Studying STEM Intervention Program (SIP) retention, particularly what distinguishes those students who remain in the program from those that leave, may be a key to better understand how to keep students on track towards STEM degree completion. This study focuses on the participation of Latinx and other underrepresented racial/ethnic minoritized…

Mentorship-based interventions have been found to have positive effects for youth at-risk of negative academic and behavioral outcomes. Implementation studies of school-based mentorship programs, such as the Check & Connect (C&C) program, have mixed results with some studies supporting positive academic and behavioral outcomes for students…

Nearly half of students who enter college do not graduate. The majority of efforts to increase college completion have focused on supporting students before or soon after they enter college, yet many students drop out after making significant progress towards their degree. In this paper, we report results from a multi-year, large-scale…

Our study aims to identify effective activities to enhance student retention and promote student success in higher education institutions (HEIs) by reviewing the factors that affect student retention through a literature review. Our study used a systematic review with the bibliometric method to analyze 125 articles related to the retention of…

Online learning has become more popular in higher education since it adds convenience and flexibility to students' schedule. But, it has faced difficulties in the retention of the continuity of students and ensure continual growth in course. Dropout is a concerning factor in online course continuity. Therefore, it has sparked great interest among…

Non-continuation in higher education is rising up the political agenda. In the vernacular, it is often described negatively as 'dropping out'. But despite any terminological confusion, all such measures describe a gap between learners' original stated intentions and their situation when they leave their course. This policy note looks at the scale…

This Perspective builds on a related RAND Corporation report that describes the implementation of Findhelp at four North Carolina community colleges in 2021 and 2022. Findhelp is an online tool to connect students to resources in their communities to help meet their basic nonacademic needs. The North Carolina Community College System, with support…

In the United States, Black male students graduate at a significantly lower rate than other student groups, with 38.6% of Black males graduating in six years from four-year institutions and just 21% when time is reduced to four years. This qualitative action research case study used a focus group interview with six participants to understand the…

From fall 2021 to summer 2022, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted virtual focus groups with administrators at 47 colleges: a nationally representative sample of 36 2-year and broad-access 4-year colleges and a purposive sample of 11 colleges selected for their track record with advising. The study identified four key findings…

Universities have a wealth of new digital tools and methodologies at their disposal for educational processes. It is difficult to know which of the many options to use, but it makes sense to combine methodologies to increase student satisfaction and, above all, to reduce drop-out rates. The study used a questionnaire survey in a mass course to see…

The number of PhD candidates who experience psychological problems has risen significantly over the past few years. Poor mental health can have numerous negative consequences for PhD candidates and their supervisors, as it may adversely affect their quality of life, attrition, and academic productivity. Despite these well-documented challenges,…

A significant number of university students are leaving their institutions before completing their degrees. The present research project applied embeddedness theory, from organizational research, to understand student retention in a tertiary student population, and develop a quantitative instrument that measured university student embeddedness. In…

Predicting students' performance to identify which students are at risk of receiving a D/Fail/Withdraw (DFW) grade and ensuring their timely graduation is not just desirable but also necessary in most educational entities. In the US, not only is the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) major becoming less popular among…

In 2019, MDRC launched the Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) project to improve college completion rates for traditionally underserved students, such as students from low-income backgrounds and students of color, at community and broad-access colleges (those that have open or minimally selective admissions…

While the value of mentoring has long been presumed in the literature as well as in practices, little is known about the success of formal, and informal mentoring practices (Crisp, 2010; Crisp & Cruz, 2009; & Ward & Ball, 2016). In addition, there is a lack of research on community college student mentoring in higher education…