First-Year Students Who Engage Also Persist

Sadly, many college students fail to complete their degrees. For example, only 60% of students entering a bachelor’s degree-granting institution earn a degree within six years (U.S. Department of Education, 2018). Compared to graduates, students who drop out tend to earn less, are more likely to default on student loans, and have lower life satisfaction on average. Low degree-completion rates are also costly to institutions that invested in students through financial aid and other forms of subsidy, and must recruit new students to replace those who leave. Because colleges and universities can stem the tide of student attrition by emphasizing aspects of the student experience that matter to retention, we examined the relationship between engagement in the first year and a student’s likelihood of returning to campus the following fall term.

We obtained student-level persistence data (spring 2018 to fall 2018) for a sample of first-year students from 75 institutions that participated in a study funded by the ACUHO-I Research and Education Foundation examining students’ living arrangements. These institutions were diverse in terms of size, sector, student body, and Carnegie Classification, reflecting the diversity of four-year public and private, not-for-profit institutions nationally. Institutional persistence rates ranged from 53% to 98%, with a median of 92%. (These persistence rates are higher than what is typically reported because they focus on spring to fall, not fall to fall, persistence.) We compared persisters and nonpersisters on NSSE Engagement Indicators (EIs; see pp. 14–15), two key academic challenge items, and two factors from the living arrangements study.

Results show that all 10 Engagement Indicators as well as the other four measures were positively related to persistence, but the magnitude of the relationships varied (Figure 10). Among EIs, Quality of Interactions and Supportive Environment had the strongest relationship with persistence, while the differences for Higher-Order Learning, Reflective & Integrative Learning, Quantitative Reasoning, Collaborative Learning, and Effective Teaching Practices were nontrivial, but lesser in magnitude. Students who persisted also spent more time preparing for class and were more likely to believe their institution emphasizes spending significant amounts of time on academic work. What’s more, students who returned to the institution exhibited greater levels of financial well-being as well as belongingness and safety. These results demonstrate the vital role of the student experience in promoting persistence to the second year of college.

In addition, we examined potential reasons for departure using data from 17 institutions in the study that also participated in NSSE’s First-Year Experiences and Senior Transitions Topical Module. This module asks first-year students whether they had considered leaving the institution and if so, to indicate reasons why. Among students who did not return for the second year, the two most-cited reasons were financial concerns and personal reasons (46% and 41% respectively; Figure 11). About one in three cited campus climate, location, or culture, and about one quarter identified inadequate social opportunities, relationships with other students, or “other academic issues” as a reason for considering leaving. Overall, these results highlight the diversity of reasons why students leave college and the need for multifaceted solutions to improve college persistence.

The need to help more students stay in college and complete their degree is ongoing. These results highlight the importance to persistence of aspects of the student experience including high-quality interactions with peers, faculty and administrators, a sense of feeling valued and safe in the community, and institutional support for students’ academic and personal well-being. Institutions intent on maximizing persistence and completion would be well advised to monitor and enhance these dimensions of student engagement.

The Relationship Between Persistence and Intention to Return

NSSE does not collect persistence rates as matter of course, but the questionnaire does ask first-year students if they intend to return to the institution the following year. However, with persistence data from the housing study, we were curious to know how well students’ intentions to return matched their actual spring-to-fall persistence. The data included over 17,000 students from 75 institutions who completed the “intention to return” question in Spring 2018, and for whom we obtained Fall 2018 enrollment information (Table 3). Nine in 10 first-year students in this specialized dataset returned to their campuses the following fall, and results show a strong relationship with their intentions as reported in NSSE. For example, fully 95% of those who intended to return actually did so, while nearly two thirds of those who did not intend to return left the institution. Interestingly, students who were not sure whether they would return the following year were quite likely to return (74%). These results give us confidence that—while not a perfect predictor—NSSE’s intention-to-return question is an adequate proxy for actual persistence.

References

Rocconi, L. M., & Gonyea, R. M. (2018). Contextualizing Effect Sizes in the National Survey of Student Engagement: An Empirical Analysis. Research & Practice in Assessment, 13, 22–38

U.S. Department of Education. (2018). Digest of Education Statistics: 2017(NCES 2018-070). Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_326.10.asp.

Glossary of Terms

Belongingness & Safety
A scale of six items from a set of questions designed for a special study of student living arrangements in 2018 that asks students about their physical safety, freedom from harassment and discrimination, feeling comfortable “being myself,” feeling valued, feeling a sense of community, and ability to resolve conflicts where they live.

Effect Size
An estimate of the practical importance of an observed difference or relationship, often used to complement statistical significance. As in this report, effect sizes can be standardized mean differences (mean difference divided by the standard deviation) or standardized regression coefficients. When comparing means, NSSE classifies effects based on their magnitude as follows: small ≥ 0.1; medium ≥0.3; and large ≥ 0.5 (Rocconi & Gonyea, 2018).

Financial Well-Being
A scale of five items from a set of questions designed for a special study of student living arrangements in 2018. The scale asks students how often they worried about meeting regular expenses, worried about paying for college, refrained from activities due to lack of money, chose not to buy academic materials due to cost, and skipped meals due to lack of funds.

Intention to Return
NSSE asks the following question only of first-year students: “Do you intend to return to this institution next year?” (Response options: Yes, No, Not sure)

Perceived Gains
A set of NSSE questions that ask how much students believe their experience at the institution contributed to their knowledge and development in various outcomes such as writing and speaking clearly, thinking critically, working effectively with others, etc.