The 'Thriving Quotient': A New Vision for Student Success

The qualitative difference in the "success" of college students raises question of how educators envision student success. Although in "Student Success in College," George Kuh, Jillian Kinzie, John H. Schuh, Elizabeth J. Whitt define student success broadly as "satisfaction, persistence, and high levels of learning and personal development," the reality is that educators tend to measure student success primarily in terms of academic performance and persistence to graduation. Yet most of them who have worked extensively with students know that there is more to a successful college experience than grades and graduation. This article is the first in a three-part series that describes the major findings from a national study of college-student thriving conducted over the past three years with the author's team of doctoral students at Azusa Pacific University. In this first article, the author describes the study itself and how the data were collected and analyzed, along with the major features of their newly developed instrument, the Thriving Quotient. The author shares the findings related to students psychological perspectives and attitudes that are foundational to thriving, along with their implications for future research and practice in higher education. (Contains 12 notes.)