Information was collected in 1993 from students who withdrew from courses in mid-term at a community college either because they were dropping a course or departing from the college. This report documents withdrawal patterns of students during the calendar year of 1994. Self-reported reasons for course/college withdrawal were identified and…

The primary goal of a districtwide dropout-prevention program is to develop, implement, and enhance instructional and programmatic components that have proven effective in educational research and practice and thus resulted in fewer students dropping out of school prior to high school graduation. This paper describes the development and…

As part of a student retention project conducted at Spoon River College (SRC), specific populations served by SRC were identified; strategies to increase retention of particular student populations were developed; students in need of assistance were identified; and a transfer graduate follow-up study and two cohort tracking studies involving all…

This manual outlines the procedure for counting dropouts from the Nevada schools. The State Department of Education instituted a new dropout counting procedure to its student accounting system in January 1988 as part of its response to recommendations of a task force on at-risk youth. The count is taken from each secondary school and includes…

This report reviews the literature on early departure from school in America, both past and present, in order to ascertain why students drop out of school, what the consequences are for the students who do so, and what schools can do to reduce the dropout rate. After a brief historical perspective on the problem, the social and economic costs of…

The results of the first semester's work of the Withdrawal Office of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, are presented in four reports. A brief historical overview and introduction by Deborah Hazel Johnson describes the objectives of implementing a withdrawal procedure, the purposes of the Withdrawal Office, and procedures that were used…

A survey of 145 postsecondary programs for hearing-impaired students in North America gathered data pertaining to attrition rates. Estimated attrition rates were found to be lowest for the group of programs primarily offering diplomas, with a rate of 59 percent, and highest for those offering Associate degrees, with a rate of 79 percent.…

The results of a computerized tracking system and followup studies of nonreturning students indicate that the nonreturning student statistic at Mercer County Community College (New Jersey) has been due to intermittent enrollment, changes in personal plans, and completion of individual student objectives, rather than to the failure of the student…

This survey analyzes the characteristics of students who dropped all of their classes at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) before the college's census date. The survey finds that students who drop all of their classes are similar to students who remain enrolled, yet tend to be older, to hold a college-level degree, and to hold at least one…

This study extended the knowledge of the explanatory power of Tinto's theoretical model of college persistence/withdrawal through a multi-institutional validation. Path analysis was used to test the model overall and at three different groupings of postsecondary institutions: four-year, predominantly residential; and four-year, and two-year,…

Discusses demographic statistics that reveal a declining number of African American students entering American colleges and universities, along with a disproportionately high attrition rate for those who do. Suggests that the focus on retention of these students is insufficient; programs are needed to help minority students progress to degree…

A study assessed the validity of the Tinto model of student attrition for community college students, and extended and refined the model by examining the mediational influences of a comprehensive set of psychological measures on the model's constructs. Results confirm the model's generalizability to this population, and show psychological measures…

Multiple linear discriminant function analyses were performed using academic, performance, and personality variables to discriminate among groups of transfers, persisters, and dropouts two years after college matriculation. Analysis of all variables combined added no predictive power beyond that by either subset alone. The results held up on…

This study of the persistence behavior of undergraduates at America's 4-year colleges and universities used data from the "High School and Beyond" study, a national survey of 28,000 high-school seniors. "Persistence" is described as the flow of students through college over a 6-year period. Four categories of persistence were…

In fall 1987, a study was conducted at Central Community College (CCC) to investigate patterns in student course withdrawals at the college's three campuses. At CCC, students may enroll in a "whole" course (i.e., all credits represented by one listing on the schedule) or in one or more parts of the course by individual units. For example,…