Retention: It Takes a College

Tad Graham-Handley
President
The Art Institute of New York City

The majority of colleges and universities in America do not have the luxury of being particularly selective. By definition, then, the majority of institutions admit students who are not ideally prepared to succeed in higher education. Many of these students struggle to find their footing, and quite a few fail.

Any college?s retention rate can be predicted fairly accurately given the demographic characteristics of the student body. I and many others have found that four factors are strongly predictive of lower persistence: Low socio-economic status of students? families; poor quality, on average, of high schools attended; a high percentage of minority students; and a high percentage of students who are the first in their families to attend college.

There are strong ethical, social and financial reasons to help students persist. The above notwithstanding, some colleges have better retention rates than others with similar student demographics. I would venture to guess that nearly all colleges have retention plans in place. Why do some work better than others? The answer lies in the culture of the individual colleges.

A Re-Purposed Parable
Perhaps you have heard the following parable: There was a village by a river. One day a villager was looking at the water and he saw a body floating by. He grabbed a nearby stick and fished the body out. ?I don?t know whose body this is, but we ought to bury it,? he told his fellow villagers. So they gave it a respectful burial.

The next day, another body floated by and the villagers fished that one out, too. It turned out the person was still breathing. The villagers bandaged him, fed him, and got him back on his feet. They felt good when the person got well.

In the next few weeks, more bodies floated by. Some of them slipped silently past in the night and the villagers never saw them. Others they spotted and fished out. More than a few they were able to restore to good health. They began to specialize. Some villagers were good at transporting the bodies, others fed them, others treated medical issues, etc. They became increasingly skilled and efficient at dealing with all the bodies, conducting triage, burying the dead ones and saving as many of the live ones as they could. They felt good about the ones they saved.

One day, a particular villager got frustrated by the inexorable flow of bodies. She decided to walk upstream to find out how they were getting in the water in the first place. Her goal was to solve the problem at the source.

Traditionally this story is told to illustrate the difference be-tween charity and social change: The work of the villagers represents the former; the villager walking upstream the latter. There is need in the world for both.

We can regard at-risk students in a similar way. Those who are already in trouble need help immediately. Think of them as if they are already floating down the river. Some are in financial straits, others are overwhelmed academically, some have relationship problems, some have gotten sick, perhaps a few have gotten themselves in conduct trouble, etc. Saving them is definitely worth doing, and we should keep doing it. We need to assign specific ?villagers? to help these students, people skilled and efficient at addressing these issues.

Let?s not forget that quite a few of our students are ?floating by in the night.? They withdraw without ever talking to any-body at the college. We need to get more skillful at spotting them before they drift away from us permanently.

We should also create conditions ?upstream? conducive to keeping students safe, warm and dry in the first place.

Creating Conditions to Help Students Stay in School
The primary opportunity to keep students in school is not financial, it is social. The most powerful motivator for students to persist is a web of positive connections with people in the college community, including other students, faculty and staff.

The reason these efforts work is that they help students to feel like it is not just a school, it is their school. To drop out is to disappoint people they know, who care about them. With-drawing is tantamount to stepping out of the circle, away from the warmth and light of the fire. Therefore it is critical to create conditions whereby students will make such connections early and often.

First let?s talk about positive early interactions with faculty and staff, which strongly correlate with improved persistence. (Incidentally, the opposite is also true? negative interactions are a big risk factor.) Here are some things that we have control over:

Instructors can have discussions with students outside of class. Virtually all such conversations are effective if they take place in a non-evaluative way. Examples include off-the-cuff conversations after class, drop-in meetings during office hours, or even talking informally in line in a coffee shop. Any time we show personal interest in a student?s story, in his or her life, it flips a switch. We can all re-member a teacher who did that for us. It feels wonderful when a teacher takes an interest in us personally. Wherever possible, even in general education courses ? especially in general education courses — faculty should encourage active, project-based learning. This is most important early in the program. It is conducive to student engagement. We can and should practice better pedagogy than the so-called chalk-and-talk method.

Faculty should personally call students who are absent, and let them know that it mattered that they were not in class. This is an extremely effective retention tool. Calling is better than e-mailing because it creates an opportunity to connect on a human level.
Teachers should identify students who are at risk of failing in the class and reach out to them ?off-line? to see what help they might need. Faculty should practice compelling disengaged students to engage in a lesson, overcoming their resistance and rewarding them for doing so by respecting their contribution.

Wherever possible, instructors should design their courses to help students achieve incremental success. Acknowledging even small victories with genuine, heartfelt pleasure is another key technique for improving persistence among at-risk students.

The following elements help students come out of their shells and bond with their peers:

A longer more comprehensive orientation ? This helps by providing students with realistic, accurate expectations about the program, but it also gives them additional opportunities to make friends. Social networking has enabled students to bond with one another very efficiently. Encouraging students to share their various on-line sites with one another is desirable.

Housing ? Students who live in dorms persist better. It makes sense: Commuters don?t have the same number of opportunities to connect.

Project-based Freshman Year Experience classes ? When properly designed, FYE classes are centered around active learning and subjects that students are psyched about, like dogs, or tattoos, or music, or helping others. Getting students to feel good about something together is a very powerful retention technique.

Clubs and Organizations ? Students who have a passionate interest about something often blossom in groups where others have the same interest. Research shows that this is especially true for minority students.

Peer tutoring ? Not only does peer tutoring aid in the retention of those tutored, it also helps the tutors themselves to feel like they are an important part of the community. In other words, it improves the retention of tutors as well.

It is also critical that our staff and administrators treat students respectfully and professionally. Some students need a lot of help. That is our job, the very reason we are employed. Smiling at students and taking a genuine interest in finding solutions to their challenges helps them to feel like they belong here.

Saving Students Already in Trouble
Our job is not an easy one. We enroll students who face a bewildering array of challenges. Furthermore, we cannot count on students to come to us with their problems, and we cannot rely on them to always tell us the truth when they do. It is embarrassing and stressful to reveal personal struggles to authority figures. This is yet another reason to make certain that every student has personal connections in the college community, go-to people with whom they feel safe.

What are the primary reasons why students withdraw? At my institution we analyzed the data, interviewed students and read a large number of studies about student retention. When you strip away the jargon and eliminate the one-offs, here are the three most common reasons for our students to drop:

Social and Family Problems ? To keep up in our programs, students must work steadily, and not just in the classroom. Meanwhile, their friends often invite them to parties they have to turn down. Their families expect them to pull their weight with child care, house-work and even family income. Their romantic relation-ships become frayed, and sometimes they are even given ultimatums by their BFs/GFs/families that are not in their best interest academically. It is a lot to expect from a young person to stay focused on school in the face of relentless social pressures. They need to be re-minded of why they came to us in the first place to keep their eyes on the prize.

Financial Issues ? Our students are initially packaged for tuition and fees for the first academic year, but sometimes they are unable to package for subsequent years. Perhaps a parent has lost a job or family finances have deteriorated. Maybe a sibling has started college. Also, many students are unprepared for the inevitable weekly expenses of transit, meals and supplies for their projects. Their families face financial struggles already, and students are reluctant to add to that burden. In the absence of proactive intervention by financial aid administrators they remain unaware of any potential solution. They withdraw to end the pain and frustration of not having enough money.

Academic Struggles ? Students do not initially understand how intensive college-level work is, nor do they know how important attendance is. Perhaps they were able to get through high school without being in class a whole lot. Although we tell them in the admissions interview and during orientation what is important, it doesn?t have meaning to them until they experience it firsthand. Once their program starts, they get a little behind, then a little more behind, and before you know it the first term is over and they have failed one or more classes. They do not know how to get back on track. They are embarrassed. They feel like they have failed, and that is an unpleasant feeling they want to end as soon as possible. It is critical that an advisor talk them through what happened and what needs to be done about it. They need to know that this is not uncommon and certainly not fatal.

To improve retention, we need to become aware of students who are in trouble sooner, and establish protocols for what happens after we have found them. We have to fish them out of the river one at a time. The primary indicator that a student is in trouble is attendance. Our best opportunity to save these students is to call them every time they are absent. The most effective caller is the instructor. Next most effective are academic chairs, academic advisors and deans. The mes-sage must be that the student was missed, that it is important to come to class and that we care.

We can do these things, but we must be united in our resolve. Each of us can make a small difference, but all of us together can accomplish near-miracles. When we do, more students earn a degree, many of whom have never before achieved such a significant, tangible goal. When more students cross the stage at commencement, the eyes of more parents glisten. I love that.

There is little enough we can do for one another. Should we not do this?