ACADEMIC ADVISEMENT AND STUDENT RETENTION: EMPIRICAL CONNECTIONS & SYSTEMIC INTERVENTIONS

Joe Cuseo

The Case for Attention to Student Retention
The majority of new students entering higher education leave their initial college of choice without completing a degree (Tinto, 1993), and national attrition rates have been increasing since the early 1980s at two-year and four-year institutions, both public and private (Postsecondary Education Opportunity, 2002). The most critical period or stage of vulnerability for student attrition continues to be the first year of college�at all types of higher education institutions, including highly selective colleges and universities (�Learning Slope,� 1991). More than half of all students who withdraw from college do so during their first year (Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange, 1999), resulting in a first-year attrition rate of more than 25% at four-year institutions, and approximately 50% at two-year institutions (ACT, 2001).
The economic implications of these alarmingly high rates of attrition for enrollment management was anticipated more than 20 years ago by John Gardner, during the nascent stages of the freshman-year experience movement he helped launch: �Higher education must make changes if it is to survive in anything resembling its present form. The student has become a precious commodity. Institutions must now concern themselves with retaining students so that, if nothing else, budgets can be preserved� (Gardner, 1981, p. 79). Vince Tinto, a nationally recognized retention scholar, notes further that strengthening institutional efforts aimed at increasing student retention may be a more effective enrollment-management strategy than devoting more resources to increasing student recruitment: �As more institutions have come to utilize sophisticated marketing techniques to recruit students, the value of doing so has diminished markedly. Institutions have come to view the retention of students to degree completion as the only reasonable cause of action left to ensure their survival� (Tinto, 1987, p. 2).
The cost effectiveness of focusing on student retention as an enrollment management strategy is insightfully captured by Alexander Astin, who reminds us that, �In four-year institutions, any change that deters students from dropping out can affect three classes of students at once, whereas any change in recruiting practices can affect only one class in a given year. From this viewpoint, investing resources to prevent dropping out may be more cost effective than applying the same resources to more vigorous recruitment� (1975, p. 2). In fact, cost-benefit analyses of student recruitment efforts, which require substantial institutional expenditures (e.g., hiring of staff, travel funding, and marketing costs), range between $200-$800 per student (Kramer, 1982). In contrast, retention initiatives designed to manage student enrollment are estimated to be 3-5 times more cost-effective than recruitment efforts, i.e., the cost of retaining one already-enrolled student approximates the cost of recruiting 3-5 new students (Noel, Levitz, & Saluri, 1985; Rosenberg & Czepiel, 1983; Tinto, 1975). Another fiscal advantage associated with student retention efforts that effectively promote student persistence to graduation is that graduating students are much less likely to default on their student loans than students who drop out�due, in large measure, to the fact that graduates are more likely to find gainful employment (Seaks, cited in Levitz, 1993).
Most importantly, however, improving student retention not only fulfills the institutionally self-serving function of promoting fiscal solvency, it serves the more altruistic, student-centered purpose of promoting learning and development. As Astin (1975) notes: �More important from an educational standpoint, changes that help students complete college, represent a real service to them, whereas successful recruiting efforts may simply change students� choice of institutions� (p. 2).
Lastly, it should not be forgotten that student retention is an assessment outcome, and one that is amenable to accurate measurement. Furthermore, retention functions as a fundamental or foundational student outcome, serving as a precondition or prerequisite for meaningful assessment of other outcomes. For instance, other commonly assessed outcomes of college, such as knowledge acquisition, critical thinking, and attitude change, cannot possibly be accurately measured as final outcomes of the college experience unless and until students have persisted to completion of the college experience. Any outcome assessment data collected on students who have graduated from a postsecondary institution where sizable numbers of other students have withdrawn prior to degree completion (e.g., institutional attrition rates of 50% or higher) is, in effect, conducting assessment on an unrepresentative sample of students, i.e., these college graduates do not represent the general population of students who matriculated at the college. Using a medical metaphor, if 50% of a school�s entering class completes their college experience and displays positive outcomes at graduation and the college concludes that it is doing an effective job, it would be akin to a pharmaceutical company concluding that a newly approved drug was highly successful because it produced positive outcomes for 50% of the patients who completed the drug-treatment plan, while blithely ignoring the fact that one-half of the treated patients failed to complete the treatment plan due to the drug�s intolerable side effects and high mortality rate. Thus, it may be argued that any institution seriously interested in outcomes assessment should include student retention as a primary outcome measure, and should use it to make meaningful interpretations of other assessed outcomes.
Lastly, if the ultimate purpose of assessment is institutional improvement, then improvement in student retention should be an intended outcome of any postsecondary institution that is serious about using assessment results as a vehicle for promoting positive institutional change. Given the distressingly high levels of student attrition at many colleges and universities, retention represents a student outcome that can be dramatically improved, not only because there is so much room for improvement, but also because it is influenced as much or more by institutional behavior than by student characteristics (e.g., lack of academic motivation or academic underpreparedness). As Tinto (1987) reports:

Though the intentions and commitment with which individuals enter college matter, what goes on after entry matters more. It is the daily interaction of the person with other members of the college in both the formal and informal academic and social domains of the college and the person�s perception or evaluation of the character of those interactions that in large measure determine decisions as to staying or leaving. It is in this sense that most departures are voluntary. Student retention is at least as much a function of institutional behavior as it is of student behavior (pp. 127, 177).

Final Note: For strategies relating to assessment of academic advising, see the following URL: http://www.advising.hawaii.edu/nacada/assessmentlG/advising_assess_tools.asp,

Or, contact Joe Cuseo at: [email protected]

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