RETENTION OF STUDENTS FROM THE FIRST TO SECOND YEAR OF COLLEGE

Retention of Students from the First To Second Year of College



Retention of Students from the First To Second Year of College

Literature Review

Based on Tinto's (1993) theory of student departure and Astin's (1996) Inputs- Environments-Outputs model, this literature review presents the findings of a single-institution study into the effect participating in a living-learning community (LLC), Freshmen Interest Group (FIG) and First Year Experience course (FYE course) had on the academic performance and retention of first-year students. An increasingly vitriolic barrage of reports published over the last 20 years have all made the same basic point; the quality of undergraduate education in this country is unacceptably low.

A 1984 report declared that the USA was being underserved by higher education and called for “demonstrable improvements in student knowledge, capacities, skills, and attitudes between entrance and graduation” (Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education, 1984, 15). This theme is repeated ever more stridently in documents such as: College, The Student Learning Imperative, Returning to Our Roots: The Student Experience , Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities, Greater Expectations , and the recent documentary Declining by Degrees . One of the more frequently cited reports, An American Imperative, states that the American people need their colleges and universities to dramatically improve in terms of access, retention, graduation, and the quality of education leading to a baccalaureate degree. The most recent installment in this seemingly endless stream of reports is entitled A Test of leadership: Charting the future of U.S. higher education commissioned by Margaret Spellings. and the authors decried the “lack of clear, reliable information about the cost and quality for information” (p.xii) regarding student learning and institutional quality.

The report recommended that improvements were required in six areas: access, cost and affordability, financial aid, learning, transparency and accountability, and innovation. One of the fundamental conclusions one can draw from this reports is that unless dramatic changes are made in the way U.S. higher education is structured, delivered and assessed, it can be expected that the economic standing of the U.S. in the world and the quality of life in this country will erode. One area of higher education that has proven problematic, even though it has received a great deal of attention, is the retention of first-year college students.

The dropout rate of first-year students ...