Retention
Opinions on matters of interest to the university and higher education.
Share your thoughts on this topic or other issues with the provost.
Retention is part of a set of issues that includes persistence and time to degree. By all measures the Knoxville campus does poorly in these areas. Currently we graduate fewer than 40% of our students in four years, and we graduate fewer than 60% in six years. From our 1999 cohort only 33.5% graduated in eight terms and 57.2% in twelve terms. Previous cohorts look much the same, although we did break the 60% barrier with the 1997 (61.5%) and 1998 (60.9%) cohorts. Women graduate at a significantly higher rate than men in four, five and six-year data. Tennessee residents do slightly better than out-of-state students. As one might expect, graduate rates increase with higher ACT and high school GPAs. We do poorly in graduate rates compared to our peers: in 2003 the peer average for six-year graduation was 71.82%; UT was at 58.8%. While in 1997 we could still boast that we had higher rates than LSU and Kentucky, by 2003 only LSU fell below UT, and it appears to be rapidly closing the gap.
One of the keys to our poor time-to-degree statistics is our retention rate: if a significant number of students is leaving the campus, it will be impossible to have a good graduate rate for that cohort. It should therefore come as no surprise that we do poorly with retention rates, especially from the first to the second, and from the second to the third year of college. From 2003-2004 UTK retained only 78% of its students from the freshman to the sophomore year. Even if we ignore premier public institutions, such as Berkeley (96%), the University of Virginia (97%), and the University of North Carolina (95%), we still do not rank favorably among our peers. Florida (93%), Texas Austin (92%), Maryland College Park (92%), North Carolina State (90%), and Georgia (93%), which are in the THEC peer group all retain at greater than 90%. Texas A&M (89%), Virginia Tech (87%), LSU (84%) and Auburn (84%), also THEC peers, rank at least five percentage points above UTK. Only Kentucky among our peers in 2004 was at the same level as UT.
Disheartening is the fact that our retention rates have not changed over the past decade or so, and that even the advent of the lottery scholarship students has not significantly altered the dismal picture. Looking at the years 1992-2004, we find only one year in which retention was above 80%, in 1992. In all subsequent years retention fluctuated between 75% and 80%. The addition of better students with lottery scholarships has increased retention rates slightly in the past two years for which we have data, but the average retention rate for 03-04 and 04-05 is still below the average retention rate for the years 1992 and 1993, when the students we admitted were performing at significantly lower levels.
Breaking down the data into different categories, we can see that women are retained at a higher rate than men, that over a longer period of time blacks are retained at a slightly higher rate than whites, and that students entering with higher ACT scores and high school GPAs are retained at rates significantly above those with lower ACT scores and high school GPAs. But even in the groups that retain at the highest levels, we still do not reach the level of retention that is the average retention rate for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and North Carolina State. In 2004 we only retained 88.4% of our students who entered with a high school GPA of 3.5 or better and 88.5% of students who achieved above a 30 on their ACT. Clearly the problems are not restricted to those students who have poor academic preparation.
Scope of the Problem
Retention from the first to the second year is a large problem for several reasons. As mentioned above, it is obvious that if we are losing a large number of students from the first to the second year, then our four, five and six-year graduate rates will never be very good. In fact, if we look at the years 1996-2000, we find that 40%-50% of students who eventually do not obtain a degree leave in their first year, and two-thirds to three-quarters have departed by the end of the second year. Moreover, the poor retention rates mean that we are wasting resources that could be put to other purposes. If over 20% of the students are leaving after their first year, we are wasting their time and energy, the time and energy of the faculty and staff on the campus, and the resources that they consume while they are students for one or two semesters. Finally, poor retention rates figure in our institutional ranking, placing us below institutions we should be ranked above if we were to consider only the quality of the faculty and the research they do.
Unfortunately we do not have very much reliable data on why students choose to leave. The last “Non- Returning Students Survey” was taken in 2002, and it is not very helpful in finding answers. It had a response rate of 25%, and it involved only students who left after one term. When students were asked why they left UT, the greatest single reason given was “other” (34%). 17% claimed a change in personal life; 9% claimed UT did not meet expectations; 8% indicated they had taken all the coursework they needed (?!). When asked what UT could have provided to retain them, the plurality answered with “other.” 14% indicated that UT should have more concern with academic issues such as class availability and advising; 10% said UT should provide advisors and teachers who make an effort to get to know students. Many indicated they plan to return to UT (35%), but we know that a large percentage of this group does not return. In rating various aspects of academic life, students appeared to be vaguely dissatisfied with advising and advisors, but the responses do not reveal much except generally weak positive and slightly negative sentiments toward aspects of life and education at UT. Strangely enough 76% of the respondents reported that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with their overall experience at UT. The survey thus does not give us a lot of indication of what we should do to improve retention.
We should have more accurate data by next year. One of the performance funding standards for UT is student persistence (standard 3), and we should be collecting more differentiated data this year. In addition, Institutional Research has agreed to resume the non-returning-students survey, which we will design differently to get at issues more central to our concerns.
Interim Strategies
In the meantime, however, it would be foolish simply to wait for more information. There are a number of measures that are almost certain to have an impact on student retention, and the longer we hesitate to do something in these areas, the longer our record for retention, and hence our performance in graduation rates, will be weak.
1) Advising and Counseling: The Student Success Center has indicated that it intends to put into place a program that will deal with students who do poorly and are under review. By intervening in the academic lives of our poorest performers, we may be able to assist them in their studies, placing them on the path to success. The Success Center will also implement an experimental learning community, a strategy that has a proven track record of improving retention. These efforts are welcome, but they do not exhaust the possibilities of advising and counseling. No doubt we will want to invest more in these crucial areas in the coming years.
2) First-year Seminars: I believe we should implement a first-year seminar program based on the model with which I am familiar at Berkeley. Faculty members would be asked to teach a one-credit course (one hour per week) for a stipend that would go to a research account for them (I’m thinking of $1500 per course; only one stipend allowed per term). They could use the stipend for any research-related expense or for entertainment of the students in the course. The seminars would be given on a credit/no credit basis. Faculty members could teach any topic they choose; they don’t have to stick with topics in their discipline. They should do something in which they have genuine interest, and in which the students will likely have an interest as well. The enrollment should be limited to 20 students per seminar. The advantage of such a program is that it will bring faculty members in contact with students during the first year, while at the same time supplying faculty with much needed research funding.
3) GPA Requirements for Entering Majors (Progression Requirements): Currently many majors across the campus require a GPA for entering and graduating that is above what the campus considers acceptable (2.0), or they require grades in courses above the level of C for entrance into the major. These restrictive requirements have the effect of eliminating a significant number of majors for many students and hence discouraging them about their future at UT. Many of these restrictive requirements were evidently not introduced because of limitations on capacity, but rather “to increase the quality of the major.” Certainly some majors need to have restrictions where capacity is an issue, especially where it is related to accreditation. But restrictions need to be carefully approved on a case-by-case basis, and we should seek to address capacity issues, whenever possible, with budgetary measures, not with restrictions on students. Furthermore, placing entrance restrictions on majors strikes me as an abrogation of our mission as educators: anyone can teach the B+ and A student; the real educator is one who can also address the concerns, and fire the enthusiasm, of the B- and C student. To correct this situation I have asked the deans to contact their departments and to ask them to roll back restrictions to entrance and graduation in majors to the level off “good standing” (2.0), and to have units request exceptions only on the basis of genuine issues of capacity. Moreover, there are many ways to restrict the number of majors, when restriction is necessary: raising the GPA requirement for entrance and graduation is only one way to achieve a limitation on the total number of majors.
4) Science Education: Currently there is a lack of coordination among science departments that causes difficulties for students in their initial year. A more ordered curriculum would very likely assist retention. However, even if there were no confusion among students and no impact on retention, it would be preferable to have a more sequenced science curriculum, especially for majors in the biological sciences. Students could have more reasonable schedules; introductory courses in the various sciences could be pitched at providing knowledge necessary for subsequent courses and the subsequent courses could count on students having a certain amount of knowledge from previous coursework. I have requested that we assemble the relevant departmental representatives and begin discussion of a science sequence.
5) Retention Task Force. We have several individuals on campus who have expertise in retention, and we are in need of data, reasons, and ideas on retention. Some of these individuals are members of the staff; others are faculty members who have worked on issues of retention in their research. To move forward with retention and to impact eventually time to degree and general persistence I have asked Ruth Darling of the Student Success Center to assemble a task force on retention that will examine the situation and suggest remedies. Individuals from various parts of the institution will be members of this task force.
Future Directions
After I have received more data from the various surveys and from the performance evaluation for standard 3, and after I have heard from the task force on retention, I can develop plans for other measures we can take. One important area to consider will be Student Affairs. We will want to see whether we can integrate any academic programs (including the freshmen seminars) with housing or dining, and whether there are any campus initiatives we can undertake to foster a “culture of belonging” at and to UT. One example of what has been done on other campuses is clusters of courses built around common housing (the floor in a residence hall, for example). Another possible avenue for consideration involves electronic communities. Right now Facebook is extremely popular with undergraduates. Could we not try to establish electronic communities that might even lead to non-electronic communities and that might make the students feel part of something going on at UT? Brice or people in his shop may have some ideas about such an initiative. These are two areas in which we might be able to make progress in the future.
I see the effort to improve in the area of retention as a campus affair involving almost all parts of UT. We will count on publicity to help us get out the message about programs and to “market” programs internally to students and the campus community. We will need development to assist in funding these programs since we will likely not be able to shoulder the entire burden from funding sources currently available to us. Finance and Administration will have to assist us with creative thinking on campus funds and on how to set up research accounts efficiently in departments for faculty members.
Although I am committed to playing a large role in this effort, I am going to be counting on my new Vice Provost, once that person is appointed, to be the point person in the central administration for the issues of retention, persistence, and time to degree.
07 Nov. 2006
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