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Commentary
About Student Success by Don Hossler Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without the release of a new policy report, article or essay critiquing widely used measures of postsecondary student success — persistence and graduation rates, most typically. What students learn in college and how they perform in their careers after graduation would be ideal measures of student success, but the costs and complexities of developing these measures consistently return us to more indirect, yet still defensible, measures of success like persistence and graduation rates. A key concern for institutional and public policymakers for more than 30 years, student persistence has been one of the most intensively studied topics in higher education. Surprisingly, however, college completion rates have remained fairly constant during that time and public policymakers are increasingly asking for improved measures of student success. As institutions experience tightening fiscal constraints and growing pressure to demonstrate effectiveness, along with the ever-present imperative to cultivate institutional prestige, the discussion among institutional and public policymakers about student persistence is becoming more urgent. Meanwhile, attrition’s human toll is rising. Students who do not persist — who leave college without achieving their goals, particularly for reasons an institution can influence — are cheated of the opportunity to learn in college and to reap the benefits of a college degree. In both the two-year and the four-year postsecondary sectors, student persistence is now a critical concern. Despite
all the attention
given to student
persistence over
the past 30 years,
we know very
little about the
extent to which
institutions match
their rhetorical
dedication to
student success
with a commitment
to campus resources,
policies and
practices designed
to increase student
persistence. Most
of my work in
recent years has
focused on how
institutions
organize themselves
to increase student
persistence and
graduation. In
a series of case
studies conducted
at four-year
institutions funded
by the Lumina
Foundation for
Education, my
colleagues and
I at the Project
on Academic Success
at Indiana University
School of Education
have found that
most campus-based
programmatic
efforts to increase
student persistence
are poorly planned,
inadequately
staffed, underfunded
and — unsurprisingly — ineffective.
Similarly, other
studies have
found that many
community college
students either
never enroll in
or do not complete
remedial education
courses and — again,
Institutions that fail to provide or support interventions designed to increase persistence — for example, not ensuring that remedial students take needed remedial courses — demonstrate gaps in institutional commitment. In contrast, institutions that have long histories of developing organizational systems ensure that their students follow important campus policies and regulations. Using such an approach, a community college could implement a student tracking system requiring enrolled students to take remedial courses before taking other courses, for example. Similarly, many two-year and four-year colleges and universities have long histories of their extensive efforts in developing successful academic and nonacademic programs that are supported by the institution’s focus and resources. A college could apply such an approach, for example, in organizing the institution’s focus and resources in developing a well-funded and administratively supported first-year advising program. The work of the Project on Academic Success with the College Board is the first large-scale effort to unpack the institutional role in student persistence and graduation. The results of this effort, reported in “How Colleges Organize Themselves to Increase Student Persistence: Four-Year Institutions” (available at www.collegeboard.com/retention suggest that many institutions devote relatively meager amounts of institutional time and resources to improving student persistence. This report also describes the many campus policies and practices that institutions are using (or not using) in their efforts to decrease student withdrawal, providing a rich set of considerations and implications for campus policymakers. What would happen to rates of persistence and graduation if colleges and universities gave as much systematic attention to them as to recruiting or fundraising? Policymakers are right to be asking administrators of postsecondary institutions for more accountability in these important dimensions of student success. High school teachers, counselors and other providers of postsecondary guidance also should focus more attention on these indicators. High school students and their parents often need the assistance of high school staff to sort through the important issues to consider when deciding to which colleges or universities they should apply. Looking at persistence and graduation rates should be a factor in choosing a college. Tuition costs, although undeniably high, can be overemphasized. Especially in these turbulent economic times, we should focus on enhancing what matters most — student success — which means getting serious about student persistence.
Don
Hossler is executive
associate dean
and professor
of educational
leadership and
policy studies
at the School
of Education,
Indiana University.
He is also a member
of the    
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