Increasing Persistence by Wesley R. Habley & Jennifer L. Bloom & Steve Robbins

Author:Wesley R. Habley & Jennifer L. Bloom & Steve Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-06-08T16:00:00+00:00

Minority Student Attrition and Retention

In Chapters Three and Seven of this book, respectively, we reported on the demographic characteristics and the academic performance of students in the educational pipeline to college. Demographically, those who are least likely to succeed in the educational system will account for nearly half of the U.S. population by mid-century. In its report Minorities in Higher Education (Ryu, 2010), the American Council on Education (ACE) cited stagnant postsecondary attainment rates in the United States across virtually all races. And the two largest minority groups, Hispanics and African Americans, have made no appreciable progress in educational attainment rates. In the 20-year period (1988–2008) covered by the ACE study, the high school completion rate for African American students increased only 2% (from 76% to 78%). And while the college enrollment rate increased from 22% to 34%, the percentage of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees awarded to African American students increased a paltry 1% (from 11% to 12%) between 1997 and 2007. Though movement of Hispanic students through the educational pipeline is slightly different, ultimate educational attainment levels are not encouraging. Hispanic students recorded a 12% increase (from 58% to 70%) in high school completion rates and an 11% increase (17% to 28%) in college enrollment rates. However, these results did not lead to concomitant growth in degree completion. The percentage of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees awarded to Hispanic students increased from 10% to 11.6% between 1997 and 2007. As a further indication of stagnation in the educational attainment of African American and Hispanic students, Ryu (2010) reports that the percentage of degree holders in the two groups is relatively flat across all age cohorts.

In addition to studying attrition factors and retention practices by institutional type, the fourth WWISR study (Habley et al., 2010) examined four subsets of data drawn from more than 1,100 colleges and universities that responded to the survey. Those subsets were two-year colleges with 20% or more Hispanic students enrolled (N = 37); two-year colleges with 20% or more black students enrolled (N = 83); four-year colleges with 20% or more Hispanic students enrolled (N = 33); and four-year colleges with 20% or more African American students enrolled (N = 95). To compare and contrast attrition characteristics and retention interventions, these subsets were compared to the remaining two-year and four-year institutions in the respondent pool. For the sake of expository simplicity, these subsets are referred to as either colleges with high black (or Hispanic) enrollment, or other colleges.

For the most part, the rankings of the comparisons on the causes of attrition varied little when comparing high minority enrollment colleges with the other colleges. The five highest-rated causes of attrition in both two- and four-year colleges (in order of ratings) were adequacy of personal financial resources, student preparation for college level work, study skills, low socioeconomic status, and amount of financial aid available for students. Although the ranking of attrition causes did not vary, there were obvious differences in the mean ratings of the attrition factors. Specifically,

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