In a culture that is highly focused on student retention, higher education faculty, staff, and administrators have turned their eyes to a demographic of students that have historically demonstrated a high rate of attrition -- nontraditional students. Little research related to these students, however, has looked at persistence and even less has…

Nontraditional students are flooding online programs; however, their attrition rates for program completion are higher than for traditional students. Previously, Ellis (2019) found the opposite is true for single courses; nontraditionals demonstrated greater persistence than traditional students in course activities, creating a conundrum. This…

Problem: Undergraduate and graduate students frequently experience psychological distress that often results in impairment and psychopathology, and effective interventions are thus needed. This work represents a replication of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to reduce psychological distress; secondary objectives include: evaluating…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the causes and potential solutions to, student attrition. With student attrition rates reaching between 30 and 50 per cent in the United States, and over 20 per cent in Australia, the inability of higher education institutions to retain their students is a significant issue. This paper cites key risk factors…

The purpose of this quantitative research study is to identify variables that lead students to having thoughts of leaving their institution, talking with someone about leaving their institution, or taking steps to leave their institution. This attrition study identifies variables that institutional faculty, administrators, and staff can address…

At Western Michigan University, the Graduate Center for Research, Writing, and Proposal Development sustains both doctoral students and graduate advising faculty through the doctoral dissertation process and represents one best practices approach that promotes persistence in graduate education--an especially important benefit, given the national…

Limited evidence exists concerning the health of young adults, most likely attributable to the fact that young adults perceive themselves to be insusceptible to infirmity. This lack of information extends into higher education sectors, places that have venues for dispensing health information/education to many young adults. What is important to…

The phenomenon of student attrition is an increasingly challenging problem confronting American higher education. Unfortunately, there exists virtually no consensus on root causes; and disagreements continue over what intervention strategies might help to reduce the rates with which young collegians abandon their studies and leave campus. Data…

Used a current attrition study to show the usefulness of discriminative analysis and a cross validation technique applied to student nonpersister questionnaire respondents and nonrespondents. Results of the techniques allowed delineation of several areas of sample under-representation and established the instability of the regression weights…

Discusses the problem of dichotomous-dependent variables in regression analysis in student attrition studies. Proposes a new method as an alternative to regression analysis. (Author/RC)

This is a case history of the steps taken by a private institution of higher learning (10,000 students) in the east to cope with the problem of attrition. (Author)

Concerns a study of student attrition on the urban campus and how this attrition rate can be reduced. Attempts are made to identify the dropouts, why they are dropping out, and a description of a program for reducing dropouts. (Author)

The University of Akron, a major urban university, has experienced unusually high attrition rates for students enrolled in the two largest colleges. The university has attempted to meet this problem by committee recommendations and questionnaire/demographic data gathering and analysis, which has resulted in some success. (Author/RC)

Comparable groups of undergraduate students, withdrawers and persisters, were surveyed and compared in terms of their self-perceived parental expectations of academic success. Students who entered college directly from high school reported greater parental expectations of success than transfer students. Withdrawers reported less parental…

The present study, through the use of focus groups, identified the academic activities and support services perceived by engineering students as having a positive impact on their academic performance. The results suggest three primary factors: (a) individual effort and involvement, (b) peer interaction, and (c) faculty contact. Differences in…