Student Departure Research Articles

Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle

Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle

The Fulfillment of Expectations for College and Student Departure Decisions

Following the recommendations of Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson, (1997) to seek explanations for social integration, this study addresses how the fulfillment of college expectations affects social integration. Path analysis is used to examine the effects of having academic and social expectations met on social integration; the effect of social integration on a student's subsequent level of commitment to his/her college or university; and finally the effect of subsequent institutional commitment on the likelihood of student persistence in college. Results from the analyses indicate the fulfillment of students' social expectations for college positively affects both social integration and subsequent institutional commitment. The greater the degree of these, the more likely students will re-enroll in the university.

Simulating the Longitudinal Effects of Changes in Financial Aid on Student Departure from College

We use the estimates from a hazard model of college student departure to simulate how changes in financial-aid packaging affect students' departure decisions over time. We find that changing loans to scholarships, as Princeton has recently done, has a large impact on retention and that frontloading aid has a more modest impact. Our results also suggest that financial aid represents more to the student than just the dollar value of the aid offered. Increased knowledge about the temporal effects of different types of financial aid will help policy makers make more informed choices about the structure of financial aid packages.

The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474-1520 (review)

286ReviewsLa corónica 30.1, 2001 Edwards, John. The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474-1520. Cambridge , U.K. andMaiden, MA: Bhckwell Publishers, 2000. xi+311 pp. ISBN 0-631-22143-3 John Edwards has written the first all-encompassing history ofthe Catholic Monarchs in English since William Hickling Prescott's remarkable, epochmaking History ofthe Reign ofFerdinand and Isabel (1837). And it is a very fine history indeed. Edwards's book will serve both as a comprehensive reference source for scholars and as a cogent, sharply focused point of departure for students embarking upon the period's study. Over the years, I have often been frustrated by the requests of colleagues and students alike to recommend a good, up-to-date study in English on this crucially important moment in early modern European and American history. In the absence of one, I have suggestedJohn Elliot's Imperial Spain 1469-1 716 and Henry Kamen's Spain, 14691714 . A Society ofConflict, each ofwhich, though excellent in its own way, fails to provide an in-depth examination of this critical juncture in the destiny of the Iberian peninsula, Europe, and the world. To comply with future requests I have but to look no further than Edwards's excellent book. The Spain ofthe Catholic Monarchs is divided into nine chapters with a concluding bibliographical essay and covers the political, social, cultural, religious , economic, and military history of the age. All of this is accompanied by several useful maps and plates of portraits of the major figures of the period. Chapter 1 appropriately deals with "The War of the Castilian Succession", its origins in the political and constitutional upheavals of the reigns ofJuan II and Enrique IV, Castile's dynastic and territorial entanglements with Portugal , and the conflict's final resolution in 1479. Edwards's placement ofall these events on a broad plane manages to extract succinctly their significance for the transformation of the balance of power in the rest of Iberia and, indeed, the rest ofwestern Europe through their involvement with Louis XI ofFrance. In the course ofhis analysis, Edwards discusses the compelling role played by the education, temperament, and personalities of Ferdinand and Isabel in the unfolding of the events. In Chapter 2, titled "The Consolidation ofa Regime," Edwards examines with admirable clarity the early administrative and fiscal problems confronted by the Catholic Monarchs, and the measures taken to resolve them to establish their hegemony in Castile, Aragon, and the Mediterranean possessions ofthe Crown ofAragon. A separate, though related and equally detailed chapter , Chapter 3 ("The New Inquisition"), is devoted to the establishment of the Inquisition and its use as a means for enacting firm control over the religious La corónica 30.1 (Fall, 2001): 286-87 Reviews287 and cultural life of the citizenry. Edwards highlights the personal part played by Isabel in the Inquisition's establishment in Castile and Ferdinand's cunning role in overcoming the Aragonese administrative obstacles and social resistance to it. In addition to providing new insight into the political dimensions of the Inquisition, Edwards offers an effective overview of its methods and a sobering account of their impact upon society in general. It is here, and in Chapter 6 ("Christian, Jews and Muslims"), devoted to the complexities of the interaction of coexisting religious communities that Edwards, as might be expected, is at his best. He not only delves searchingly into the religious issues that affected relations between these three groups, but provides a thorough examination of some of the major cultural factors that induced the breakdown of long-sustained accommodations that ultimately led to the extirpation of two of them. Chapters 4, 5, and 7, devoted respectively to "The War for Granada," "Economy and Society," and "Spain in Europe," are likewise complimentary in that they offer a concise political, military, economic, and dynastic history of events and trace clearly the process of the domination of Catholic Monarchy from the moment of its Iberian hegemony in 1492 to the beginnings of its supremacy in Europe and America by the year 1520. In short, for the transformation of the union of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into an early modern Spain that, almost despite itselfaccording to Chapter...

Book Review: Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle

Book Review: Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle

Reworking the student departure puzzle

More than a quarter of the students who enter four-year institutions and half of those who enter two-year schools depart at the end of their first year. This phenomenon is known as the departure puzzle, and for years, the most important body of work on student retention has come from sociologist Vincent Tinto. In Reworking the Student Departure Puzzle, leading scholars of the college student experience - including Tinto himself - reevaluate Tinto's interactionalist perspective, which holds that students unable to connect with either the academic or social subsystems of their institutions are likely to leave. Recent critiques of this theory have indicated the need for either its serious revision or the development of a new theory altogether. The contributors to this volume offer a variety of both theoretical and methodological perspectives on student departure, with additional chapters covering minority student retention, the link between college choice and student persistence, and the effect of the classroom experience on the student's choice. The recommendations made here will not only reinvigorate research on this important topic but will also lead administrators to better mana

Powerful Institutional Levers to Reduce College Student Departure

This article classifies 47 recommendations gleaned from the articles appearing in this special issue of the Journal of College Student Retention. These recommendations are classified according to their consistency with Tinto's three principles of effective retention. These 47 are ordered by the institutional domain most likely to implement a given recommendation. These recommendations are viewed as multiple, powerful levers to reduce college student departure.

The Influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process

(2000). The Influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 71, No. 5, pp. 569-590.

The Influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process: Toward a Revision of Tinto's Theory

The Influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process: Toward a Revision of Tinto's Theory

Tinto's Separation Stage and Its Influence on First-Semester College Student Persistence.

Examination of student departure for various student populations, in different institutional settings, and at various stages in time is crucial in the quest to improve retention (Tinto, 1988, 1993). Therefore, this study explored first- to second-semester persistence of first-time, full-time freshmen at a public, four-year institution, focusing upon Tinto's concept of separation. The question of how various underlying dimensions of separation influence departure decisions was examined. The dimensions of (1) support and (2) rejection of attitudes and values were found to influence persistence in a statistically significant way.

An event history model of student departure

This study uses a modeling technique often used in economics and other disciplines but rarely applied to educational research. The technique, known as event history modeling, is used to examine the temporal dimensions of student departure from a large research university. This approach allows researchers to remedy analytic problems often found when standard statistical procedures are used to study longitudinal events such as student departure from college. The study confirms most of the substantive findings of earlier research but we document that key explanatory variables have differential effects over time. Pinpointing the times at which students are at risk of leaving college will permit more efficient intervention strategies which could reduce the social, institutional, and individual costs often associated with leaving college before degree completion.

REVISING TINTO'S INTERACTIONALIST THEORY OF STUDENT DEPARTURE THROUGH THEORY ELABORATION: Examining the Role of Organizational Attributes in the Persistence Process

The purpose of this study is to estimate the effects of organizational attributes on social integration in particular, and more generally on the student withdrawal process. Theory elaboration (the application of new concepts borrowed from other theoretical perspectives to explain the focal phenomenon) is used to help with the revision of Tinto's interactionalist theory of individual student departure. The existence of empirical evidence supporting the importance of organizational attributes in the persistence process makes the addition of organizational characteristics a logical choice as a possible source of social integration in an elaboration of Tinto's theory. The results from this study provide strong support for elaborating the revised version of Tinto's theory through the inclusion of concepts from organizational theory. The findings from this study also indicate that future research should use theory elaboration to look for other potential sources of social integration.

Predicting student satisfaction in baccalaureate nursing programs: testing a causal model.

The purpose of this study was to test a causal model for predicting the overall satisfaction of senior students with their baccalaureate nursing programs. The proposed model was primarily a sociological impact model based upon Tinto's (1975) student integration theory for predicting student departure, and Pascarella's (1985) causal model for predicting student outcomes. To test the model, a sample of 195 senior female students from five baccalaureate nursing programs in the southwestern United States was selected for step-wise regression studies and path analysis. Testing the causal model, the students' integration into the academic and social systems of their nursing programs directly explained 42% of the variance for predicting overall satisfaction. The best predictors of overall satisfaction were the students' 1) academic development, 2) satisfaction with facilities and services, 3) satisfaction with the faculty, and 4) social interaction with peers.

Mirabile dictu: representations of the marvelous in medieval and Renaissance epic

Mirabile Dictu covers in six separate chapters the works of Virgil, Dante, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser. Its broad aim is to provide a select cross-section of works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance in order systematically to examine and compare for the first time the marvelous in the light of epic genre, of literary and critical theory (both past and present), and of historically and culturally determined representational practices.Douglas Biow organizes this volume around the literary topos of the bleeding branch through which a metamorphosed person speaks. In each chapter the author takes this event as his starting point for a broad-ranging comparison of the several poets who employed the image; he also investigates the ways in which a period's notion of underpins its representations of the marvelous. This method offers a controlled yet flexible framework within which to develop readings that engage a multiplicity of theories and approaches.Mirabile Dictu offers not only an insightful survey of the literary connections among this group of important poets, but also a useful point of departure for scholars and students intrigued by the reuse of epic conventions, by the peculiar role of marvellous events in dramatic poetry, and by the later history of classical literature.Douglas Biow is Assistant Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, University of Texas, Austin.

Staying in College: Moderators of the Relation between Intention and Institutional Departure

Introduction The present study tests hypotheses pertaining to moderators of the relation between intention and institutional departure. The hypotheses are derived from a review of the literature on college student departure, the theory of reasoned action [4], and Azjen's [3] conceptual analysis of the factors that cause intentions to degenerate. Intention represents a determination to act in a certain way in the future [24]. Intention plays a key role in Bean's [9, 10] model of attrition because it is conceptualized as the most proximal determinant of institutional departure. This model of attrition has been applied successfully to diverse populations of college students [11, 12, 13, 22, 23]. Several studies have found that intention to leave is a significant predictor of subsequent attrition [8, 14, 15, 17, 22]. Nonetheless, for example, Metzner and Bean [23] found that intention to leave, grades, and 24 other predictor variables, in concert, accounted for only 29% of the variance in attrition. bivariate analysis of data reported in Okun, Ruehlman, and Karoly [29] reveals that intention by itself explained only 13% of the variance in institutional departure. What accounts for the moderate relation between intention (to stay or transfer) and institutional persistence? The present study investigates the possibility that the magnitude of the relation between intention and subsequent enrollment behavior varies with (a) grades, (b) commitment, and (c) encouragement from others to stay. Review of the Literature Grades. According to Bean [9], grades are an academic outcome, which can be conceptualized as quasi-economic rewards. Even when students dismissed for inadequate grades are eliminated, grades have been shown to predict persistence [2, 13, 31]. There is also some evidence that the relation between GPA and institutional departure may be nonlinear. Andrieu and St. John [5] reported that graduate students with intermediate GPAs had the highest rate of institutional departure. In studies with undergraduate samples, St. John and colleagues [37, 38] found that students with below C grades were more likely to persist than students with B grades, and students with B grades were more likely to persist than students with either mostly C grades or A grades. Therefore, in the present study, we examined whether semester GPA has a nonlinear effect on institutional departure. Commitment. Tinto [40,41] theorized that commitment to the goal of attaining a degree (goal commitment) and commitment to one's college (institutional commitment) were proximal determinants of institutional departure. Empirical tests of the presumed linkages among the constructs of academic and social integration and goal and institutional commitment and between these constructs and persistence behavior have been equivocal [25, 26, 27, 32, 33]. More recently, Spanard [39] suggested that commitment to the college role needs to be assessed in the context of nonacademic roles. Consequently, in the present study, we defined commitment as the priority students place on doing well in college relative to goals associated with other roles. Encouragement to stay. Lack of encouragement from others to stay is posited by Bean and Metzner [14] to be an important environmental variable which exerts both direct and indirect effects on institutional departure. Tinto [41] noted that memberships in external communities may be crucial to departure decisions, particularly for commuter students. External communities may affect institutional departure by exerting normative influence [8]. Normative influence occurs when individuals tell another person how they should or should not behave. Bank, Slavings, and Biddle [8] found that the social influence of parents and peers (but not faculty) had strong direct effects on institutional departure. Other studies confirm that encouragement from others affects the decision to depart [19, 26, 27, 28]. …

Expectations for college and student persistence

Tinto postulates that students enter college with expectations. If these expectations are unmet, there is early disenchantment with the social and academic communities. Such disenchantments hinder academic and social integration which, in turn, influence subsequent institutional and goal commitments and ultimately student departure. These formulations are tested in a multi-institutional study of 263 first-time freshmen who entered four-year colleges and universities. The findings indicate that both academic and social integration are positively influenced by the meeting of expectations for academic and career development. Social integration is positively influenced by expectations for opportunities for personal involvement, but negatively affected by expectations for a collegiate atmosphere. Indirect effects on intentions to remain in the focal college are indirectly influenced by collegiate atmosphere and academic and career development. Implications for enrollment management and the development of linkages between theories of college choice and student departure are drawn.

Can Tinto's Student Departure Model Be Applied To Nontraditional Students?

While Tinto's student departure model has been tested and supported in numerous studies, it has not yet been applied to nontraditional students. This study attempted to find out whether Tinto's model, in particular the concepts of academic and social integration, can explain retention among nontraditional students. Attrition rates of 25 adult learner classes in a college of management and business were calculated. Four independent variables were entered into a regression equation in an attempt to explain attrition from these classes. They were: social, academic, and career integration; and the size of each class. The data showed that classes that were socially integrated and smaller were better able to retain their students than the less socially integrated and larger-sized classes. The data suggest that what keeps adult learners in educational programs is the social environment in which the learning takes place.

College Persistence

Although several theories have been advanced to explain the college persistence process |6, 44, 45, 50, 52~, only two theories have provided a comprehensive framework on college departure decisions. These two theoretical frameworks are Tinto's |50, 52~ Student Integration Model and Bean's |7~ Student Attrition Model. A review of the literature indicates that the Student Integration Model, for instance, has prompted a steady line of research expanding over a decade |see, for example, 37, 42, 30, 35, 24, 46, 18~. This research has validated Tinto's model across different types of institutions with differing student populations. In turn, the Student Attrition Model |4, 5, 6, 7, 10~ has also been proven to be valid in explaining student persistence behavior at traditional institutions |3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 18~, while modifications to the model have been incorporated to explain the persistence process among nontraditional students |9, 26~. Insofar as the two theories have attempted to explain the same phenomenon, no efforts have been made to examine the extent to which the two models can be merged to enhance our understanding of the process that affects students' decisions to remain in college. However, Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, and Hengstler |18~ have provided evidence that there is considerable overlap between the two theoretical frameworks. Taking these findings one step further, this study attempts to document the extent to which these two theories can be merged in explaining students' persistence decisions by simultaneously testing all non-overlapping propositions underlying both conceptual frameworks. Theoretical Framework Student Integration Theory Building on Spady's |44, 45~ work, Tinto |50, 51, 52~ advanced a model of student departure that explains the process that motivates individuals to leave colleges and universities before graduating. Tinto's theory attributes attrition to the lack of congruency between students and institutions. Tinto's theory basically asserts that the matching between the student's motivation and academic ability and the institution's academic and social characteristics help shape two underlying commitments: commitment to an educational goal and commitment to remain with the institution. Accordingly, the higher the goal of college completion and/or the level of institutional commitment, the greater is the probability of persisting in college. The Student Integration Model has been subjected to considerable testing, and research findings have largely supported the predictive validity of the model as far as the role of precollege variables is concerned |37, 38~. Results are mixed, however, when the structural relations that the theory presumes to exist among academic integration, social integration, and institutional and goal commitments are subjected to empirical testing |14, 28, 30, 33, 39, 40, 36, 41, 46, 47~. Although contradictory findings have been attributed to type of institution, gender, ethnicity, and inconsistencies on the measurement of the constructs |19, 35, 31~, these mixed results can also be attributed to the lack of control for variables external to the institution. A major gap in Tinto's theory and allied research has been the role of external factors in shaping perceptions, commitments, and preferences |7~. This topic is particularly relevant from both a policy analysis and an institutional perspective, given the different social and institutional programs aimed at stimulating enrollment and preventing attrition by addressing variables other than institutional ones (that is, ability to pay, parental support). In spite of this limitation, researchers have found that the Student Integration Model is useful in exploring the role of such external factors as significant other's influence |30, 35, 19~ and finances |15, 19, 24, 30~. Student Attrition Model Over the years, Bean |3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8~ has advanced an alternative model to explain the college persistence process. …

Student retention: Moving from numbers to action

We describe a multifaceted approach to providing information to improve student retention at an urban public university. Many students at this institution are older, working people; few live on campus and participate in “traditional” student experiences. A Retention Task Force, using qualitative as well as quantitative methods, identified problems that were barriers to student success or that contributed to student departure. We outline our results to date, address strategies for involving administrators, faculty, staff, and students, and discuss future research plans. We describe elements of a model for transferring information from the research realm into the policy arena.

The Origins of St. Gregory’s, Paris

St. Gregory’s was a small college belonging to the English secular clergy founded at Paris in the late seventeenth century. Its main purpose was to enable suitable ecclesiastics who had completed their training at Douai or the other colleges abroad to pursue advanced studies at the Sorbonne before working on the mission in England. Its founders hoped it would serve to produce a corps of highly qualified men to fill the leading administrative and teaching posts in the Catholic Church in England. It survived until 1786 when financial difficulties forced it to close—temporarily, as was at first thought. During the Revolution it suffered the fate of the other English Catholic institutions in France, and it never, in fact, reopened. Among the documents that have survived from its archives is a Register Book covering the whole period of its existence from its first beginnings in 1667 until it closed down over a century later. This Register Book, which records the arrival and departure of students, the stages in their university career, their promotion to holy orders, deaths occurring at the college, and occasional memoranda of events affecting the life of the community, was edited for the Catholic Record Society in 1917 by the late Monsignor Edwin Burton.