropping out do so within two years. Five-year graduation rates seem predictable from a small set of institutional characteristics including the college's age, tuition, and proportions of out-of-state and part-time students.PhDHigher educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159337/1/8314236.pd