Student success has long been considered as the “holy grail” of enrollment management in higher education. Student success generally refers to students persisting to completion of their educational goals. The most frequently cited variables to measure student success are: student retention (freshman-to-sophomore retention rate or first year annual return rate) and time to graduation (four-year cohort graduation rate, and six-year cohort graduation rate). Student retention rate in the context of U.S. higher education is defined as the percentage of first-time full-time students enrolled at the university the following Fall semester. The four-year student graduation rate is defined as the percentage of an entering class that graduates within four years with a baccalaureate degree. The six-year student graduation rate is defined as the percentage of an entering class that graduates within six years with a baccalaureate degree.
Extant research is replete with predictor variables that have been shown to influence student retention or graduation. For example, student retention is influenced by financial aid, parents' education, the number of semester hours enrolled in and dropped during the first fall semester, developmental education programs, internet-based courses, and participation in the Student Support Services program (Fike and Fike, 2008). Other factors identified are: High School GPA, Gender, SAT/ACT, Race/Ethnicity, High School Rank, Household Income, First-Semester (-Year) College GPA, First Generation, College Gateway “Killer” Courses, Loan Aid, Gift/Grant Aid, Transfer/Commuter, Work Study Aid, Student Need, Big Five Personality Traits, Locus of Control, Self-Esteem/Self-Efficacy, and Student Readiness Inventory (Hanover Research, 2011). Lopez-Wagner, Carollo, and Shindledecker (2010) found that the predictors of retention for at-risk students are: Ethnicity, high school GPA, University Studies 100 enrollment, first term GPA, percent of courses completed during the first year, and number of general education courses enrolled during the first year.
However, there are three gaps in the existing research in this area. First, retention and graduation rates have mostly been studies separately, with their own set of antecedents, thus making it difficult to comate between the two. Second, the published research in this field has mostly been conducted at the individual student level, and not at the institutional level. Third, we consider academic factors as antecedents to student success in our model, which differentiates it from other research that have focused on demographics, socio-economic factors, and student services and other support factors.
The purpose of this research is to understand the effects of a common set of academic factors on student retention and graduation rates at the institutional level in U.S. higher education. More specifically, we explore, using secondary data, the individual and interaction effects of seven academic factors: Enrollment, Student-Faculty Ratio, Percent classes with fewer than 20 students, Average Net Price, Socio-Economic Diversity, Salary after Attending, and Percent of Full-Time Students, on three outcome variables: 4-year graduation performance, 6-year graduation performance, and student retention rate.
The theoretical background of this research is based on the Exit, Voice and Loyalty theory (Hirschman, 1970). Three separate regression models were tested, one each for each of the three dependent variables.
