The American Council on Education released a report today highlighting why students stop out of college. The reasons can be distilled to the following:
- They are overwhelmed by external issues, including family, work, and medical issues.
- They weren’t doing as well academically as they expected.
- They could no longer afford it.
- They didn’t fit in or belong.
- They wanted to get a job.
This post will identify two simple methods for identifying stop outs at ISU. And ideas for translating evidence into action.
- Ask students about their intentions
The most simple and efficient method for identifying stop outs is to ask students if they intend to return to college. If they say no or not sure, I would believe them.
2. Create stop out profiles
Returning Student Profile
- Returners feel like they belong at ISU.
- Returners are engaged in interactions with others. These interactions are frequent and positive.
- Returners collaborate with other students in the classroom and in academic work outside of the classroom.
- Returning students are more certain about their decision to attend ISU and college in general.
Non-returning Student Profile
- Non-returning students feel less belonging at ISU.
- Non-returning students have less interactions with other students.
- Non-returning students exert effort and work hard. They put in as much time and effort into academic activities as returning students, including reading and writing. They stop out of ISU because they run out of time.
- Non-returning students are less certain about their place at ISU and in college in general.
Translating results into action
I would avoid two things:
You won’t improve retention and student success through strategic planning.
Strategic planning is about articulating what you value and what your priorities are. But it’s not a useful framework for action. The problem is planning is future-oriented. One can’t evaluate the impact of a policy or intervention with assessing it. Unless there is a guiding model – effectiveness, capacity, etc. – evaluation is almost never a part of strategic planning. This is a big mistake. Improving retention requires intentional interventions designed around evaluation, not aligning already existing data around a plan. Alignment only confirms what you already know.
My favorite resources are Improving Student Learning at Scale (a great resource at the program level), Improving College Student Retention, How College Students Succeed, and The Impact of a Sense of Belonging in College. Anyone serious about student success interventions should read these books.
Forget about data literacy. Create habits of mind and trust in data among staff.
Forget about data literacy. No amount of literacy can compete with the overwhelming amount of data staff are asked to process. The amount of data we have far exceeds our capacity to use it. If literacy mattered in decision-making, why do so many leaders with PhDs struggle applying data?
If you focus on data literacy, you’ll get decisions by compromise. And will get nowhere. If you create habits of mind among staff to be evidence-based practitioners and build trust in the accuracy of the institutional data they are using, you’ll get decision-making by informed judgment. That’s where quality improvement happens.
With trust and habits of mind, staff can do all kinds of everyday things that have a big impact on retention, such as:
- Having a clear answer to the question “when am I ever going to use this?” helps students be more confident and certain about their place in college.
- Tell students that low grades aren’t always a bad thing. A 2.2 GPA is not an indicator of belonging in college. There’s little to no association between grades and life outcomes.
- Teach students how to collaborate and interact with others. Frequent and positive interactions are highly associated with student success.
