Theories explaining why students drop out of college have evolved to emphasize interactions between students and their college environments. While the interactionist model underscores the influence of social integration on student retention, few have examined the role of students' social networks in the decision-making process. Drawing on a survey…

The "institutional databases audit" addresses common challenges of retention research by viewing existing databases and key surveys as resources for analyzing persistence rates. Such an audit helps verify whether student database elements have theoretically derived research referents. Positive results show that institutions can acquire…

This chapter describes research findings that show a positive relationship between higher order examination questions and core concepts of empirically supported theories of college student persistence for both residential and commuter colleges and universities.

College student retention constitutes a long-standing and critical problem for many colleges and universities. Although the average national rate of first-to-second year persistence stands at 68.5%, rates for types of colleges and universities vary from a low of 56.4% for 2-year public colleges to a high of 81.5% for private PhD-granting…

Theoretical modeling has been a widely used tool in the student persistence literature for many years; however, only recently has it been applied to the Historical Black College or University (HBCU) context in an intentional way. We investigated a theory of student persistence in commuter institutions at 2 commuter HBCUs (N = 147 students).…

Vice chancellors of public universities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region face a myriad of challenges that require research- and data-driven decision-making. This paper presents a decision-making model for college and university leadership - The Two-Way Practitioner-Researcher Loop. This scholarship of practice has the…

Fostering a sense of community should be at the center of every housing and residence life professional's efforts. Research conducted by Braxton et al. (2014) revealed that students who are able to identify with their residence hall community, interact with peers in this community, and find solidarity within the community experience an increased…

This article focuses on the cross-national relevance of theories of college student departure formulated by U.S. scholars. Some aspects of U.S. developed theories of college student departure hold some semblance of cross-national relevance. Economic and sociological perspectives provide such aspects. The weighing of costs and benefits inherent in…

This study explores the relationship between such student classroom incivilities as disrespectful disruptions and insolent inattention and student's sense of their likelihood of finding a group of students with which they share in common goals, values and beliefs. A negative relationship between these two forms of classroom incivilities and…

The Strategic Retention Initiative is an administrative practice which involves calling all first-year students. The initiative is guided by an institutional commitment to the well-being of students and represents an institutional investment in student persistence. The development and implementation of the Strategic Retention Initiative was…

Compared an outcomes-based typology of institutions derived from a cluster analysis with the Carnegie Classification of Institutions. The sample consisted of 38 colleges and universities included in Cooperative Institutional Research Program surveys that had minimum of 25 students who completed both 1971 and 1980 surveys. Found little or no…

In spite of substantial investment in retention in Indiana higher education, there have been only a few well-designed studies that evaluate the effects of these interventions.

Examined how the fulfillment of college expectations affects students' social integration. Path analysis showed that the fulfillment of social expectations for college positively affects both social integration and subsequent institutional commitment; the greater the degree of these, the more likely students will re-enroll in the university. (EV)

Study elaborates on Tinto's (1975) theory of student departure by focusing on the concept of social integration. Examining freshmen at a Research I institution using three quantitative instruments, study finds that how students deal with stress impacts their level of social integration, institutional commitment, and intent to reenroll. (Contains…

Describes college students' role in the detection of teaching misconduct, providing results from a study suggesting that the role undergraduate students can play in detecting teaching wrongdoing is tenuous at best and asserting that the graduate school socialization process, institutional codes of conduct, and faculty peer sanctions must assume…