1. Is Retention Enough?
- Author
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Mahan, David, Wilson, Kristin B., Petrosko, Joseph M., and Luthy, Michael R.
- Subjects
Student Counseling and Personnel Services ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Higher Education Administration ,Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research - Abstract
Higher education researchers, practitioners, and administrators understand the attrition risk of traditional-age, first-generation college students. These students typically retain and graduate at lower rates than their continuing-generation peers. Practitioners have identified many ways to address these issues, resulting in a larger percentage of first-generation students graduating from four-year institutions. Graduation rates are important measures of institutional effectiveness as well as an overall reflection of access to American higher education. Higher education leaders however, need to better understand the entire undergraduate experience of first-generation undergraduate students in terms of their engagement, learning, and satisfaction. The quality of the overall, long-term learning experience is an important indicator of how effective institutions are in achieving their missions. Because first-generation students often experience college differently (due to external factors such lower socioeconomic status, living with their family and commuting to campus, family obligations with younger siblings), they may be less satisfied at the end of the four-year experience and score lower on standardized direct measures of learning (than their continuing-generation peers). Retention and graduating more first-generation college students may not be enough. The results from this study suggest that there is no difference in student satisfaction or direct measures of learning, despite differences in the ways first generation students engaged with the campus community.
- Published
- 2014
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