ACUHO-I News Blog

Today’s Doonesbury strip mentions retention issues among college students: family, work, children…and the circus?

Colleges and Universities employ a myriad of programs aimed at retention; many, not all of these, are in the student affairs area; plenty of those are in housing. Living-learning communities, mentoring, tutoring, freshman introductory programs, second-year experience programs, et cetera, are all aimed at getting students to graduation and improving their experience along the way. The success of these programs is often measured on retention and graduation rates. But that’s not the only way to measure success; there’s also the more business-like (or callous?) way: do the students who stay (and continue paying tuition and fees) make up for the monies spent on the programs? For the most part, they do, says a report, Investing in Student Success, sponsored by Jobs for the Future and the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability. Thirteen institutions allowed their retention programs to be evaluated using a costs-to-returns calculator. While the return of a programs could not be accurately calculated because of a lack of necessary data, most did very well, their returns outstripping the costs considerably.

Last week, Public Agenda and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released a study, With Their Whole Lives Ahead of Them, on why students drop out of college. The report, the first of a series of three, says their study found that students leave college for financial reasons, to work to support themselves or their families. Many survey respondents said they couldn’t afford to return to college even if their tuition and books were paid. The report also noted that the students may have not chosen the best college for them, as students who are financially independent have fewer resources to make these decisions, and that most don’t realize the impact dropping out will have on their lives.

These are interesting results, but commenters at Inside HigherEd had a different take when a brief article about the study was posted last week: While there are some students who definitely have financial need, some seem unable to discern between needs (food) and wants (dinners out).

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, some commenters also brought up the needs/wants argument; some wondered if some of these “dropouts” later return and finish their degree (the study was silent on this) and others said they saw these problems at their institutions.

What’s your take?