Student retention has become a difficult issue within higher education. As such, it is imperative to examine the causes, as well as provide educators with strategies to implement to improve retention rates. "Critical Assessment and Strategies for Increased Student Retention" is a pivotal reference source for the latest progressive…

General education classrooms provide a common milieu for understanding and appropriating results of classroom research projects, which are typically viewed as having little application outside their original contexts. Here, results of an investigation into the "sophomore slump," where grades and class attendance rates typically suffer, are…

Freshmen college students often experience a dramatic change in activities, values, and personal demands compared to home and previous schooling. To investigate the relationship between psychological maladjustment and stressful life events, locus of control, and social support networks, 62 college freshmen in their first semester of school…

Attrition, which averages 40 percent among college freshmen, has been associated with academic skills, career decision making, psychological characteristics, and institutional climate. To determine the self-perceived developmental characteristics of college freshmen and the relationship of those characteristics to retention and grade point average…

A study investigated relationships between academic majors and six undergraduate student work values (authority, recognition, administrative responsibility, financial success, helping others, artistic creativity), using Holland's theory of occupational choice. Subjects were 18,137 students persisting at four-year institutions from 1985 to 1989.…

Describes a study of the effectiveness of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), high school graduation class percentile, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), as predictors of short- and long-term academic achievement among a sample of 58 high-risk college freshmen who participated in 1-year special studies program. (PAA)

Stepwise discriminant analysis coupled with logit regression analysis of freshmen data from Brandon University (Manitoba) indicated that six tested variables drawn from research on university dropouts were useful in predicting attrition: student status, residence, financial sources, distance from home town, goal fulfillment, and satisfaction with…

Data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Follow-Up Surveys were used to study student retention at four-year colleges and universities. Data used were from the 1985-1988 follow-up surveys of 1981-1984 freshmen. Student data were also requested directly from the institutions themselves, concerning degree earned, number of years…

This study examined the value of the American College Testing Program (ACT) and secondary school performance as predictors of academic performance in college. Multiple regression was used to establish a prediction equation for grade-point average (GPA) at the end of the first term of the freshman year as the dependent variable and ACT and high…

This study investigated whether the one-year retention rate for the cohort of full-time, baccalaureate-degree-seeking, first-time freshmen could be predicted from institutional and aggregate cohort characteristics, including institutional type and control, institutional size, cohort size, average entrance exam score, percentage of part-time…

The relationship between student persistence and types of financial aid at a Jesuit comprehensive university was studied. Three freshmen cohorts (134 for 1989, 171 for 1990, and 131 for 1991) of 436 students were tracked through fall 1994. Attention was focused on nine financial aid variables, five additional noncategorical and six categorical…