University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Increasing student retention through benchmarking and organizational improvement

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Increasing student retention through benchmarking and organizational improvement

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Content INCREASING STUDENT RETENTION THROUGH BENCHMARKING
AND ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVEMENT
by
Sarah Curtis
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2005
Copyright 2005 Sarah Curtis
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UMI Number: 3180491
Copyright 2005 by
Curtis, Sarah
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank my family for forcing me to get this finished. My husband
tirelessly reminded me that I needed to complete what I had started, and that I
could, in fact, do it. He also gave me time when I needed it and made sure the
girls were well taken care of. My in-laws and parents stepped in whenever I
needed them to and took care of our daughters so that I could work on my study.
Without the constant support and encouragement from all my family and friends,
this would not be complete.
Dr. Dennis Hocevar, my committee chair, truly believed in me and had
more confidence in me than I did of myself, and for that I can never fully express
my gratitude. He was there for me any time I needed him and calmly kept me on
track.
I also must thank the two committee members, Dr. Glen Thomas and Dr.
Carl Cohn, who traveled to Sacramento to witness my defense, and of course
approve my dissertation.
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iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................. ii
LIST OF TABLES................................................................................................ iv
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................v
Chapter
1. PROBLEM DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION................................... 1
Problem Analysis.......................................................................................9
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE...................................................................17
What the Institution Can D o ...................................................................39
How the Services Will Help Retention..................................................40
3. ACTION PL A N ........................................................................................ 46
The Study.................................................................................................46
Specific Methodology of Action Research........................................... 57
Organizational Barriers...........................................................................60
4. RESULTS..................................................................................................67
Benchmarking Analysis..........................................................................73
5. SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS 78
Summary..................................................................................................78
Discussion.......................................................... 84
Recommendations................................................................................... 88
J
SELECTED REFERENCES............................................................................... 92
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iv
LIST OF TABLES
1. Student/Faculty Population............................................................................ 2
2. Overall No-Show Rate....................................................................................7
3. Undergraduates ..........................................................................................7
4. Graduates..........................................................................................................7
5. Undergraduate Persistence as Percentage of Total Admissions................. 8
6. Graduate Persistence as Percentage of Total Admissions............................8
7. Factors Used and Weights Assigned.......................................................... 68
8. Descriptive Statistics.................................................................... 70
9. Graduation Predictors................................................................................... 71
10. Freshmen Retention Rate by USNWR Tier................................................74
11. Graduation Rate by USNWR Tier............................................................. 74
12. Analysis of Variance for Freshmen Retention............................................75
13. Analysis of Variance for Graduation Rate........................................... 75
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V
ABSTRACT
Student attrition has been a problem since students first started attending
school; any group of students is going to suffer a reduction in its numbers.
Research over the past 30 years shows that students drop out of school or college
for a variety of reasons, and the average college attrition rate is 30%, but colleges
and universities are always working to discover new ways to hold onto their
students.
The study performed here looked at one private university with many
campuses and mostly adult learners. Possible solutions are offered to address
some of its attrition problems. This is done through a combination of action
research and benchmarking, largely based on the West section of the U.S. News
and World Report (2004) “America’s Best Colleges” 2005 edition, which ranked
124 Master’s universities and divided them into four tiers. The university studied
had, for the past five years, fallen into the fourth tier, but this year it fell below
and did not even make the rankings. The data show that this university
consistently had low peer assessment scores and low graduation/retention rates,
possibly due to its lack of selectivity in admitting students.
The study offered solutions and recommendations to bring the school back
into the fourth tier in the immediate future and to higher tiers in the distant future.
This included performing a formal benchmarking study where The University
would choose and analyze one or several schools that had lower attrition rates.
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This should be a college that shared some similarities such as the monthly format
and a school with many campuses. The University would need to open up and
share ideas with other like-colleges in order to discover what some of the other
universities were doing correctly. This would then need to be followed by
adaptation of ideas that were found to be working in other colleges.
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CHAPTER 1
PROBLEM DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION
For confidentiality purposes, we shall call the university where the
research was conducted The University. It was founded in 1971 and
headquartered in San Diego, California. It had 26 campuses serving 16,850 full
time equivalent students, all adult learners. It was the second-largest private,
nonprofit university in California, offering a one-course-per-month format with
over 55 undergraduate and graduate degrees and 16 teacher credential and
certificate programs. Disciplines included fields in business, technology, criminal
justice, computers, education, human services, nursing, counseling, arts and
sciences, and math.
The University had more than 109,000 alumni, which is an average of
approximately 3,300 students per year. While this may be impressive, the college
also had thousands of students who had never completed a program at the college,
and that is where the problem was. Many students were signing up to take classes
and never showing up (no shows), and many were dropping out before
completing a degree or certificate (students who did not persist).
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Table 1
Student/Faculty Population
The University Enrollment Statistic
Full-time 16,850
Undergraduate full time 24%
Graduate
Full-time 76%
Minority 35%
International 2%
Average Age 33
Faculty
Full-time 170
Full time with Doctorates 94%
Associate 30
Core Adjunct 600
It is difficult to believe that no one had ever studied student retention, or
the lack thereof, at The University, or any comparable university, but that seemed
to be the case, and the school was suffering because nothing had been done to
remedy the problem. The University was a private company, so the bottom line
was dollars, and when students were leaving the university before finishing what
they set out to do, the school lost revenue, classes got cancelled, students got
disenfranchised, and ultimately, people lost their jobs. Although attrition had
been a problem for many years, a commission on student retention had only
recently formed to look at the problem, identify why students were leaving, and
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try to find solutions so that students were retained. Once the problems were
properly identified, The University could take steps to assure they were
permanently resolved.
Students drop out of universities for a variety of reasons, many of which
are beyond the control of the school, but when they are dropping out at a dramatic
rate and either never returning or transferring to another school, there is much to
be considered and done. The first issue is that of students not obtaining a college
degree, which ultimately impacts society because of a high rate of unqualified
professionals. Second, students are leaving with unpaid student loans and
possibly not the income to pay them. Third, the reasons students leave must be
identified and prevented whenever possible.
Since The University ran on a one-month course format with courses
starting every month, students could begin at any time of the year. This is why
the school was attractive to working adults, but it came at a price. Tuition ranged
from $950 to $1,070 per class. Many students could complete their course in two
years, so they were spending approximately $24,000 on tuition alone. The full
time equivalent enrollment was 16,850, so if only 10% of those students stopped
coming during any year, the school lost over one million dollars for every month
of classes. The retention numbers were a little unclear, due to not always
knowing why students were leaving, but we knew that well over 25% of the
population was leaving every year, which translated into millions of dollars lost
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and many disenfranchised students. The University had a goal to boost retention
by at least 10%, but the immediate, year-long goal was a 5% boost. This would
not result in regaining all of the lost revenue, but it was a start.
According to the research done at The University, students left the
university for a number of reasons—mainly financial, personal, and university-
related. The Student Retention Commission had been trying to decide exactly
where the biggest problems lay so that it could invent possible solutions, but this
was made more difficult by the fact that the data seemed to conflict on whether
more students left for personal/financial reasons or because of something the
university did to make them leave. The commission also did not have any way to
find out exactly why students left, and ultimately it may not matter exactly how
many students left for which reasons; it had been identified that the problems
were related to finance, advising, faculty, and academic programming. Although
these were rather broad, since they were the root of most of the problems, they
were the issues that needed to be closely scrutinized.
In May 2003, the Office of Student Affairs conducted a survey of 6,000
students who had discontinued course work at The University during Fiscal Year
2000. Unfortunately only 248 students, or 4%, responded. The profile of
respondents generally mirrored the demographics of the student population, with
slight overrepresentation by students in the School of Education, but 4% is
statistically insignificant, so there needed to be more data collected on why
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students were dropping out. The problem was that there was no way to get former
students to respond to a survey, and it was probably true that mainly disgruntled
ones would reply. This could have led to skewed numbers because 29% of
students responding said they left because of The University. It is still unclear
why the other 71% left.
Forty percent of students who responded cited multiple reasons for
discontinuance, and 63% indicated that they would not return to The University.
Students responded with the following reasons: Difficulties with The University,
29%; Financial, 26%; Other, 17%; Work Conflict, 11%; Family Issues, 10%;
Discontinued Reimbursement, 3%; Military Deployment, 3%; and TAW A
Benefits, 1%. I believe the “other” had been left too open and needed to be
defined more closely. Things beyond the students’ control, such as military
deployment, made up 18%. If “family issues” was added to this, it was 28%.
Benefits could also be added to financial, and financial may be out of the student
control also, so this brought the no-control issues to 46%. The problem was that
it was not clear if financial included problems with financial aid at the school or
simply that students could not afford the tuition. Financial was the leading
problem at 30%, but it was unclear who was responsible for this. Twenty-nine
percent of students cited problems at the university as their reason for departure,
and this was significant. Eight percent of the respondents complained about the
quality of instructors, and 12% cited problems with the staff.
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Part of the problem with the initial data was that only a small number of
students was even considered in the numbers when the statistics were being
gathered; these were the ones who were signed up to complete a program; they
were either degree- or certificate-driven. When a student signed up to take one
class because of work or personal reasons, for instance, he was not counted in the
pool. The students who were examined were the ones who were considered to be
persisting.
The term persistence was used to describe undergraduate students who
took four or more courses and graduate students who took three or more courses
in their first 12 months at The University. After that, they are persisting if they
took one course in the next 12 months. According to one study, undergraduate
persistence runs at about 80% and graduate persistence runs at 65%. This may
sound impressive, but there is a problem because that data is counting only those
students who fit the definition of persisting. These data eliminate those students
who paid their enrollment fee but never completed a course at The University—
labeled no-shows. Also eliminated are students who signed up to take a particular
course and then dropped that course either before or after it started. Even if the
student took a different course at the original time, the student was recorded as a
drop.
Tables 2 through 4 show some of the data on these students.
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Table 2
Overall No-Show Rate
Student Data 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Total Admissions 13,963 15,425 15,220 14,963 15,258
No-show count 1,767 2,460 2,351 2,354 2,349
No-show rate 13% 16% 15% 16% 15%
Table 3
Undergraduates
Student Data 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Total Admissions 3,716 4,663 4,369 3,800 3,470
No-show count 637 1,019 926 978 981
No-show rate 17% 22% 21% 26% 28%
Table 4
Graduates
Student Data 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Total Admissions 10,247 10,762 10,851 11,163 11,788
No-show count 1,130 1,140 1,425 1,376 1,368
No-show rate 11% 11% 13%- 12% 12%
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The comprehensive no-show rate ran at about 15%, while the
undergraduate rate hovered in the low- to mid-20s, and the post-baccalaureate in
the low tens. Tables 5 and 6 illustrate the persistence rate among undergraduate
and post-baccalaureate students on the basis of total admissions, including no-
shows, rather than on the yield pool.
Table 5
Undergraduate Persistence as Percentage o f Total Admissions
Student Data FY 1999 FY 2000 FY 2001 FY 2002 FY 2003
Total Admissions 3,716 4,663 4,369 3,800 3,470
Year 2 Persistence 1,809 2,151 1,842 1,466 1,200
Percent of Total 48.68% 46.13% 42.16% 38.57% 34.58%
Table 6
Graduate Persistence as Percentage o f Total Admissions
Student Data FY 1999 FY 2000 FY 2001 FY 2002 FY 2003
Total Admissions 10,247 10,762 10,851 11,163 11,788
Year 2 Persistence 4,500 4,764 4,729 4,764 4,096
Percent of Total 43.91% 44.25% 43.58% 42.60% 34.74%
This shows that approximately 35% to 44% of those admitted to the
university failed to persist. That was a huge problem, and it was an even bigger
one when added to the overall numbers of no-shows and drops.
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Much more data needed to be gathered to decide precisely where the
problem was, but there was no question that there was a problem. The
commission realized that no school can ever retain 100% of its students because
there are many factors beyond the school’s control, but The University had a goal
of boosting retention by 10% in 2004, which did not happen. What was done was
considered to be pilot programs, and in the future when the school moved beyond
these programs, the goal would be a 20% increase.
The problem of student retention had apparently not been studied at other
local comparable universities, and The University was unwilling to speak with
other universities for ideas, so it was difficult to benchmark this school against
others. What could be benchmarked was how long it should take the average
student to graduate from The University, and then a goal could be set by which
the progress of all other students could be measured. I planned to discover what
it was that was causing students to drop out, or not show up, at The University,
and with the help of the staff, increase student retention. This would, in turn,
increase revenue for the school.
Problem Analysis
It is a well-known and admitted problem that too many students at The
University were either not starting of not finishing a program, making student
retention an important issue to be researched and an important problem to be
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remedied. What was not clear was just why students left and what could be done
to remedy the problem. Many, but not all, problems could be addressed and
possibly resolved by the university, if the causes were known.
The Student Retention Committee spent an extensive amount of time on
this issue and came to conclusions, but deeper research needed to be done to
discover the exact causes and possible remedies and then to actually fix the
problem and increase retention. While the committee identified possible reasons
that students left and made recommendations about how to increase retention, no
in-depth analyses were conducted to discover the exact causes of the problem.
Clark and Estes (2002) refer to the organizational problems as performance gaps,
and it is these gaps that must be determined before a solution can be implemented.
The systematic (gap) analysis that I planned to perform started at the
surface of the problem and worked inward. First there was what we already
knew—why students (say they) drop out. Next I planned to determine what was
causing this to happen.
Following are some of the specifically identified problems in student
retention:
• Students get in the arrears and cannot continue due to their financial
balance owing.
• Students are allowed to take courses without the prerequisites, which
often leads to failure in one or more courses.
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• Many students say they cannot afford the $ 1,000 per month to take a
course. Student loans do not fix this problem, and financial aid is not
available or clearly defined and made accessible to all students.
• Students quit when they can’t get the courses they want, in the order
they want them.
• Many students report problems with their schedules such as being
scheduled into wrong classes or their schedules getting erased or lost.
• Students are often forced to take courses in an illogical sequence. For
example, they will take an upper division literature course before they
have had the basic writing course.
• Students often can’t complete their program of study in a timely
manner because courses get rearranged and cancelled at the last minute
• Admissions advisers are rewarded for admitting students but not for
keeping them at the school, so their focus is on the admissions only.
• As with any school, each instructor teaches the course differently, and
students do not get a consistent level of academia or two students in
the same course with different instructors will not have the same
learning objectives covered. If an instructor fails to heed the syllabus
or course outline, students move on unprepared for the next course.
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• Students are permitted to miss 2/10 class sessions. This usually results
in a lower grade, which ultimately results in angry students and
dropout.
The above list is what identifies the direct causes of student loss, but there
were problems below the surface and internal to the organization that were
causing these outlying issues, and they first needed to be identified so that the
gaps could be determined.
Clark and Estes (2002) have identified what they call “Performance
Gaps”—the gaps between where the organization wants to be and where it
actually is (p. 22). The three biggest causes of performance gaps are due to a lack
in employees’ knowledge and skills or motivation, and organizational barriers.
Before any remedies can occur, a gap analysis must be performed and the gaps
must be identified. It is, of course, foreseeable that there may be gaps in all three
places.
In order for an organization to begin fixing the problem, performance
goals must be established. In this case, The University had a goal of increasing
retention by 10% in the first year. The goal was set by the organization, but in
order to reach that goal, it must be determined where the gaps were between that
goal and the current low retention. A gap analysis must be used to determine the
“human causes behind performance gaps” (Clark & Estes, 2002, p. 21) and just
where the gaps lie. It is also necessary for all involved stakeholders to have the
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same goals in order for this to work. All employees involved (which was close to
everyone at the school) had to know their performance goals and how to know if
and when they were being met. They needed to know the business goals, but in
order for them to want to make any changes, the business goals must translate into
a positive effect for the individuals. Just the fact that the larger company is going
to make more money does not directly or intrinsically motivate any employees
unless they can see how it will impact them and their jobs. There must be a
connection made between high-level organization tools and specific/team
individual work goals (Clark & Estes, 2002, p. 23).
If we solved the performance problem of student retention, or dropout, we
would also improve the business problem of the school losing money because
every student who was retained translated into $1,000 per month per student.
The first thing that had to happen was to determine where the gaps were
and their cause(s) of them. This would be done through gap analysis, wherein
people would be surveyed, work records would be examined, and work processes
would be observed. People’s perceptions about the barriers they faced in
attempting to close the gap and achieve their work goals needed to be collected.
Clark and Estes said “perceptions of reality control performance” (Clark & Estes,
2002, p. 42). Focus groups can be used for this, as well as interviews and survey
'/ methods. It would take some looking at reasons for leaving and talking with the
students first to find out why they were leaving.
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Once it was determined why they were leaving, we needed to determine
why that problem was happening in the organization. The students were the
customers; they were paying a fee for a service they expected to get, and if they
were not getting or did not like the service, they were going to leave. Being the
customers, they were also the ones who were able to tell what was wrong with
customer service in the organization. Therefore, we needed to start with them.
Some of this had been done already, in surveys, but it would take more in-depth
searching via personal interviews to find out exactly what they felt was wrong.
If students were leaving because they were not getting enough support or
because their classes were not being offered, those were the problems that needed
fixing, and they are organizational problems. The school cannot control someone
leaving because of a job transfer or a layoff, but it can control students leaving
because they are unhappy or not getting the service they feel that they paid for. It
is felt that employee’s “beliefs and perceptions are critical to diagnosing gaps,”
(Clark & Estes, 2002, p.43) so as much time as possible needed to be spent with
focus groups, interviews, and surveys. As mentioned previously, we also needed
to examine applicable work records. We wanted to look at student complaints—
who hears them, what they are, and what is done about them. There had to be
some record of student complaints before they dropped out, and this needed to be
uncovered. Many customers leave an organization or establishment without
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saying anything, but most of them probably complain or ask for help at least once
before they leave.
Since student retention was an important enough issue to have been given
its own committee, probably most of the staff was aware of the problem. In
looking at the advising staff as an example, there was an obvious conflict in what
they were told to do in their job and what the retention committee was
recommending. Advisors were rewarded for the number of students that they
signed up as intake students. There was no incentive for them to do anything for
the student after that since their efforts were to be put into gaining more students.
This created one of the biggest retention problems at the school—the no shows.
Obviously there was a gap there. This seemed to be one simple gap, but there
were many different ones that might surface during gap analysis.
The three biggest causes of performance gaps are people’s knowledge and
skills, their motivation to achieve the goal, and organizational barriers such as
lack of necessary equipment and missing or inadequate work processes (Clark &
Estes, 2002, p. 43). We needed to determine exactly what the causes were and
close the gap by eliminating those causes. In some cases, the solutions were
probably rather simple. If students were not getting the classes they needed, in
the order they needed them, that could remedied by a new schedule or training for
the counselors who were doing the scheduling. It appeared, in talking to staff at
The University, that money, or supposed lack thereof, was the root of many of the
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problems. It seemed to be a money saver to cancel a class that only six students
needed, but in doing this, at least six students are put off schedule, which means
they may leave the university. So in saving a few thousand dollars by not having
to pay the instructor or turn on the lights, the college actually lost $1,000 for each
student for each class the student might have taken from that month until
graduation. It is interesting to note that this university charges students
approximately $1,000 per class and pays its adjunct instructors $1,600 per class
no matter how many students are enrolled.
The Student Retention Commission identified specific issues that it felt
were the causes of students not staying at The University, but they had done this
without a systematic gap analysis. As they move forward, they will probably
discover more causes, which will hopefully lead to successful solutions that will,
in turn, lead to an increase in student retention.
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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
Since students first started going to school, they have also been dropping
out. This phenomenon spans all ages and backgrounds, but this study dealt
specifically with a private university. The literature to support it deals mainly
with schools other than community colleges, where there is no choice in whom to
admit. There did not exist much literature specific to private, for-profit
corporations that admit anyone who applies, or for schools that run on a monthly
format. Bringing benchmarking to the study demonstrates that any business must
look at existing literature and conduct a study specific to its own demographic
population. While this is done by looking at other universities, the study and
findings are specific to the business or school that is being evaluated.
Persistence, dropout, stop-out, attrition, and retention are all topics and
synonyms for the same problem. Many students sign up for, or begin, a college
program and never finish it. Why?
As the literature shows, there are as many reasons and variables for
student attrition as there are students. The studied university (herein called The
University) is a private college with many campuses and approximately 16,000
students including those on campus and online. This researcher intended to
pinpoint the reasons students were leaving the studied university.
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Porter (2003) argues that we cannot count transfer students as stop-outs,
but I argue that if they are transferring before their time or completing their
program, or before they were scheduled to begin the new one, why are they
leaving? There must be some dissatisfaction with the current program or school.
Even if they left to begin another college, they dropped out of the first one—
therefore they are dropouts.
There is some assumption that if students enroll in college, they must want
to be there, and they probably have a goal of completion, whether it is a certificate
or a diploma. We did account for the fact that some students enroll in college
courses to earn credits or pay for a job or career, and when they stop attending, it
is because they have completed their goal and are not dissatisfied. If the
assumption is correct that students want to complete their task of graduation, if
they drop out, they must be dissatisfied. The research shows that most students
do have a goal, but some have more of a commitment to their goal than others
(Tinto, 1975). This is where benchmarking can be introduced as a way to combat
attrition. Although students enter college with specific goals, the research shows
that, to some degree, the institution can help make the commitment stronger
through student services and difficult admissions.
This research was limited by the fact that the research/subject university
was the ultimate commuter school. Students took a new class each month, and
each course met 10 times in a month for a total of 48 hours per month of seat
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time. Many of the courses were also offered online* which meant students never
had to leave their homes or offices or meet another student or instructor.
According to the literature, students are greatly affected by influences
surrounding them and their college experience. These influences are lessened
when students never come face-to-face with their instructors or other students, or
when they meet an instructor and fellow students only 10 times during a course.
The biggest obstacle to research on student retention is finding students.
If students drop out, it is hard to find out why because they are not there any more
and many times can not be located or do not want to offer any information on why
they left.
Researchers try to interject after a student has dropped a course but have
not yet dropped from the school. The study done at The University targeted
dropouts, but in the future, students would also need to be flagged as soon as they
left a course and were still enrolled in the school. Most of the research at The
University had been done on students who dropped courses first but had not yet
left the institution. The hope was that if students were targeted as soon as
possible and the real reason they were dropping courses was made known, we
might find out why. This is not the case for many freshmen who really do not
know why they are dropping out. Most students give the answer of, “I just can
not do this and my job,” or their family circumstances are too great, or the work is
too difficult. This is why a benchmarking study is important. If the actual
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dropouts at a university can not be contacted, we must look elsewhere, and the
best place to look is at a similar business.
There are some reasons that retention seems to be more serious in recent
years, and we can speculate as to why, even if the research is inconclusive as to
specifics. The fact is that in this country, anyone can sign up at a community
college, or a private university in this case, regardless of previous grades or
experience, as long as he meets the entrance guidelines such as age and takes the
necessary assessment exams. This leaves institutions wide open for high attrition
rates, and this is where changing the demographics of the students might result in
lower attrition rates. Once a benchmarking study was done at The University, and
we had realized what was making students leave, we could work to remedy the
problem. A determination could then be made if this problem might lie with the
instructors or the course format.
The reasons students leave higher education can be categorized simply as
personal or school-related. Some would say that a problem such as job movement
is a different category. However, I consider that a personal reason because it
deals directly with goal commitment. If students are wholeheartedly committed
to their goal of graduation, they will leave the job to stay in school or move with
the job but transfer schools. Academic probation is also personal because it is due
to either something the student did directly, or it is an effect of a personal
problem. This is not to say that the school can not, will not, or should not offer
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help to the student; it simply categorizes the reasons for dropout. Obviously each
institution determines what needs to be changed within the organization in order
to retain students.
No matter what the reasons for withdrawal, researchers old and new agree
that students weigh their costs and benefits of completion, and if the costs
outweigh the benefits, they withdraw. Probably the most important point is that
each college and each student is different, as are the teachers and the
circumstances. What is an issue at one college may not be an issue at another.
This means that each college or university will have to perform its own student
retention study or intervention in order to find out what is wrong and what will
work to remedy high attrition. While an institution can benchmark itself against
another, it still must find the best way to remedy the problem at its own
campus(es).
In a British study conducted in 1999 (Why Students Drop Out o f Further
Education), researchers found that students are more likely to drop out if they:
• Do not feel they have been placed in the most appropriate course.
• Applied to college late.
• Find it difficult to make friends.
• Have difficulty settling in at the start o f their course.
• Do not feel that their course is interesting.
• Are dissatisfied with the quality of teaching.
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• Are dissatisfied with their course timetable.
• Are dissatisfied with help either to get a job or to go to university.
• Are male.
• Have difficult financial or family circumstances.
• Have their fees waived or reduced.
Not all of these variables were studied, but this research shows that the
reasons students drop out are endless and constantly changing, and in the case of
being male, cannot be controlled.
Numerous studies and researchers of student retention and attrition
disagree with which variables most contribute to college dropouts, but five
specific studies (Bers & Smith, 1991; Clagett, 1996; Feldman, 1993; Voorhees,
1993; Windham, 1995) consistently revealed that older, part-time, minority, and
working adult students have higher dropout rates than the average young college
freshman. This is important to The University because these attributes described
the population at their campuses.
Tinto’s (1993) research shows that approximately 4 of every 10 students
who enroll in four-year colleges and universities leave without earning a degree.
Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon (2004) cite that 50% of students leave higher
education. The American College Testing Program states that in 2002 this
number was approximately 45% of students in two-year colleges (students leaving
their first year), and 26% of those in a four-year college or university. The
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research indicates that most students drop out before they finish their first year.
The numbers have not changed in almost 30 years. It is interesting that we are
still tackling this problem when we could just accept what the statistics show, that
25% to 45% of people drop out of college. We could then concentrate on the
ones who do not. Instead, we spend countless hours and money trying to
determine why students leave and what can be done about it.
What needs to be noted, though, is that college attendance overall is
steadily increasing. It can be argued that it does not matter that college
attendance is increasing because the percent of dropouts remains the same, but on
the other hand, with more students come more variables, which could lead to a
higher attrition rate. Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson (1997) call the problem of
student attrition the “departure puzzle.” The University has been categorized in
U.S. News and World Report’ s masters rankings, which means that the school
offers masters programs, but it also offers undergraduate programs and various
certification courses such as teacher credentialing. Students do drop out at a
slower rate once they have received their undergraduate degree, but the students
at this university continue to leave at a rate that the university president feels is
too high.
Using Stringer’s (1999) action research framework, along with literature
on benchmarking, I originally hoped to solve this departure'puzzle at The
University, but the study changed to one of writing a model that this or any other
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university could follow. This model involves looking (at the organization and the
problem), thinking (interpreting and analyzing), acting to resolve the problem,
and assessing progress.
The first part of Stringer’s (1999) model is looking. The researcher needs
to assist the stakeholders (university staff) in defining the problem in their own
terms. The problem, student attrition, must be described; this step has been
completed.
The second step is the analysis, in which stakeholders try to understand
what is happening and how. This is the first difficult part in this research—
finding out why students leave The University. The research on commuter
schools is vast. Blame must be put somewhere, and it can be categorized as the
fault of the school, the individual, or outside circumstances such as military
deployment, or financial issues. We are concerned with factors the school can
control.
The fact that this college used a one-month course format made things a
little different, but The Student Retention Commission defined students as
persistent and non-persistent, and the students that were of concern were those
who did not take at least three courses within their first year. A dropout is easily
defined as someone who stops attending altogether, but this was a little more
difficult to determine in a school that did not havef a set four- or five-year
graduation plan.
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Once the problems have been identified and analyzed for discovery of
cause, action must be taken to resolve the problems. This university would be
forced to make a decision about where to concentrate their efforts, and it would
undoubtedly be in the area over which the school has control and that would gain
the most students, but this was unknown at the time. Stringer (1999) calls this
“sorting out priorities.” The immediate goals were set—a retention increase of
5%. This is added to objectives (what will happen inside of the goal of increasing
retention) and tasks. The list includes what they Student Retention Commission
identified as tasks needed to be done, and it identified areas that were targets of
importance. The last piece is the ongoing assessment of whether the action
research is working, which will show in the retention rates. The Student
Retention commission identified certain tasks needing to be done, but these would
probably change once it was decided why students were leaving.
If retention rates seem to stay the same over the years, why study
retention? As Braxton et al. (2004) point out, we are in the midst of a world that
needs educated people, and if we continue to lose students instead of gaining
more, we will, as a country, not be able to compete in this world and economy.
That is the overall, serious reason, but The University is first interested in solving
the issue of students leaving its institution.
To start from the very general and work to the specific is to discover why,
generally speaking, students are dropping out of higher education. This is where
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the foundations of student retention and attrition research come in to play, and we
look to researchers such as Astin (1975), Tinto (1975), and Bean and Metzner
(1985). Astin (1975) at UCLA, using large national data sets, identified
involvement (academic involvement, involvement with faculty, and involvement
with student peers) as a key factor in retention. Tinto’s (1975) model (at Syracuse
University) of institutional departure is based on academic and social integration;
the greater the amount of integration, the greater the probability of retention.
Bean’s (1985) model of student attrition represents factors that influence student
decisions to drop out of an institution.
The research of Tinto (1975) is based on Spady ’ s (1971) work and
Durkheim’s (1966) theory of suicide. Durkheim argued that people will commit
suicide when they break ties with a social system because they fail to integrate
into society, and Spady moved that into the education world by using those same
integration issues to explain student dropout. In Spady’s model, as in Tinto’s, if
students are to be fully integrated, and therefore retained, they must meet the
demands of the college’s social and academic systems. At the center of Tinto’s
model are two attributes: goal commitment and institutional commitment. His
model is a diagram that looks like a flow chart, wherein students enter college
with a commitment to the goal of graduation and a commitment to their
institution. The levels of commitment that students have influence their level of
integration into the college and its community. Tinto (1975) also claims that the
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attributes that students have when entering college, such as family background,
directly influence their departure decisions. Surrounding the commitment areas
are other attributes such as social and academic integration, family and personal
issues, prior qualifications, school support, and dropout decisions.
In 1993 Tinto revised his book, but his basic tenet in his Model o f
Institutional Departure remained the same: If students are satisfied at college,
they stay; if they are dissatisfied, they leave. It sounds like basic customer
service, but this is more of a problem if students drop out completely instead of
transferring to another school. In Tinto’s model, even when students leave
voluntarily, he blames the institution and its academic and social systems for not
interacting reciprocally to produce the level of social and academic integration
necessary to maintain or increase student commitment to the university. Tinto
(1993) recognizes the outside factors that influence student departure, but he
ultimately feels the puzzle has not been completed, and the institution is at fault.
Tinto’s model does offer help for researchers and universities in linking student
learning and services with retention, but he has followed his model with a great
deal of research (1975-1998).
Tinto’s theory (1993) seems quite logical, but it has been challenged in
recent years. One of his large challengers is Braxton et al. (1997; Braxton et al.,
2004). When people'begin college, or anything new, they bring with them all of
their background. There is some assumption that if a person starts college, he
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must want to finish, but like anything else in this world, people quit tasks, and the
ones who are less committed to finishing are the ones who will quit first. If it is
that simple, why study retention? The answer is that schools want to retain the
students who want to complete their degree, and if they can help the student do
that, most of them will. The trick is discovering why they quit or want to quit and
remedying it if possible. As stated previously, every school is different, but every
school can at least attempt discovery and remedies.
Tinto’s model (1993) gives more weight to the social integration than to
academic integration (Braxton et al., 1997), but more recent research (Braxton,
Bray, & Berger (2000) shows that active learning plays an important part on
retention. There is a direct link in this research between instructor characteristics
such as organization and preparation and student commitment and re-enrollment.
When students experience higher-order thinking activities and classroom
discussions within the classroom, their institutional commitment increases
(Braxton, Bray, & Berger, 2000) and there is a focus on teaching practices that
foster active learning in order to retain students. Active learning includes a higher
level of student learning skills which must be fostered by the institution.
Bean’s (Bean & Metzner, 1985) model of the factors affecting dropout is
similar to Tinto’s. One difference is that Bean concentrated on students’ peers
and their importance and influence on student socialization, but his results, like
Tinto’s, show that there are many factors, including environmental ones that
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cause a chain reaction that may lead to dropout. His model is slightly simpler
than Tinto’s (1975), but they look almost identical. Bean puts more emphasis on
the social factors, whereas Tinto puts equal emphasis on academic and social
influences.
It appears, based on teaching experience and the research, that students are
not coming to college prepared. They are not prepared to learn and they are not
prepared to survive in the quasi-real world of postsecondary education. This is a
simple way of stating what the theorists have been saying, but this literature and
research, instead of attempting to change what happens before a student reaches
college, focuses on what colleges and universities can do to retain students,
prepared or not. Students come to postsecondary education with certain attributes
that we cannot do anything about. What happens when they are in college,
though, may make us hang onto a few students if we try hard enough. Some
students, no matter what we do, will leave. Others need some extra hand-holding.
Is it a big waste of time to even try to reach these students? Since we have so
many students lined up to step into the university spots, should we worry about
hand-holding? According to the stakeholders, including students, yes.
Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, and Hengstler (1992) wrote an extensive paper
on the convergence between the theories of Bean (Bean & Metzner, 1985) and
Tinto (1993). Both theories argue that what the students bring with them to
college in the way of background experience and characteristics will have a direct
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influence on their goal and institutional commitment. If students do not feel that
a correct match has been made between them and the college, they are likely to
leave. This is important because it sheds new light on what are the strongest
factors influencing college persistence. Their findings detail the differences in
many different areas after analyzing both models in a study of college students,
but there is no determination of which model is better because it depends on “the
specific criterion under consideration” (Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, & Hengstler,
1992, p. 158) for any given study.
In a study of college freshman, Ryan and Glenn (2002) found a surprising
finding—that freshmen specifically need support in developing their academic
competencies if they are to survive in the college classroom and actually thrive as
learners. This contradicts much of the research that says schools need to improve
their administrative services in order to retain students. The students in their
study, as in many studies, lacked the academic skills necessary for college. This
is a nation-wide problem that appears to be getting worse, but the appearance may
be false since more students than ever are now attempting to go to college.
Woosley (2003-2004) gives all problems relating to withdrawal the general name
of “pre-entry” attributes and argues that they directly relate to why students leave.
How much of a commitment students have coming in (Tinto, 1975; Woosley,
2003-2004) directly relates to their leaving. Woosley takes this commitment into
other areas of students’ lives and argues that if students are more committed to a
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job than college, they will likely choose the job. Woosley, like all researchers,
believes that “Overall, drop-outs and stop-outs appear to be different groups of
students with different issues” (Woosley, 2003-2004, p. 301).
Ryan and Glenn (2002) believe “The most widely cited and well-regarded
framework for understanding student departure decision is that developed by
Vincent Tinto in Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures o f student
attrition” (p 298). Tinto blames the universities for students leaving, but his
model recognizes that what students bring to college in their pre-entry attributes
contributes to their success, as do their goals, intentions, and commitments.
Recent studies (Ryan & Glenn, 2002) have concentrated on specific
services colleges can offer to boost retention. Specifically, they are concerned
with academic and social interaction, institutional commitment, and re-enrollment
likelihood. In referencing Tinto (1975,1993), they look at the efforts of student
affairs offices in relation to academic integration. These offices can help develop
student learning skills, which will in turn facilitate academic integration “by
helping students become more effective consumers of instruction within the
academic system of a postsecondary institution” (Tinto (1975,1993), p. 298).
The study is even more specific and offers ideas for active learning in the
classroom. The guiding philosophy behind their study is that students come to
higher learning as naive learners and that in order to best serve their educational
needs, we can help them become better learners who are able and committed. It
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appears that we are shifting to a (more) customer service oriented way of
thinking, but if we do that, then maybe we will have retention and not attrition
(Ryan & Glenn, 2002).
In this market-driven educational system, schools are feeling the need to
be more accountable to their students, funding agencies, and the general public.
This need to be accountable is driving schools to offer a more learning-centered,
customer-service model of higher education for the students (Ryan & Glenn,
2002) and a performance-based approach for the government agencies. Schools
are trying to please everyone, so they attempt to develop learning skills for the
students and assure high retention and graduation rates for the outside agencies.
In the case of The University, the institution is responsible to itself and its direct
stakeholders, as it is a private corporation.
All colleges and universities are interested in why students leave their
schools. Although the statistics have not changed much over the years, it is still
an issue that interests all stakeholders at an academic institution. Just as a
corporation wonders why it has high turnover rates, schools wonder why they lose
students. Bean and Vesper (1990) argued the similarities between organizational
turnover and student attrition. Organizations expect to have some turnover, but
when it reaches high levels, it becomes an issue worthy of attention, as student
retention is to academic organizations.
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Tinto’s 1997 study focused on how much emphasis is put on the college
classroom. He pointed to the fact that colleges tend to look to student affairs and
not what is happening inside the classroom. Students need to feel connected.
They need to have an involvement in the school which will affect effort and, in
turn, learning. He believes college classrooms are not involving their students
enough. This is a bigger problem when coupled with adjunct faculty who also
feel less involvement, do not have offices, and are not on campus as often. The
percentages of adjunct faculty on campus have been steadily climbing, as have the
numbers of students enrolling in college.
College attrition can be a direct link from primary and secondary
education. There are many students in this country who drop out of school—there
always have been. What is critical to look at, I believe, is the behavior of students
because most students heed the thought that education is compulsory through 12th
grade. Most students do not feel they have a choice to drop out, and most
students are not able to choose their teachers or courses. They simply follow a
prescribed curriculum, based on their goals after graduation. It may be difficult to
tell which students will drop out of college, or ever begin, but there are probably
some indicators of who will do well in a post-secondary environment after high
school and who will not. This is a part of Tinto’s theory of the attributes a student
brings to college. 3
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This is what The University was attempting to do. The people at the top
knew they were not happy with their retention rates, but they had yet to discover
why students were discontinuing and what could be done about it. This university
was a phenomenon because it was a private, for-profit institution and students
paid a great deal of money for their classes. If they quit, the money was lost for
the student and the university. A student who took three courses at a community
college in California might be out a few hundred dollars, but that same student
who took three courses at this university would be out $3,000, and the university
would be out thousands more for the student not finishing the degree.
My research question was the same one that has been asked for years:
Why are students discontinuing their education? What are the exact causes and
how can they be remedied? The most difficult part of this research was that the
subjects in question had usually left the institution, and it was difficult to study a
subject that was no longer on campus or accessible by phone or mail. The staff at
any institution can offer suggestions for what they feel is wrong, but ultimately
the customer will be the one to give the actual reason. We can speculate forever,
but that is not solid research.
In 2004 Braxton et al. published a report that described and assessed the
validity of Tinto’s theory and offers a revision to it. They specifically describe
programs that are designed to reduce attrition at commuter colleges and
universities such as The University. Braxton et al. believe if students drop out, it
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will have an effect on their development of human potential, and once students
drop out, if they never return, their lives will forever be altered, possibly
negatively.
We used to believe that if students dropped out, it was related to their
failure, but universities have begun to shoulder some of the responsibility. Just as
special education has been added to our education system so that we do not lose
students who need special services, so has a responsibility for retaining students.
In Braxton’s report, it is noted that it is believed (by some) that all students can
succeed if given the proper support. “Retention is about developing a climate that
is conducive to students as well as helping students to make appropriate choices
that make them successful” (Braxton et al., 2004, foreword, p. 1). What is worth
noting, though, is that those in charge of retention efforts recognize that not all
people were meant to have a college degree, and not every campus is suitable for
every student. A dropout from one college may be a success at another.
While there are numerous reasons students leave a university, research
shows there are some specific factors related to attrition, and they are outlined
below.
Environment: The school may fail to create the environment that students
need to meet their educational needs (Bean, 1980; Lau, 2003; Tinto, 1993). This
environment is the one both in and out of the classroom, so it includes social
activities and teaching, among other things. These students drop out because they
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are not satisfied with the education that is being offered to them. If students are
placed in the wrong courses, it is quite possibly the fault of the school, and
students may feel unable to continue due to lack of confidence in their courses.
Another problem Lau (2003) cites is that students do not have “appropriate role
models or mentors in the academic environment” (p 127).
Academics: The research by Hoyt (1999) highlights community colleges,
but he studies a problem that is now widespread throughout all college
communities: students are not prepared for college academics. In the past, if
students were not prepared and could not make it, they left. End of story. More
recently, schools have implemented remedial programs and courses, many of
which do not earn the student any course credit, but are in place to bring the
students academically up to speed to join the ranks of the usual college courses,
for example College Composition. The university can not be held responsible for
what students do not know or do not know how to do when they enter, but in the
interest of retaining students, they must offer services and courses to bring
students up to the necessary academic level. This means colleges and universities
need to allocate resources for programs and courses. This means tutoring centers,
special courses, more faculty, and much more.
When colleges take on these students who are not prepared for college, it
increases the chance that the attrition rates will rise (Hoyt, 1999). His study found
that the more areas in which students needed help, the more likely they were to
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drop out. For instance, if students need remediation in math, English, and
reading, they are more likely to drop out than a student who needs remediation in
only one of those areas. The remediation may also come in areas such as study
skills, but that is harder to assess than in specific content areas.
Hoyt’s study supports the need for academic services to students because
his findings show that, to begin with, “a student’s first-term academic
performance” (Hoyt, 1999, p. 58) had the most impact on retention. If students
receive enough services to do well in their first semester, they are more likely to
persist.
Personal Factors: Many students are unable to manage the college
workload or to assimilate into the college population (Lau, 2003). Whether it is
the fault of previous schooling or the student, students who lack the skills to
succeed in college, especially the courses they are put into when they arrive, will
fail, drop out, or both. This problem falls back on the school to some degree
because the advising and placement staff needs to assure that students are put into
the appropriate courses and given the correct prerequisites. If students do not
understand the importance of education “or do not know how to apply classroom-
learned theories to real life problems,” (Lau, 2003, p. 127) they will not assimilate
well. The fact that students, especially freshmen, are overwhelmed by the
transition from high school to college may cause them such great stress that they
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leave before finishing the first year. This can be seen as a personal problem, but
in Lau’s research it is one she feels the school has some control over.
What the Institution Can Do
It is important to remember that even Tinto (1993) studied one educational
context, and what works for one school may not work for another, especially in
regards to cost-effectiveness (Ryan & Glenn, 2002). The University is a
commuter school but is specialized in that it uses the one-month course format
unique to a few universities, and although an entering student may be considered
a freshman, all students are adult learners, most over the age of 25. Many
students have attended another institution before transferring, and many have
been away from a school setting for many years. The need for student learning
services and institutional commitment will probably look different than at a 2-
year commuter school. Students still need goal and institutional commitment but
it may come in different ways than what is seen at schools that work on a
semester system or offer day classes instead of only evening and online classes.
Lau (2003) puts forth a list of institutional factors that positively affect
student retention. She breaks them into three categories: institutional
administrators, faculty, and students. All three of these categories positively
influence student involvement and their learning environment, which affects
student retention, which impacts the graduation rate (the goal of the university).
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Institutional administrators must help students adjust to the new
environment of college and “ensure that the institution is accommodating to the
student’s needs, interests, and learning styles” (Lau, 2003, p. 128). She has a list
of specific services that schools can offer for students including scholarship
programs, academic and career advising, programs for students with special needs
or of minority groups, physical facilities such as dormitories and study rooms,
computer services and training, and cooperative and collaborative learning
environments put forth my the faculty. Ryan and Glenn put it this way: “The
route to improving retention rates lay in increasing student learning skills and
academic efficacy” (Ryan & Glenn, 2002, p. 297). Their study involved student
development and advising centers that identified effective support programs.
They urge the student affairs offices to play a strong role in student retention by
helping students learn “active learning skills that facilitate academic integration
and institutional commitment” (Ryan & Glenn, 2002, p. 297). They agree with
Tinto that students must have a commitment to the college or university in order
for them to want to stay, and this commitment will come only with the right
services for all students.
The University had focused on what was being done at the school such as
academic or financial aid advising, which really meant placing students in the
correct courses or assuring their paperwork is in on time. There really was no one
on campus to offer many special services. Aside from some services for students
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with disabilities, there were no real support services, and there were financial aid
services but not the counseling to help a student who became too deeply in debt
and felt that dropping out was the only answer.
How the Services Will Help Retention
The efforts that schools and their student affairs offices are making are
expected to “facilitate academic integration by helping students become more
effective consumers of instruction within the academic system of a postsecondary
institution” (Ryan & Glenn, 2002, p. 299). Ryan and Glenn specifically studied
freshman, but their research shows that if freshman are able (through help from
the institution) to develop the necessary skills not only to exist, but thrive
academically, they can become “active agents in the process of academic
integration and institutional commitment” (p. 299) which will directly increase
their persistence and retention, and ultimately graduation.
A study conducted by Cofer and Somers (2001) investigated the effect of
financial aid, price, and debt on student persistence. The University is an
expensive school. Tuition alone, if a student took only 10 out of 12 courses a
year, was $10,000.00. Ten courses equates to a full load at a traditional college,
where students taking a small, full load with no intercession courses take eight
courses a year. Tuition was akin, then, to that of other private institutions. It was
easy for students to get into debt at this school. While the school had nothing to
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do with students’ finances, it could offer counseling when it saw a student getting
into debt with the university, often due to spending financial aid checks, received
twice a year, before tuition was due (once a month). If the school could flag
students before they got into financial trouble, students would be more likely to
stay because once student debt became too great, the university asked them to
leave. This could be avoided for some but not all students, but it would help
boost retention, and once students leave, their incentive to pay their debts is not as
great.
Organizational change is not a new topic, but what is constantly being
renewed is the process by which any organization chooses to make changes. Two
that were being looked at in this study were action research and benchmarking.
These processes can be used in any type of organization or institution, but in this
case they were specifically being looked at in light of change in education.
Although benchmarking literature has been in existence for 20 years, it is more
recently being accepted as a change agent for education.
Much of the literature on benchmarking as a form of organizational
development was written in the early 1990s. It was developed in the early 1980s
at the Xerox Corporation, and it has been adapted for use in higher education.
Colleges and universities are able to look at what works at other, similar
organizations and adapt those methods to their own institution. The goal is to
provide personnel in charge of the processes needing improvement with “an
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external standard for measuring the quality and cost of internal activities, and to
help identify where opportunities for improvement may reside” (Alstete, 1996,
p. iii). It is currently in use worldwide and is becoming increasingly widespread
over time, especially with the advent of national rankings such as the U.S. News
and World Report's “America’s Best Colleges” and the National Survey of
Student Engagement.
There are four steps in the benchmarking process: planning the study,
conducting the research, analyzing the data, and adapting the findings to one’s
own organization (Alstete, 1996). Camp (1989), a leading author in
benchmarking literature, calls the steps Planning, Analysis, Integration, and
Action. He finishes with Maturity, which means the goal or practice is fully
integrated into the study institution. The first step, planning the study, involves
defining what is to be studied or benchmarked, identifying comparative
companies, and determining the data collection method. In Camp’s first step, he
also includes collecting the data; the second step in Alstete’s method is research
collection, but Camp uses this as his analysis where current and possible future
performance gaps are identified. This is also the second step in the Clark and
Estes’ (2002) Action Research Model. The third step, according to Alstete
(1996), is analysis, wherein performance gaps are determined. Camp uses this as
his integration—the benchmark findings are communicated and hopefully
accepted by the organization members and then functional goals are established.
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Lastly, the enablers, or processes that enable other universities to have high
retention rates are adapted to the home institution. Alstete states that the overall
goal is “the adaptation of the process enablers at the home institution to achieve
effective quality improvement” (Alstete, 1996, p. vii). The adapting is what is
important, not simply conducting the research. Camp calls the final step action
and includes implementation of the findings or actions, progress monitoring, and
recalibration of the benchmarks if necessary.
Benchmarking must be thought of as a procedure wherein there lies
continuous comparison to sister, or any other, institutions. The leaders of one
organization are learning from moving targets after identifying the process
leaders. They are good for improving specific processes at an institution (Alstete,
1996). Benchmarking as a change agent for educational systems is becoming
increasingly more popular. Bender and Schuh (2002) gathered writings and
studies from over 10 people who wrote specifically about using this process in
education. In their book they include benchmarking as used with tuition and fee
decisions, distance education, student affairs, administration, and many other
facets of higher education. Specifically, tuition is discussed in relation to
retention. Colleges must decide if lowering their tuition rates or admitting
students at low- or no-cost is a positive move toward retaining students. Distance
education is increasingly an important part of universities as they try to reach
more and diverse students. Benchmarking can be used to strengthen distance
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education, but since it is constantly changing, a university, as stated earlier, must
concentrate on a moving target.
The strength of using benchmarking is that supposedly a university in
need of help studies another university that is doing something right. This is a
fairly obvious answer to finding out how to do something correctly, but in the
business world, people are secretive, so the process is not always as easy as it
sounds. A banker wanting to recognize counterfeit money studies real currency
until he knows exactly what it looks like. A student wanting to pass a test such as
the BAR Exam studies previous exams and questions until he knows exactly what
is expected of him. A writer or artist wanting to learn a skill studies the best the
world has to offer and borrows and uses ideas until he develops his own
techniques. Benchmarking is no different. A university wanting to increase
retention rates studies an organization with high retention in order to find out how
to replicate their practices.
As Gallagher and Holley point out, the leader of an organization (in the
case of a university, the dean or president) is the one making decisions based
upon the findings of studying other colleges, and s/he
is forced to negotiate the demands of numerous stakeholder groups and
their various interests in the activities of the school. Often, the dean is
confronted with situations that require value choices between academic
and administrative needs. (Gallagher & Holley, 2003, p. 4)
The dean of a school knows that problems such as retention are large ones,
but he also must keep every decision he makes in line with the mission of the
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school, unless that is to be changed. Just as with any business, there are many
people and factors to consider in any decision, and just as in any other
organization, there are employees, customers (students), and various stakeholders.
There was a great amount of work to be done and just as much research
for help and support. Given the review of the literature, we know that the reasons
students drop out are many. We also knew that The University had special
circumstances, but the one common variable was students who were seeking an
education. The school existed to make money and offer students a service—
education—and if they were leaving before getting that service, The University
needed to know why. The University could then begin implementing the specific
programs needed to satisfy the customers and assure their success. This
researcher, along with The University, had the role as an agent of action research
to identify and analyze a cause of an already named problem and develop a plan
of action to at least reduce the problem. With the help of Stringer’s (1999) model
for action research and benchmarking practices, I would move forward with the
goal of increasing student retention at this university by at least 5%.
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CHAPTER 3
ACTION PLAN
The Study
The University identified student attrition as a problem in need of
attention. There was no doubt that this was the problem and that it had some
causes within the university, but what still needed to be discovered was the
biggest causes and what could be done about them. The ultimate questions that
needed answering were: Who or what has the largest affect on student attrition,
and what can be done to boost retention?
A Commission on Student Retention worked for the school year 2003/2004 on
identifying possible causes for this attrition, or lack of retention, and identified
possible areas of concern that could be targeted for improvement. My job as the
researcher/facilitator was to continue the research of identifying the exact issues
that were causing attrition and form an action research study to improve retention
by at least 5%. The original number set forth by the provost was 20%, and the
vice president of student affairs agreed that he might be able to make a 10%
change, but realistically 5% was all that could be hoped for at the time. I planned
to use mostly the model set forth by Clark and Estes (2002), but some of
Stringer’s (1999) action research methods were used also. Both action research
methods outline plans for looking at the problem in order to discover how to
resolve it.
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I began by looking at all students who had not persisted or been retained since
they enrolled in fiscal year 1996. A designated group of staff at the school tried
reaching all of them by phone in order to find out why they dropped out. We had
no idea what we were going to find, but when we found it, we felt that we would
know what was wrong (on the surface). Patton (1988) calls this inductive
evaluation, but as we narrowed down the answers from past students, we planned
to begin to verify a certain problem and be more deductive. We did not know
exactly where to look until we discovered some of the student answers in this
round of questioning, but we knew that there were several areas contributing to
the problem. What we did not know was what students would say, since their
answers to date had been conflicting on whether they dropped out due to
something school-related or for personal reasons. The students were asked one
open-ended question with one follow-up question: Why they stopped attending
the university, and if they felt anything in the school’s control could have been
done to make them stay. The surveys in the past had asked whether they planned
to re-enroll, but this was not part of the study because we were contacting only
students who had been gone for at least two years past their enrollment date, and
we were concerned with what made them stop attending, whether permanent or
not.
Stringer’s (1999) model uses community-based action research, as I
planned to, in order to conduct a thorough and systematic investigation into a
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problem and implement resolutions. These problems are experienced by a
company that has clients, and in this case the company was the university, and the
clients were the students. Stringer’s model exams how effective the work
practices are by taking a purposeful and methodical look into the organization and
steps toward a resolution. His three fundamental steps are to look, think, and act.
The looking, in this case, was done by the student retention committee. I planned
to conduct phases two and three. Phase two, to think, is to “analyze and interpret
the situation to extend [our] understanding of the nature and context of the
problem,” and phase three is to “act to formulate solutions to the problem
(Stringer, 1999, pp. 43-44).
This is where the plans changed and my research had to take a different
approach. When I began my research in 2004,1 gained approval from the
president of the university and began working with the vice president of student
affairs, who was in charge of the retention committee. I was given full access to
records and reports until I presented my first findings, showing that the school did
not have good retention rates and no one really knew why. I believe that the
initial formation of the retention committee was in response to a WASC (Western
Association of Schools and Colleges) recommendation, but no one would answer
that question with certainty. What I do know is that once the committee was
formed, other subcommittees were also formed under the guise of making things
better. One of these, as an example, was an Adjunct Academy made up of one
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adjunct faculty member from each of the school’s campuses. The academy
members were to form an alliance and, among other things, to make adjunct staff
feel more like a part of the university, thus possible increasing retention. This all
looked good, but the staff members were asked to do an immense amount of extra
work and some travel with no extra pay, the idea was not well thought out, and
the leadership lacked focus and understanding. If the president had truly believed
that a well-trained adjunct staff would make a difference to the university, he
would have offered to pay them for their efforts and been more organized in his
own efforts.
Once I realized that the university personnel did not want to work on their
attrition problem with anyone outside or inside the institution, I had to change my
plans. Instead of offering the direct support that utilized Stringer’s or Clark and
Estes’ action research, I decided to write an action plan based on benchmarking.
The University could use this in whatever way it wanted, it would shed some light
on the attrition problem, and it would offer a possible solution for this
organization or any other. My plan then changed to a benchmarking study
whereby I researched The University’s 2005 U.S. News and World Report’ s
rankings in order to show that there was much work to be done in order for the
school to improve. It would take far more than simply calling students to find out
why they left. My plan was based on benchmarking literature-published in the
last 20 years.
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Camp (1989) and Alstete (1996), in their benchmarking literature,
specifically discussed placing the right people in charge of making change within
an organization. It seemed that in this company, no one wanted to admit there
was a problem, and certainly no one wanted to dig deeply into why there was a
retention problem. Since the people at the top did not seem very serious about
making changes, it would be extremely difficult to get employees to make
significant changes. In fact, many people dropped out of the Adjunct Academy
for this reason—their efforts were not rewarded and it seemed as if they were
simply set to a task for a task’s sake.
After talking to many people, including the person in charge of the
retention committee, I discovered that I was not going to get any answers and they
certainly did not want my help, so I was forced to change plans. Enough people
told me that people at The University did not want anyone scrutinizing them.
After I presented my findings to the vice president of student affairs and a
colleague of his, I was told that if I wanted to proceed, I would need to change my
language so that the problem did not look so serious and the university would be
portrayed in a better light. I was unwilling to do this as my information would
have been false, so I changed my method to one of generating a theory of action.
I would still present what I thought The University needed to do in order to boost
retention, but I would not expect them to take my advice.
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The most strongly relied upon model of action research was originally to
be Clark and Estes’ (2002) model of diagnosing gaps in the organization in order
to resolve a problem. This involves surveys of students and focus groups and
surveys within the organization. As I changed my methods to rely heavily on
benchmarking, much of this remained the same because diagnosing and closing
gaps is also a large part of the benchmarking model.
Stringer’s (1999) model, on the other hand, involved locating the people
with whom I would work and establishing contact with one major player. I did
this by working closely with the vice-president of student affairs who was, in turn,
working with the president of the university. I planned to also work with small
groups (based on Clark and Estes’ focus groups and Stringer’s stakeholding
groups). This included staff and faculty, advising and financial aid staff, and
adjunct and full-time faculty. This, too, changed although I could continue to
work with Stringer’s model. In all three models used, people had to be identified,
but in this case I would never know who might be commissioned to carry out any
of these plans.
Stringer’s model involves looking at and describing the situation, which in
this case was a lack of retention, but also changed into a much larger picture of
gaining numbers in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. The next step was
analyzing the problem and finding out what is happening and why. Lastly the
organization needed to act to resolve the problems. When all of this is complete,
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an organization must continue to evaluate the work it has done and the changes it
has made. This is the last step of the Clark and Estes action plan, and it is an
ongoing part of benchmarking. Evaluation always needs valid and reliable data,
and the evaluation study in this case would look at whether there were any change
in retention and whether The University could change its standings in the U.S.
News and World Report rankings.
Benchmarking and Stringer and Clark and Estes’ action plans all rely
heavily on three basic premises: an organization must decide what needs
attention, it must conduct research either within or outside to determine where the
gaps are between goal and actuality, and then it must act to resolve or improve the
problem.
It had been identified that an average of 35% of students who took at least
one class at the university subsequently drop out. These numbers do not include
the students who enroll and pay their fee but never take a course. The literature
shows that in the past eleven years, student attrition rates have run between
twenty-five and forty percent (Tinto, 1993). It appears that our university falls
right in the range of the national average in its retention, but it was of deep
concern for this university for a number of reasons. First, it is a private school
and a great deal of money is lost for each student who drops out. Second,
recruitment is expensive, and it isdess expensive to keep an enrolled student than
to recruit a new one. Third, some of the campuses are fairly small, and every time
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a student is lost, the chance of classes getting canceled rises, which means all
students in a class could get displaced, and they might transfer to another school.
The domino string is fairly short, but the effect is large when, as in the case of
some, there are less than 1000 students taking classes on campus at any given
time.
The problem had been validated by people at the school, but that did not
mean that they really wanted to work to remedy it. Since the Commission on
Student Retention, supported by the president, identified this as a problem
needing attention, it would supposedly be getting attention until the retention rates
increased, and hopefully beyond that. The target retention increase for the
2004/2005 school year was 5 %, but while I was conducting my research, no
changes were made. In changing my methods to include benchmarking, I hoped
that instead of having an increase of a specific percent, The University would rise
in the U.S. News and World Report's rankings of America’s Best Colleges.
Because the people I had been working with decided to keep to themselves
and exclude me, I looked to outside literature for information on the school. On
the front page of The University’s website, is printed a quote that claims the
school has consistently ranked in the top 100 colleges and universities awarding
bachelor’s and master’s degrees. While this information is vague, it is also
untrue. For the 2005 rankings, the school did not even make the fourth tier of the
top 124 schools. Not only had the school consistently had a retention problem, it
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had consistently been sliding in the rankings so that it was finally eliminated. The
U.S. News and World Report (2004) statistics are weighed on many factors, but
the ones that carry the most weight are peer assessment and retention. It was very
clear that faculty at other universities did not think very highly of The University,
and it was also clear that their retention rates were lower than 75% of the schools
listed in this group of 124 colleges.
One of the existing problems was that only the commission was currently
working on this issue. Focus groups still needed to be identified and this would
be done partially through the following recommendations for improvement which
are in the first report the commission wrote in June 2004. These
recommendations were being considered, but nothing would be officially
implemented until the final survey was completed and analyzed. What is
interesting to note is that the commission identified problems that, according to
retention research, could potentially and greatly affect a school’s retention rates.
1. Professionalize all frontline staff through the creation of a tiered
system within types of positions and provide initial and advanced
training systems to promote growth.
2. Give lead faculty members the time and the tools (including access to
the FACEVL screen) to hire, orient, train, mentor, and monitor adjunct
faculty and maintain the quality of their teaching.
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3. Enhance the quality of teaching by part-time faculty by allowing the
best instructors to teach more courses within their area of expertise,
and correspondingly reduce the ratio of part-time to full-time faculty.
4. Provide ongoing teaching enhancement programs for faculty, and a
dedicated website for each course. The website would contain the
standard course syllabus, along with sample course outlines and
materials, that would be helpful to all instructors assigned to teach the
course.
5. Ensure implementation of the Scheduling Issues and Outcomes
document, including the provisions relating to the participation of lead
faculty in short- and long-range scheduling meetings, sequencing of
classes with a program string, cancellation policies and procedures,
course caps, and the like.
6. Design an automated system that will notify students to purchase the
required textbook prior to the first night of class. Until such a system
can be developed, encourage faculty to email students one week before
the start of class.
7. Develop an orientation to enhance student success and retention.
8. Develop a proactive system of communication with students, including
complaint management and strategic advising, and have advisors
devote equal attention and effort to recruitment and retention goals.
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9. Promote a proactive approach of intervention regarding financial aid
and student account issues, and institute a tuition incentive for the
University’s high-performing students.
For the next two months, discontinuing students continued to be contacted
by telephone in order to determine why they left, but most of them could not be
contacted. Because past surveys were inconclusive, there was no prediction of
what the outcomes would be, but once the reasons for discontinuance were
identified, an action plan would be put into place in order to determine how to
raise retention rates. The first step the school personnel had planned was asking
ex-students to identify the problem, but what needed to happen was that all
faculty and staff needed to be asked, which would happen through surveys and
focus groups. Once I added benchmarking to the plan, I could see that the staff
and students might be able to identify what was wrong, but the solution would
probably come through studying a similar institution with much higher retention
rates. No matter which method was used, the evaluator would need to work with
stakeholders/staff on an evaluation that included any and all data that would help
to identify the problem.
The university felt that the people who were needed had already been
gathered in the Commission on Student Retention, headed up by the Vice
^ President for Student Services and overseen by the chancellor and the president of
the university. A group of 18 people served on the commission, but in an
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organization with over 16,000 total students and hundreds of staff members on
each of its 26 campuses, more than 18 people needed to be included in the
evaluation and resolution of the problem.
My original plan included the following, which did not happen, because
dialogue between the school and me was discontinued. The surveys were to be
conducted with 6,000 dropout students across the campuses, and focus groups
were to be identified on at least three campuses of various sizes. Surveys were to
be completed by staff and faculty on all campuses, but it was obvious that a
survey would barely scratch the surface of the problem. A survey may look
impressive, but in this case, all it may be able to answer is why students were
leaving. What needed to happen was to make changes so that students did not
leave, or perhaps different students were needed. These two things are far more
drastic than a survey.
Specific Methodology of Action Research
The first step in the Clark and Estes model is to set goals, which was
completed on a basic level. The president desired a 5 % increase in retention
within one year, but the vice-president of student services was unsure of what he
could guarantee, so he proposed a 3% to 4% increase in retention. This became
the current target, but all of these numbers were unrealistic considering there was
still no solid action plan to discover the cause of high attrition or guarantee these
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results. Both of these were unrealistic considering there was no solid plan to
discover the cause of high attrition. The goal must be there whether action
research or benchmarking is used, but other goals must follow. The next and
most intense step in any of this research was to discover why those goals were not
being met, and this is always done through an analysis. In an organizational
problem, such as this, there exists a gap between what is desired and what is
actually occurring, and the organization must find a way to uncover the cause.
My plan was to identify the cause of the gap through a gap analysis.
Through surveys, record review, and interviews with staff, I would attempt to
diagnose the human causes of student attrition and identify appropriate solutions,
which could be discovered through the benchmarking process.
The third step in action research is to identify the knowledge, motivation,
and organizational barriers to the goal achievement. In this model, there is an
assumption that something is wrong inside the university. We already knew that
the school could not be responsible for, or does not want to be responsible for all
student attrition, but there was a specific (to be identified) amount for which the
school was at fault, and according to Clark and Estes (2002), the problem lay
somewhere within the university. As the researcher, I would attempt to discover
these barriers so that we may knock them down. I needed to “begin by learning
the beliefs and perceptions of the people doing the work” (Clark & Estes, 2002, p.
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45) and finding out what they thought was blocking them from reaching their
goals. I needed to assess what kind of support was needed to fulfill their goals.
Clark and Estes suggested the following in order to achieve this goal:
• Interview groups and individuals.
• Look at work records.
• Observe work processes.
• Collect people’s perceptions about the barriers they face in attempting
to close the gap and achieve their goals.
In the gap analysis, the following must be examined:
People’s knowledge and skills. Do people know how, when, what, why,
where, and who to achieve their performance goals? I would “ask for their views
about the knowledge and skill deficits of other people” (Clark & Estes, 2002,
p. 44), which is general and not naming names. For instance, does someone in
advising know what other advisers are supposed to be doing or are actually
doing?
Their motivation was to achieve the goal, and as the facilitator, I wanted to
help everyone to realize they were doing this for the good of the organization, the
students, and themselves. In order to have a healthy existence within an
organization, the people and the organization must be healthy.
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Organizational Barriers
Through interviews and surveys, we needed to find out if all employees
had been given or possessed the adequate knowledge, motivation, and
organizational support to achieve their work goals, and what, if anything, was
keeping them from doing their job.
During my listening, I determined what kind of support people needed.
The listening must be “openly and fully” (Clark & Estes, 2002, p. 45) so that there
is no misinterpretation and the researcher does not give his or her own ideas.
Patton (1988) , who authored How to Use Qualitative Methods in
Evaluation, discussed questions that the researcher needs to ask. The researcher
needs to consider the following, which have already been answered:
• Who is the information for and who will use the findings?
• What kinds of information are needed?
• How is the information to be used and for what purpose?
• When is it needed?
• What resources are available?
My study from this point on was one of qualitative and quantitative data.
The necessary data to discover what the staff and students think is qualitative, but
the results of the U.S. News and World Report rankings are quantitative. The
■J
researcher would be asking open-ended questions to find out what the problem is.
The quantitative data at The University was already done—how many have
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dropped out, of which programs, and when. In the Clark and Estes model, even
the evaluation is qualitative.
What was unknown was why students dropped out, and comes only after
much questioning from those who dropped out. According to Patton (1988), it is
the job of the evaluator to “capture the richness of people’s experiences in their
own terms.” A researcher is able to understand the true meaning of a situation
only from an in-depth analysis of “detailed descriptions and verbatim quotations”
(p. 10). Patton and Clark and Estes agree that all questioning and evaluation must
be done with no predetermining or prejudging.
Clark and Estes (2002) point out that we need to listen actively and folly
so that we can properly identify the causes of performance gaps, and Patton says
we need to use open-ended questions such as “Can you tell me why you didn’t
come back after your last class?” This permits “the evaluator to understand and
capture the perspective of program participants without predetermining their
perspective through prior selection of questionnaire categories” (Clark & Estes,
2002, p. 11).
The biggest problem was the limited resources in being able to contact all
past students or having them answer truthfully because unless they planned to
return if their situation is remedied, or they simply wanted to help other students,
they had no incentive to answer honestly and folly, if at all. One of the problems,
as shown by the research, is that different types of students leave different
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programs for different reasons. If all students at The University, or any
institution, are treated the same, a psychology student may leave because he did
not feel he had enough engagement with the instructor, while a business student
might leave for an entirely different reason. The reason might be in addition to
any personal or financial struggles a student may have. That means that after it is
discovered why each student dropped out, The University may have had to look
intensely at all relevant programs within the school and assess whether there was
a problem because each program should be taught differently and maybe was not,
according to the needs of its population.
The largest unanswered variable was that it was unknown what would be
found, so we did not know where we needed to look—advising, counseling,
faculty, staff, or financial aid? My assumption was that it would in some part be
all of these, and The University would need to do a cost analysis to decide where
it wanted to put its money for improvement—where was the biggest gap?
The final step in the Clark and Estes model is evaluation. Any action plan
put into place after the research will cost money, and an evaluation must be
conducted for discovery of reliability and validity in the action plan. If it was
discovered that the action plan was both reliable and valid, then The University
should want to continue it. If it were not either or both of these, it would be up to
the president to decide how he wanted to proceed in order to boost his retention
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«
numbers. At a loss of $1,000 per student, per month, there will always be some
area of The University that would benefit from changes made.
Once it was determined that the school did not want my, or anyone else’s
input, I changed methods slightly. I continued to write an improvement plan, but
it would not be submitted to The University. Instead, it can be viewed as a
general plan for increasing retention and benchmarking rankings. The new action
plan consisted of The University using common benchmarking practices to
increase retention and overall effectiveness of the organization. The goal,
according to Alstete (1996), is to provide personnel with an external standard by
which they can measure internal practices in order to discover what can be
changed to increase, in this case, productivity or retention. Benchmarking
attempts to answer the following questions:
How well are we doing compared to others?
How good do we want to be?
Who is doing the best?
How do they do it?
How can we adapt what they do to our institution?
How can we be better than the best?” (Kempner as cited in Alstete, 1996,
p. iv)
These questions'make the process fairly simple for The University. They
were not doing well compared to other universities of any kind. No matter which
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way it is analyzed, the U.S. News and World Report rankings show that this
school was at the bottom. It was already identified that retention was to increase
by at least 5%. Clearly in the West, schools such as Santa Clara and Loyola
Marymount in California were doing the best, and in the fourth tier in the West,
schools such as Concordia University in Oregon and Hope International
University in California were at the top. How they got to the top and stayed at the
top was what would take the most investigation. Once that was known, this
university could adapt it for their own use. Being better than the best was not in
the original plan because they first needed to move into the fourth tier, then the
third, and so on.
It is well known that in order to benchmark, people at an organization
must be willing to open themselves up to scrutiny. This is the first roadblock.
They must examine what is in use at other universities, and in order to do this,
their own practices must be evaluated. Because of an unwillingness to do so, this
was precisely why this school ranked at the bottom, but there would still be a
clear plan for improvement.
The University was certainly not honest with its public, as could be seen
on their website where in 2005 they stated that they were in the top 100
universities. They were not. It was also stated that their freshmen retention was
89%. If this were the case, a retention study certainly would not be needed. This
university needed to leam to be honest with itself and its employees first—then its
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students and stakeholders. Once that took place, they could move forward with
improvement.
The U.S. News and World Report rankings clearly showed that that the
school must improve its peer assessment and retention above all else. These may
go hand in hand. Much of what is proposed in action research overlaps into
benchmarking, and The University would need to begin these processes. The
performance goals were set—improve retention. What was not set was any way
to do that beyond questioning students, which clearly was not enough. The
performance gaps could probably be diagnosed after studying other institutions,
as this university clearly did not know why students were leaving.
The first and most important action is deciding which universities to study.
The best idea is to go directly to the top and study those. Since the goal of the
school should be to climb to the top, that is where they should look. It is obvious
that other schools in the fourth tier of the U.S. News and World Report rankings
were doing better than this one, but not much. The University must choose a
school in the first tier, but it should be one that has similarities, in either its
demographics or its mission. It is no use studying a school that has nothing in
common with this one. There are many universities that strive to serve a diverse
population, and although there were not many that use the one-month format, they
were^out there. If this school really desired to improve retention, they should
have considered possibly lengthening the class time and having students take two
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courses at a time but over eight weeks instead of four. Changes had to be made,
and the college had to be open to change if it was to improve.
Once a study institution was chosen, The University would be forced to
change mindsets and open itself up to scrutiny. The only way to get another
organization to let them be studied is for the original one to talk about its
problems. A business cannot expect another business to share without reciprocity
of ideas. After this choice, a study then needed to be conducted and an analysis
done. The secret would be in having open minds about change. A study is simply
to discover what other colleges are doing right, and in this case, once that is
established, this university could and would be forced to decide what they were
going to change about themselves in order to show improvement.
The methodology of this study looked at the U.S. News and World Report
rankings for 2005 in order for The University to gain some insight into what it
might do better in order to gain better peer assessment scores as well as increase
retention.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
The University, according to those at the top, wanted to improve student
retention, and it needed to change many factors within the school in order to do
that. The committees that were formed wanted to look directly at retention, and
that is all. What needed to happen was that many factors had to be considered.
The school must continually desire to rise in its rankings against other schools.
For the previous 5 years, The University had come in at the bottom of U.S. News
and World Report's “America’s Best Colleges’” rankings. In 2004, the school did
not even make the rankings. U.S. News and World Report broke down the
schools and rankings by North, South, Midwest, and West, and ranked the top
schools. Out of the master’s universities in the West, which number
approximately 125 per year, The University had consistently ranked in the bottom
tier, but in the 2005 rankings, the school did not even make the cut. This was a
sign that many variables at the school were declining.
Each school was ranked on up to 15 variables, or indicators, all carrying
different weight. Table 7 shows each factor used and the weights assigned to
each (U.S. News and World Report, 2004).
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Table 7
Factors Used and Weights Assigned
Factor Percentage
Peer Assessment 25
Retention 25
Faculty Resources 20
Student Selectivity 15
Financial Resources 10
Alumni Giving 5
Over the past five years, The University had averaged 1.8 out of 5.0 on the
Peer Assessment factor and had reported average graduation rates of anywhere
from 14% to 64%. There was no SAT requirement for students, and the
acceptance rate was 100%. These data alone show that the school accepted
anyone who applied and peer universities have a very low opinion of The
University. If the factor of peer assessment is to increase, the other variables must
change. This can happen only if the school changes its caliber of students. As is
stands, there is no minimum acceptance. Anyone who was willing to pay the
money was accepted, which guaranteed the school nothing in return. As long as
the students were in attendance, the school was earning money, but it had no
guarantee that students would finish their program, so there was a constant state
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of recruitment. While most schools were turning away applicants, The University
was recruiting with billboards, mailings, television, Internet, and radio
advertisements because its classes were not full and its students were not finishing
their degree programs. In order for a school to have any guarantee of students
graduating, it must recruit or accept students who have a higher chance of
completion, and these are students who have shown, probably in high school, that
they are good students with the tenacity to finish what they started.
Table 8 shows the benchmarking factors of the 124 schools looked at for
2005 in U.S. News and World Report (2004). These factors are tier, overall score,
peer assessment, freshmen retention, average graduation rate, faculty resources,
percent of classes with 20 or fewer students, percent of classes with 50 or more
students, student/faculty ratio, percent of full time staff, selectivity, SAT or ACT
equivalent scores, percent of freshmen in the top 25% of their high school class,
acceptance rate, financial resources, alumni giving, and average alumni giving.
Table 8 illustrates some of the factors upon which The University might place
increased effort in order to enhance student retention. Two of the most important
were peer assessment and graduation/retention rate.
Table 9 shows both the Pearson and Kendall indices of correlation. The
first two columns show the correlations between various U.S. News and World
Report indices, and the second two columns show the correlations between these
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Table 8
Descriptive Statistics
Variable Mean
Standard
Deviation N
Tier 2.54 1.08 124
Overall Score 48.73 15.91 63
Peer Assessment 2.82 .44 124
Freshman Retention .71 . 1 0 1 2 0
Average Graduation Rate .42 .14 123
Faculty Resources 46.05 32.87 63
Under 20 Students .50 . 2 0 116
Over 50 Students .054 .05 116
Student/Faculty Ratio 16.78 3.99 116
Full Time Staff .76 .14 117
Selectivity 38.46 28.01 63
SAT or ACT 732.69 472.86 117
Freshmen in Top 25% of
High School class
.48 .17 95
Acceptance Rate .74 .16 1 2 1
Financial Resources 45.43 31.48 63
Alumni Giving 42.24 30.14 63
Average Alumni Giving . 1 0 .07 1 1 0
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Table 9
Graduation Predictors
Variable
Freshmen
Retention
Pearson
Freshmen
Retention
Kendalls
taub
Average
Graduation
Rate
Pearson
Average
Graduation
Rate Kendalls
taub
Tier -.702** -.576** -.798** -.677**
Overall .677**
,494**
.895** .694**
Peer Assessment .618**
4 4 9 **
.669** .438**
Faculty Resources -.059 -.060 -.223 -.125
Percent Classes
under 2 0
-.150 -.058 .048 .087
Percent Classes
over 50
-.061 -.033 -.289**
_ 1 7 7 **
Student/Faculty
Ratio
-.123 -.130 -.358** -.270**
Percent Full time
Faculty
-.013 -.061 - . 0 2 1 -.043
Selectivity Rank -.402** -.383** -.654**
_ 514**
SAT/ACT 25,h-75th .577** .487** .487**
_ 514**
Freshman Top 25% .702** .543** .730** .584**
Acceptance Rate -.298** -.227** -.149 -.136
Financial Resources
-✓
- . 2 2 0 -.192 -.409** -.298**
Note. ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
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same indices and institutional graduation rates. The data show that the following
variables are significant (p < .01) predictors of Freshmen Retention: Tier, Peer
Assessment, Selectivity Rank, SAT/ACT Scores, Freshmen in Top 25% of High
School Class, and Acceptance Rate. For Average Graduation Rate, the following
are significant: Tier, Peer Assessment, Student/Faculty Ratio, Selectivity Rank,
SAT/ACT Scores, Freshmen in Top 25% of Class, and Financial Resources.
The only differences in the two variables are that acceptance rate is a
significant predictor of freshmen retention but not predictors of graduation rate.
Large class size, student/faculty ratio, and financial resources are significant
predictors of graduation rate but not of freshmen retention. Not shown is the
strong correlation between freshman retention and graduation rate (r = .827).
In conclusion, two broad categories of variables predict both freshman
retention and graduation rate in this population of 124 Masters Universities in the
Western United States: institutional reputation (as indicated by the tier
classification and peer ratings) and institutional selectivity (as indicated by the
selectivity rank, SAT/ACT, and the percentage of freshman in the top 25% of
their high school class). Along the same lines, acceptance rate is a significant
predictor of freshman retention rate. Perhaps, most importantly, the best predictor
of graduation rate is freshman retention rate, suggesting that the best way to
enhance an institution’s graduation rate is to work on the problem of freshman
retention first.
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These data suggest that The University’s current policy of calling students
to find out why they left is not enough. Instead, a different kind of student than is
currently attending must be recruited and the institution academic reputation must
be enhanced.
Although correlation does not prove causation, it is likely that The
University could increase both freshman retention and graduation rates by
targeting the strongest correlates as shown in Table 8 . Specifically, The
University should devote resources to:
• Move to a higher U.S. News and World Report tier.
• Enhance their academic reputation among peer institutions.
• Require and use the ACT or SAT to screen applicants.
• Recruit students who graduate in the top 25% of their high school class
Benchmarking Analysis
Clark and Estes (2002) and many other authors suggest that realistic
organization goals be set to drive organizational improvement. Accordingly, the
U.S. News and World Report data can be used to inform such goal-setting. Tables
10 and 11 show the retention and graduation rates broken down by U.S. News and
World Report tiers. Tables 12 and 13 show the ANOVA results for both
outcomes. The findings clearly indicate that retention rates and graduation rates
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correlate significantly (p < .05) with a school’s tier rating, that is higher retention
and graduation rates are associated with higher-tier institutions.
Table 10
Freshmen Retention Rate by U.S. News and World Report Tier
Tier N Mean
Standard
Deviation
Standard
Error
1 25 .82 .06 .0 1
2 38 .74 .07 .0 1
3 29 .67 .08 .0 1
4 28 .63 .07 .0 1
Total 1 2 0 .71 . 1 0 .0 1
Table 11
Graduation Rate by U.S. News World Report Tier
Tier N Mean
Standard
Deviation
Standard
Error
1 25 .62 .08 . 0 2
2 38 .44 .06 .0 1
3 29 .36 .08 .01470
4 31 .30 .08 .01481
Total 123 .42 .14 .01218
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Table 12
Analysis o f Variance fo r Freshmen Retention
Group
Sum of
Squares Df
Mean
Square F Sig
Between Groups
.54 3 .18 39.01 .0005
Within Groups
.54 116 .0 1
Total
1.08 119
Table 13
Analysis o f Variance for Graduation Rate
Group
Sum of
Squares Df
Mean
Square F Sig
Between Groups 1.55 3 .52 90.29 .0005
Within Groups . 6 8 119 .0 1
Total 2.23 1 2 2
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Tables 10 and 11 show that each tier has a higher level of retention and
graduation than the one below it. Based on the 2004 data, once a school enters a
higher tier, the retention rate will increase accordingly. Along the same lines,
once a school enters a higher tier, the graduation rate will increase accordingly.
A school such as The University that hovers between the fourth tier and not
making the rankings at all needs to set a benchmark, starting with 63 %, which is
the average for tier four. From there, it can aspire to move up by increasing that
to 67 %, and so on. A similar process of benchmarking can be used for
graduation rate. The University must, if it desires to improve retention and
graduation, set realistic benchmarks and choose to improve as many factors as
possible, which, if done correctly, will allow The University to meet these
benchmarks. Table 12 presents the analysis of variance for freshmen retention
and Table 13 presents the analysis of variance for graduation rate.
My original action plan was to work in a bubble on student retention, and
this would be done by contacting students and working with staff to discover
exactly why students were leaving the university. When this action plan was put
into place, the necessary individuals seemed more than willing to work on this,
and they agreed to outside help. Since the action plan was written, those
individuals changed their minds and decided they did not want anyone from the
outside looking in. It was a well known fact around The University that everyone
was very quiet about what goes on inside the school, and they were unwilling to
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speak even to people at other universities like theirs because of a fear of someone
stealing their ideas. This was ironic since the school had consistently placed in
the fourth tier of the rankings and in 2004 did not even make the fourth tier. This
proves that things were getting worse, not better.
What has been written is an action plan that The University should adopt,
but probably will not, but it is also one that any school wanting to improve can
and should adopt. The method chosen for this action plan is based on the U.S.
News and World Report's “America’s Best Colleges 2005” school rankings.
Specifically studied were the western schools as that is where this university falls.
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CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
Student attrition in universities or colleges has always been a problem, and
just like any business striving to keep its customers, universities and colleges
strive to keep their students. When customers leave, the business loses money.
Colleges and universities are no different, especially private ones. Schools offer
services to students in the form of an education, and students usually have many
options when choosing the place from which they would like to receive their
degree. Since attrition is a problem, college personnel, psychologists, researchers,
and many others are constantly searching for reasons students drop out and to
prevent it whenever possible and feasible.
For years people have been trying to discover what causes students to
leave an institution of higher learning and prevent this ongoing situation. Some of
the most relied upon research was conducted by Tinto (1975), beginning in 1975,
who based his work on Spady (1971) and Durkheim’s (1996) earlier research that
spanned more than colleges. Early researchers wanted to know why people gave
up in general, often resulting in suicide. Since then other researchers have relied
upon Tinto’s model of student departure from institutions of higher learning. This
model consists of pre-entry attributes that a student brings to college. They
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include family background, skills and abilities, and prior schooling. Then,
students come to college with goals such as their intentions, their goal
(graduation, certificate, etc.), and commitments to both their chosen institution
and external factors in their lives. Once inside the academic community, students
have institutional experiences such as their academic performance, extracurricular
activities, and peer-group interactions. This is followed by their academic and
social integration into the new lifestyle, which affects their goals and
commitments again, and this ends in a decision by the student to stay or leave.
Since Tinto (1975) began his student departure research, many others have
followed suit because student attrition continues to be a problem. Braxton,
Sullivan, and, Johnson (1997) refer to students dropping out as the departure
puzzle. Tinto’s belief is that when students drop out of college, it is because not
enough is being done to keep them. They may leave because the fit was not right
for them, but the university can adjust its practices to make a better fit. This is
precisely what The University would need to do—adjust its practices to make a
better fit for more students.
Obviously all students who enter college have a reason for doing so. If
they leave, they also have reason for that. Colleges want to recruit students who
make the best fit between the institution and the students’ lives, and colleges want
to keep students who start a program at their school. It is an accepted fact in the
academic community that not all students belong in college, for various reasons,
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and it is also accepted that not all students belong at The University, but this
school had a mission of educating all students, and when the dropout rate got too
high, there was cause for concern. The school needed to know why more students
were not staying to finish their goal.
This study looked at one particular college, called The University, which
had identified student retention as an area needing attention. The researcher
attempted to help the school with the problem by offering an action plan that this
university, or any other, could follow and use as a roadmap to increase retention.
This university was a for-profit business, so financial stability was extremely
important, and this stability was not possible without students/customers. What
had to be discovered was a way to keep the students it had and gain more to fill
the empty seats. The mission of the school was to educate all students regardless
of background, financial status, and education, which meant the school personnel
had to find a way to get the right students and still fulfill the mission.
The U.S. News and World Report’ s America’s Best Colleges 2005 edition
was examined in order to gain insight into how The University measured up to
other schools in the western part of the United States. The findings showed that
the chosen university measured very poorly and, in fact, did not make the 2005
rankings, which meant something was going veiy wrong because it did make the
rankings the previous five years. It is obvious by studying the results of the 2005
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U.S. News and World Report data that this university fell short of over 100
colleges in the western states, but does that matter, and what can be done about it?
A close examination of the rankings showed that the school was lacking in
many areas that directly correlated to high student retention and graduation rates.
Among these were peer assessment, or what personnel at other colleges think of
this university, and student selectivity—whom the college admits. The peer
assessment scores for The University were consistently very low—below 2 out of
a possible 5—and this needed to change. There would need to be changes in
other areas in order to drive the peer scores up, and this might come in the student
demographics, the hiring of better teachers, or simply the business practices of the
school. By examining the rankings and comparing this university to others in the
same area, it could easily be seen that there was much work for this college to do
in order to increase its retention rates.
Originally the school faculty wanted simply to interview students to find
out why they had left, but it became abundantly clear during the study that once
students left, they either could not, or did not, want to be contacted and
questioned. It also became clear that while it is always a good idea to ask
customers what the company is doing wrong or right, it was not enough just to
interview past students. Some of the basic reasons students left, such as financial
and personal reasons, were already known, and many of these factors were out of
the control of the university. What really needed to be known was what was
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being done (wrong) to make them leave. The University should look only at
factors that were controllable by the institution or the choice of students admitted.
Part of the problem was that The University admitted anyone who applied
and had the money or financial aid to pay the monthly tuition. This is akin to a
landlord renting a house without performing a background or credit check on an
applicant. Without a look at the students’ backgrounds, or track records, there
was no guarantee that they would stay. Many students were simply shopping for
the best fit, which may mean the easiest classes and not the best education. If
students liked the fact that classes were offered at night and each class was
completed in 30 days, they would sign up because the schedule seemed feasible.
While it is expected that adult students will look for a program that fits into their
schedule, if they also want the easiest program and they find they do not get that,
they will leave. This is what Tinto (1975) refers to as goal commitment: a
student who is truly goal oriented will ride the ups and downs in order to receive
the final goal (a diploma), while a student whose commitment is not so high will
leave when the resistance is too great. This could possibly be avoided by seeking
out and admitting students with a stronger goal commitment, hopefully, in light of
the school’s mission, regardless of how they performed in high school.
This school also had no form of evaluation for adjunct instructors other
than student evaluations, which can be highly unreliable. If one oriwo students in
a class were disgruntled because they did not receive the grade they wanted, not
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necessarily deserved, they could drastically pull down an instructor’s overall
rating, which meant a strong instructor may lose a position due to a few
disgruntled students, and a weak instructor, who gave high grades so as to earn
high evaluations, would go unnoticed by the administration and continue to teach.
Many students did not even complete the evaluations, and often these were the
students who had no complaints and would increase the evaluation scores.
On top of relying on students for instructor evaluation, this university had
a large percentage of adjunct faculty. Research shows that colleges with more
full-time faculty usually have better retention rates than those with a high number
of adjunct staff. Often this is simply because adjunct faculty are juggling many
balls to equate to a full-course load, and this means traveling, not having office
space, and often teaching more classes than full-time faculty teach. The hiring of
adjuncts is also often less rigorous, as was the case at this college, so the quality
of the teachers may suffer. One of the biggest problems this causes is not having
consistency throughout the university. When instructors show up to teach a class
only a few times a year and do not have any academic contact with other staff
members, there is going to be a lack of coherence that would not be there if the
majority of the staff were on campus full-time. As shown by the U.S. News and
World Report rankings, it appears that what peer university staff members think
of a university is a far better measure than what its students think. Obviously the
customers/students know what is happening in a classroom, but they may not like
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it for personal reasons, not academic reasons, and one negative piece of feedback
can taint the whole picture.
There was no question that the most important factor in this college
staying in business was student retention. The school was losing money at a pace
that was not good for business, and someone needed to find a way to gain and
keep more students.
What the researcher looked at, and wrote an action plan for, was ways to
improve the school overall. Peer assessment and student selectivity directly
correlate to higher retention rates, but the action plan showed The University how
to go about increasing productivity overall through benchmarking. This
university needed to open itself up to possible scrutiny by taking a deep look into
what other successful schools were doing. This, in turn, could and probably
would have many positive effects for the college.
Discussion
Benchmarking research, like student retention research, was first
introduced for an area other than education. In this case, it was for the business
world so that businesses could stay on top of the competition. Although there
were hundreds of universities in the geographic area of The University, there were
only a few others that offered evening courses in a monthly format, and they were
all private, for-profit institutions. This school had found a niche for working
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students, and now it needed to discover how to lure and keep students by being
the best in the industry.
Benchmarking as we know it today was developed in the early 1980s at
the Xerox Corporation as a direct result of competition, and it is used to compare
a business to others that are doing well in order to increase its own business. As
with The University, once other similar businesses came into being, competition
stiffened and customers had a choice of where to put their money.
Researchers such as Alstete (1996), Bender & Schuh (2002), Camp
(1989), Jackson & Lund (2000), and Kempner (1993), have written volumes on
benchmarking, mostly specific to education. They all agree on certain principles
such as why and how benchmarking can and should be used in education. It is
mainly a tool for education leaders so that they can identify if and how well their
institutional goals and objectives are being met. The researchers agree that this
involves studying, or benchmarking, other properly-chosen institutions and, in
doing so, some of the following questions will be answered: How well an
institution is doing compared to others and who is doing it the best, how good
does it want to be, how do other institutions do it, and how can the practices be
adapted into our own organization, and finally, how can we be better than the best
(Kempner, 1993).
In order for benchmarking to work in any organization, the institution
performing it must agree to perform certain steps, including the following:
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identify what is to be benchmarked and which comparative companies will be
studied; determine the method of data collection; determine a current performance
gap, usually between the goals and objectives; project future performance levels;
communicate these to others and find a (willing) organization to study; develop
action plans and study the other organization(s); adapt and integrate findings; and
continually assess and reassess and possibly recalibrate the benchmarks (Alstete,
1996; Camp, 1989).
The largest obstacle in the action plan for The University was that they did
not like to share information with anyone for fear that someone would steal their
ideas. This is ironic since they had recently fallen off the list of “America’s Best
Colleges” and had admitted, to themselves, that they did indeed have an attrition
problem.
In order for anything to get better, according to the benchmarking
literature, this university would first have to agree to talk to others about its
problem. This would be the first step in gaining confidence with peers, which
would raise the peer assessment scores and, in turn, pull the school up through the
rankings, beginning with putting it back in the top 100. Potential students do read
“America’s Best Colleges,” and if this university is not on the list, many potential
students are lost. Well-respected businesses have more customers than those with
less respect, and this respect-and reputation brings in customers who bring in
more customers by way of referrals. This would probably also cause the school to
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recruit stronger faculty and staff because employees also search for well-respected
places to work.
Although the school had a mission to educate everyone, it needed to admit
students who were committed to their goals. The population was mostly an adult
one, and people do change once they leave high school. Students who may not
have been goal-committed in high school may become so in later years, but there
needed to be some selectivity in admitting students. Once the student population
began to improve, this would, as stated earlier, continue to drive the student
population up both in terms of numbers and quality. Once a higher quality
student (one who was goal-oriented) was admitted, the level of service would
increase to satisfy that population. All of this, in turn, would increase revenues.
Unfortunately, many limitations were discovered in this study. The
biggest roadblock was the fact that the personnel did not want to discuss anything
about the college to anyone, and this is always a bad sign in any business.
Benchmarking is difficult when an organization wishes to keep to itself and not
seek help from similar businesses. That will need to be overcome before any
improvements can be made. Second, despite calling itself a non-profit agency,
The University was for-profit, which imposed limits such as public funding. That
simply meant that it was entirely up to the college to raise money, and it could not
look elsewhere for help. The fact that The University’s mission was to educate all
students limited their admitting only the top students, which the research shows
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would help, but as discussed, there was still the possibility for improvement even
with their type of demographic. Finally, it seemed that no one at the top really
wanted to change the practices, which limits any possible improvement in any
organization.
Recommendations
Many recommendations can be made, but it is the choice of the
organization to heed the suggestions. In this case, I recommend the following:
The University must:
• Conduct research of other, higher ranking universities.
• Analyze the data for steps to increase peer assessment and retention
levels.
• Adapt the findings to their own school.
• Stop being afraid of their information falling into others’ hands.
First, this organization would have to determine its goals and decide
whom to benchmark. The first place to look is the 2005 U.S. News and World
Report rankings of western universities, third tier. In it there are 31 colleges or
universities all offering bachelors and masters programs. This is where The
University needs to first concentrate its efforts. The lowest peer assessment score
in this tierls 2.1 and the highest is 3.2—all higher than The University’s score
had been for the past 5 years. Six of the universities are California State
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Universities and none apparently worked on the monthly class format. The
average graduation rate of these schools ranged from 25% to 54%, and the
average acceptance rate was from 46% to 100%. In some cases, these schools did
not appear to be much different from The University, but we know that The
University admits all students who can pay the bill, and its peer assessment score
is much lower. The best place to start would be to choose a school with similar
demographics but one that performed better with graduation rates. The U.S. News
and World Report (2004) rankings for the previous 5 years show The University’s
average graduation rate anywhere from not available, to 14%, to a high of 26%,
so the administration could choose any school in the third tier to benchmark and it
would have better retention rates.
It is a solid and attainable goal that The University could increase its
retention rates to a graduation rate of 35% in 3 years by partaking in a
benchmarking study with another university. This would more than cover what
the administration had suggested—a range of 3% to 20%. The best choice of
which school to benchmark was either California Baptist College or Simpson
College. Both of these were private California schools with peer assessment
scores at or above 2.5. The lowest graduation rate was at Simpson College
(48%), and the average SAT score for both schools was below 1010, which was a
fairly average SAT score. The acceptance rate at California Baptist was 84%,
comparable to that of The University’s.
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90
If The University began the benchmarking process for fiscal year 2005, it
could quite possibly reach its goals in 3 years. There would probably be an
increase in retention rates in the first year once it was discovered what other
colleges were doing, but it often takes time to implement changes, and any
organization will get discouraged if it sets its bar too high and then falls short of
its goals. The president of The University asked for a fairly immediate 5%
increase in retention, and this would certainly exceed his expectations.
Benchmarking these schools would give The University some insight into
how to successfully recruit and retain students. It would never be feasible to ask
for SAT scores at a university that is made up of adult learners, but there could be
an entrance exam. If the school insisted upon admitting most or all students, it
would have to also put into place a strong remediation program for students who
could not pass or do well on the entrance exam. If a school is willing accept all
students who apply, it must be willing to educate them if that is what the students
truly want, and this means offering enough services to meet the needs of all
students. This would mean an added expense, but if it also meant an increase in
student numbers, then everybody would win. Once the word got around that not
only did The University accept all students, but it also successfully educated
them, the number of students wanting to enroll would increase and this would, in
turn, increase the number of students who stayed to complete their goal.
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91
In order for The University to meet any of its goals, including the goal of
educating all students regardless of background, financial status, and education,
the school would need financial stability, but in order to gain this, many changes
would have to be made. Based on the research, one seemingly obvious answer to
the problem of attrition was to get students who were committed to their goals. In
a standard college, this meant students who start with better statistics such as high
SAT scores and being the top of their high school class, but in this case it could
simply mean finding students who were goal-committed. The University needed
to drastically change its reputation with everyone, including peers, faculty,
students, and future students. It might be a long road, but it is one that is drivable.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
92
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Asset Metadata

Creator Curtis, Sarah (author)

Core Title Increasing student retention through benchmarking and organizational improvement

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag education, guidance and counseling,education, higher,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Hocevar, Dennis (committee chair), Cohn, Carl (committee member), Thomas, Glen (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-387933

Unique identifier UC11336781

Identifier 3180491.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-387933 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3180491.pdf

Dmrecord 387933

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Curtis, Sarah

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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