Student Retention and Career Advising in Higher Education

Introduction: The Scale of the Retention Problem

Student retention has long been a concern for colleges and universities. As early as 1924, W. S. Brooks' article "Who Can Succeed in College" admonished institutions for "this wholesale dropping of students." High school graduates arrived with high aspirations, only to be crowded into classes; after four months, hundreds were sent home — branded as failures. They began second choices of activity, carrying a feeling of personal failure. Since Brooks raised these concerns, the national rate of student departure from colleges and universities across the United States has remained constant at approximately 45 percent (Tinto, 1982). In addition, Tinto (1993, p. 82) estimates that academic dismissals account for 15 to 25 percent of those departures.

The present track record has not improved, despite the fact that increasing numbers of educational institutions are now placing major emphasis on developing retention programs. Two reports published by ACT (previously known as American College Testing) urged schools to continue their retention efforts. "Retention of students remains a significant issue for U.S. colleges and universities, with a substantial number of students not returning for their second year of school," said Richard L. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive officer. "Our findings suggest colleges can do more to reduce those dropout rates."

Data collected by ACT show that up to one-fourth of all students at four-year colleges do not return for their second year. The National Center for Education Statistics indicates that dropout rates are particularly high for African American and Hispanic students, as well as those who are the first in their family to attend college, have limited English proficiency, or are following nontraditional routes such as returning adult students. A high attrition rate results in negative consequences for the individual, the institution, and society. The New Millennium Project on Higher Education Costs, Pricing and Productivity (1998) found that an individual who receives a college degree earns a 73 percent higher salary than one with only a high school diploma, and also benefits from better healthcare, improved working conditions, and higher levels of financial assets and personal and professional mobility.

Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) studied how students are changed through their collegiate experiences. These changes occur in the areas of cognitive growth, psychosocial maturity, and moral development. Students gain intellectual reasoning skills, writing and speaking abilities, and an appreciation for the arts, humanities, and cultural and ethnic diversity. Meanwhile, attrition causes institutions to lose funding, limiting their ability to offer optimal instruction and research, and society loses individuals with greater capabilities.

Tinto's Integration Model and Departure Theory

In 1975, Vincent Tinto hypothesized that students enter college with various individual characteristics that influence their decision to depart. These traits include family background, individual attributes, and pre-college schooling experiences. Family background characteristics include socioeconomic status and parental educational level and expectations. Pre-college schooling background encompasses the characteristics of the student's secondary school and record of high school academic achievement. These traits directly affect the student's commitment to the institution and to the goal of college graduation.

Tinto also hypothesized that these traits influence the departure decision indirectly, through the student's interaction with the institution's academic and social structures. Personal commitment to the school and having a goal of graduating will positively affect that interaction. Tinto (1975, p. 104) believed that academic integration was defined by structural and normative dimensions: the former involves meeting specific academic standards, and the latter involves an individual's degree of identification with the academic system's normative structure. The greater the student's level of academic integration, the better the chance that the person will remain enrolled. Similarly, the greater the student's social integration, the more likely he or she will commit to the school (Tinto, 1975, p. 110).

In other words, the student's goals and commitments interact over time with institutional experiences — the formal and informal academic and social systems of an institution. The extent to which the individual becomes academically and socially integrated determines the departure decision (Tinto, 1993). Research identifies the first year of college as the most critical period of vulnerability for student attrition ("Learning Slope," 1991). More than half of all students who withdraw from college do so during their first year (Consortium for Student Retention Data Exchange, 1999). Retention research further hypothesizes that the degree to which a student commits to educational and career goals is the most important element correlated with persisting to degree completion (Wyckoff, 1999).

Cuseo argues that difficulty finding or committing to long-term goals will increase a student's risk of attrition. If students develop a workable plan for identifying a college major and career compatible with their abilities, interests, and values, their overall satisfaction with higher education should increase. In turn, student retention should also increase, because there is a well-established empirical relationship between students' level of satisfaction with the institution they attend and their rate of retention there.

Academic Advising as a Retention Tool

One of the ways students become more integrated into a school is through involvement with faculty members. Studies (Smith, 1994; Nordquist, 1993) find that students' decisions to re-enroll or leave will be based on their perceptions of faculty. Even more essential than faculty involvement, however, is the involvement of the academic advisor, upon whom students rely not only to orient them to the university but also to the outside working world. Wyckoff (1999) notes, "To establish a high degree of commitment to the academic advising process, university and college administrators must become cognizant not only of the educational value of advising but of the role advising plays in the retention of students" (p. 3).

One productive way to encourage students to seek advising support is to develop programs that address their personal needs. The advisor can first help students explore majors and careers, and then — once a decision is made — help them select appropriate courses and arrange schedules. Working in collaboration, advisors and students can analyze options, gather information, and make decisions. This will increase student involvement in the institution and encourage continued enrollment until graduation.

A collaboration of institution administrators, coordinators, advisors, and support personnel on an advising system is advantageous for the school. When representatives from these groups develop, implement, and evaluate advising, they create a cooperative network that can be utilized across other areas of the college. Program planning focused on the institution's strategy and students' needs can result in a dynamic advising system with the capacity to adapt to ongoing internal and external change (Frost, 1991).

Transitioning from a traditional advising system based solely on responding to students' questions about course registration to a system of academic planning takes time, since it represents a paradigm shift for an institution. The move must be a collectively planned effort involving changes in practices and perspectives. This change is not easy, and most colleges and universities will continue to focus on normative activities (Habley and Crockett, 1988). Frost (1991) notes that "if applied creatively and with an eye to the future, perhaps academic advising relationships can provide learning experiences that prove valuable to students during the college years and beyond." She makes specific recommendations for improvements to the advising structure:

1) Consider advising as an institution-wide system centered on student involvement and positive college outcomes; 2) Emphasize concepts of collaborative responsibility for both students and the institution; 3) Initiate the relationship with an understanding of the larger purpose of advising and move toward a more detailed approach; 4) Aim for success — everyone on the advising team needs to participate in a continuous strategic effort centered on a meaningful mission; 5) Evaluate the results of the program and individual contributors and make changes accordingly; and 6) Collaborate — a shared advising relationship encourages students to contact a variety of college representatives for answers to questions that arise in academic planning.

Conclusion: Toward Integrated Retention Strategies

Retention continues to be a major problem for institutions of higher learning — indeed, it has been a problem for at least a century. Recently, colleges and universities have been looking carefully for ways to reduce attrition because of factors affecting both the individual and the institution. One of the best ways to accomplish this, according to the literature, is through a career course that integrates self-development, decision-making, career planning, and curricular strategies. Schools must alter their structure to be more integrated and collaborative across departments. Florida State University has achieved the best results with its cognitive career counseling format and has become a model for other institutions because of its positive impact on attrition rates.