High attrition rates have been a defining characteristic of doctoral education for decades, representing a loss of time, talent, and effort for departing students and their faculty. This qualitative study uses a biomedical science doctoral student sample to collect "real time" data on attrition within the first 2 years of doctoral…

Online courses are often criticized for having lower retention rates than traditional courses, especially introductory courses. This study aimed to determine whether there was a relationship between online and traditional instructor personality traits and course completion rate for introductory course instructors at a higher education institution…

This study concerns students in an internationally accredited undergraduate mechanical engineering program who due to consistent poor grades are academically dismissed and, by existing policy, required to take a 1-year leave of absence. The purpose was to determine whether the policy could be improved to offer more proactive solutions to address…

The course withdrawal decision includes both monetary and time costs for the student. Institutional costs include the misallocation of scarce seats to noncompleting students. Understanding the course withdrawal decision process can aid advisors and administrators as they seek ways to improve retention and progression. This study uses 21,318 course…

Performance during the first year of college and in introductory courses has been widely identified as critical to college students' retention and success. Accordingly, interventions to assist beginning college students in gateway courses have gained increased attention in higher education. This study tested such an intervention using learning…

The present study explored the long-term impact of admission policies at two aspiring research institutions in Texas. Six years of longitudinal institutional data were analyzed for all full-time first time in college undergraduate students at both universities. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to identify relationships and…

Conducting research and engaging in discussions with administrators and legislators can be important contributions toward alleviating the trend toward lower graduation rates among college students. This study used archival data obtained from the university registrar to examine how engagement in a credit-bearing undergraduate career course related…

Grateful people experience more psychological well-being, social connectedness, and feelings of personal accomplishment, along with less burnout. They also use more adaptive approach-oriented coping strategies. Thus, we hypothesized that trait gratitude and grateful coping strategies would be associated with various indicators/predictors of…

Many factors can influence a student's decision to withdraw from college. Intervention programs aimed at retention can benefit from understanding the factors related to such decisions, especially in underrepresented groups. The Institutional Integration Scale (IIS) has been suggested as a predictor of student persistence. Accurate prediction of…

Results from the analyses of data from 463 former college students between the ages of 25 and 34 years old identify those most likely to reenroll in higher education in the near future. Those who intend to reenroll are more likely to be members of minority groups, younger, single, and recently laid-off, have earned more credits, and hold strong…

A study was conducted to assess the impact of a career-planning course in terms of time taken to graduate, graduation rate, credit hours taken, number of course withdrawals, and cumulative GPAs. Student course participants (N = 544) were compared to a matched sample of non-course participants (N = 544) after 5 years. Results showed that the 2…

Discusses the focus of this special issue on college student retention and describes the issue's articles, which advance recommendations for institutional action that emanate from theory and research rooted in several different theoretical orientations: organizational, sociological, and psychological. (EV)

The withdrawal policies of many universities are based on the supposition that being able to withdraw without grade point repercussions will encourage students to return to the institution at a later date. This study focused on withdrawing students and examined the differences between those who re-enroll after a withdrawal and those who do not.…

Drawing on Tinto's (1987, 1993) theory of student integration, this research examines students who withdrew from their original institution prior to graduation. Of this group, some of the students who withdraw do so to transfer to another institution, and it is reasonable to assume that these students are different in many ways from students who…

Discusses institutional practices that spring from empirically grounded forces that influence students' social integration and retention. Presents 20 recommendations for implementation in 8 domains of institutional practice: academic advising, administrative policies and practices, enrollment management, faculty development, faculty reward system,…