At a community college in the state of Florida, student retention has become a critical concern because more than half of the first-year first-generation students fail to graduate. That rate is four times higher than for other first-year students. Guided by Tinto's Student Integration Model as the conceptual framework, this intrinsic qualitative…

The acquisition of programming skills specially in introductory programming courses poses an important challenge for freshmen students of engineering programs. These courses require students to devote a sustained effort during the whole course and a failure to do so may contribute to not passing the course. However, it is difficult for the…

Condensed from "The Kiwanis Magazine, Volume 53 (September 1968), 22-25, 42.

The experience of students withdrawing from a university in their first year is explored. Students' perceptions of the factors which influenced their withdrawal decisions are examined. Findings support the hypothesis that the main factor influencing withdrawal/persistence behavior is the degree to which students can adjust to the new academic and…

Of the 6,076 students enrolled at Thomas Nelson Community College (TNCC) in fall 1985, 2,389 (39.3%) were "leavers," i.e., they did not graduate and they did not return in winter 1986. Because new students made up 33.8% of the total fall headcount, but accounted for 41.7% of the leavers, a study was conducted to investigate the characteristics of…

A study of eight successive freshman cohorts at the University of South Carolina found that both participating in a freshman orientation seminar and living on campus reduced freshman dropout rates. Students who both participated in the seminar and lived on campus had the lowest dropout rate, whereas those who did neither had the highest dropout…