The State of RETENTION

Black Issues in Higher Education, Oct 14, 1999 by Ronald Roach

AUSTIN, Texas -- In the academic world, where importance in the institutional pecking order often can be measured by how much money officials are willing to spend on a certain program, rarely a peep is heard these days about retention.

College and university administrators traditionally have preferred to spend their money on a much flashier issue -- recruitment of new students -- rather than its ho-hum poorer cousin, retention.

But here in the land of Hopwood, at the nation's largest institution, University of Texas at Austin administrators are taking a keen interest in keeping the minority students they do manage to attract despite setbacks caused by the court case.

University officials say they've poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into retention efforts such as the five-year-old Gateway program, which will provide tutoring, academic advising and peer counseling to 180 incoming freshmen for two years.

"There's more interest on our campus for retention programs," says Dr. Margarita Arellano, the 50,000-student university's associate dean of students for retention, adding that most of those were launched in the past five years.

Currently, nearly one in seven freshman students here at the University of Texas at Austin participate in some sort of retention program. Still, Arellano insists that "we are not reaching as many students as we should."

Higher education experts around the country agree that interest in student retention has reached an all-time high. Yet there is a growing frustration among retention experts in the field that many colleges and universities either lack the will or the funds to develop truly effective programs.

"There's only a small number of schools that have viable retention models," says Dr. James Anderson, vice provost for undergraduate affairs and professor of counselor education at North Carolina State University. "Most schools have retention efforts and activities. There's a real difference between schools that are models and others."

Anderson and other experts on the subject contend that higher education's commitment to retention is complicated further by an impending enrollment boom on American campuses and an increasingly more hostile climate in the United States toward anything and everything associated with affirmative action.

Dr. John Gardner, the former director of the nationally regarded First Year Experience program at the University of South Carolina, says there's a misconception that retention efforts are solely intended for minorities.

In fact, he says, most retention programs benefit all students but the current climate inhibits schools from expanding their programs. "The majority of students who benefit from retention efforts are White," Gardner says.

Gardner, now a senior fellow of the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, believes many schools have failed to build retention programs that will keep clip with student enrollment increases.

A record 14.9 million Americans enrolled in higher education courses this fall -- a figure projected to jump 10 percent in the next 10 years, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

And Education Department officials say that enrollment leap of 1.5 million more students between 1999 and 2009 will come at a time when many colleges and universities already are at full capacity.

"The numbers of students on campus are up, but there'll be significant attrition if more isn't done to support those increases," Gardner says.

Nevertheless, Jamie Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, D.C., contends that colleges and universities' commitment to retention seems to be holding steady.

"I haven't seen any evidence that institutions are reducing their commitment to retention," Merisotis says, pointing to a $65 million funding increase that Congress approved last year for federal TRIO programs as evidence.

The additional funding includes a $30 million increase in outreach, counseling and educational support through TRIO and a new $35 million initiative to help disadvantaged students. Part of that money will fund the Educational Opportunity Program, which sponsors campus-based initiatives designed to improve access and retention of low-income and educationally disadvantaged students.

Dr. Gwendolyn J. Dungy, executive director of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, concurs that institutions' commitment to student retention has not lessened.

However, she acknowledges that retention programs are not as high on the priority list of the nation's college and university administrators because the market is flush with Americans clamoring to get into college.

"We're in a different climate now than when institutions were struggling to maintain their enrollments," Dungy says, adding that retention remains an important issue "whatever the prevailing climate."

Dr. Randi Levitz, co-founder and senior executive of Noel-Levitz, a national enrollment management and retention consulting company, agrees. Having consulted with more than 600 colleges and universities on retention matters, Noel-Levitz has seen consistent growth in institutional demand for retention consulting, according to Levitz.