Increasing Student Persistence: Wanting and Doing

Abstract

When one strips away all the elaborate language used to explain student persistence, theories of persistence can be reduced to two simple ideas. First, students have to want to persist to completion. Second, they have to be able to do so. As the term wanting to persist is but another way of describing student motivation, the chapter first turns to an exploration of what is known about the forces shaping student motivation to persist, in particular those that are within the ability of institutions to influence, namely, student self-efficacy, sense of belonging, and perceptions of the relevance of their studies. Then it turns to discussion of what influences students’ ability to persist, again emphasizing those issues that are within the capacity of institutions to reasonably influence. Having done so, the chapter then explores the many ways students support services can promote student motivation and ability to persist to completion. In doing so, it argues that student services need to recognize not only the importance of student perceptions of support, but also that persistence is a longitudinal process that, for traditional age students in particular, is marked by the developmental stages that calls for differing actions to be carefully coordinated and scaffolded over time. The chapter concludes with a plea for institutions to heed the importance of institutional culture in shaping student perceptions and, in turn, persistence and act to build a culture of inclusion and validation that moves us closer to ensuring that all students, not just some, are motivated and able to persist to completion.KeywordsStudent persistenceStudent motivationCompletionInstitutional cultureShaping student perceptions