Student departure from postsecondary institutions has been one of the central topics of concern discussed widely by policymakers, institutional personnel, and educational researchers at various levels. However, many existing studies have failed to address issues related to the timing of student departure from college. This article discusses the…

A study was conducted at a medium-sized California community college to identify the characteristics of students who had previously dropped out of college and then returned to the community college and the influences on their decision to re-enroll for college credit. Surveys were mailed to 396 stopouts, asking them to rate the significance of…

A study was conducted at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) to examine student enrollment and retention patterns; quarter-to-quarter retention; retention rates by full-time/part-time status, sex, race, and age; cumulative graduation rates; and the relationship between first-quarter academic performance and subsequent quarter enrollment.…

With the dwindling of the traditional college applicant pool, retention has become one of higher educational institutions' top priorities. This study addresses the effectiveness of Western Psychological Services'"Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire" (SACQ) for providing early evidence of poor adjustment and potential attrition…

Retention research in the four-year college setting has traditionally assumed that students intend to achieve a degree, and that when a student leaves school, either the college or the student has failed. In an effort to demonstrate that such assumptions do not apply when examining retention among two-year college students, Brookdale Community…

Graduation rates are often used indicators of the performance of institutions of higher education. How institutions are represented can be profoundly affected by different approaches used to develop the data for the rates. The impact of variations in how these rates are constructed is illustrated by the example of the City University of New York…

This study relates the personal characteristics, high school experiences, and college experiences of students pursuing a baccalaureate degree to the type of institution they attended and their ethnicity. Multivariate analysis was performed on data drawn from the High School and Beyond database. Summary conclusions include the following: (1)…