As the United States struggles to be globally competitive with the number of students completing a college degree higher education leaders continue seeking answers to improving student retention and graduation rates. Decades of research has been conducted on investigating factors that impact student retention and graduation with the majority of that research being centered on student attributes and students’ precollege characteristics. Research has been limited on institutional characteristics and their associations with student retention and graduation rates. Therefore the purpose of this study was to examine the extent that specific institutional characteristics predict first-year, full-time, fall-to-fall retention rates and 6-year graduation rates. The sample for this study consisted of 4-year institutions in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) region that have been granted Level III accreditation status and also report data annually to the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS). All data used for this research were publicly available archival data available from IPEDS. Sixteen research questions were investigated about institutional student variables, environment variables, resource variables, financial variables, and interaction variables. Multiple linear regressions were conducted for all research questions, representing the statistical method of analysis. The findings showed that the most useful predictors for retention rates were students scoring at or above the 75th percentile ACT scores, physical library collections, expenditures for academic support, and tuition and required fees. When investigating to what extent institutional characteristics predict 6-year graduation rates the findings showed that 75th percentile ACT scores, physical library collections, expenditures for instruction, the percentage of full-time faculty, and cost were the most useful predictors. Findings also showed that student-faculty ratios and the percentage of full-time faculty were not significant predictors for student retention. Some institutional predictor variables may be significant predictors for both retention rates and graduation rates, while other predictor variables may be significant predictors for only one of the criterion variables.

America invests large amounts of money in K-12 education to develop its human capital. As such, K-12 student success is vital to the human capital development and future of America's children and adolescents. There is significant concern for the K-12 students who are predictably at risk of not graduating from high school (e.g., low-income, ethnic minority, and first generation college students) let alone qualifying for and enrolling in postsecondary education. Over the past four decades student success has primarily been explained by sociological research on status attainment as well as social capital and cultural capital. However, very little research addresses the relationship between this sociological research and motivation theory from the field of psychology. Specifically, student success research generally neglects describing how social capital and cultural capital become contextually and motivationally relevant for K-12 students. This study explored the pathway of success for students from the following backgrounds: low-income, first generation in college, active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), Hispanic, graduated from a Utah high school in 2009 and who were admitted to Brigham Young University the same year as new freshmen. Case study methods were employed initially in phase one of the analysis using a grounded theory or emic paradigm, allowing data and patterns to emerge. In phase two of the analysis, using a post-positivist or etic paradigm data were contrasted with existing research. The findings revealed a new model that explains the conditions of student motivation. While the findings support existing research on the influences of social capital and cultural capital on student success, all students in this study experienced a triggering relationship that caused them to contextualize and assign value to various forms of capital in the past and present and leveraged them towards student success. This contextualization also served as a motivation for students to be successful and to pursue additional forms of capital to assist them on their pathway to success. The implications of this triggering relationship theory can assist parents, educators, and many others who facilitate the human capital development of children and adolescents.

This study explored how first-generation, minority community college women who participated in a Student Success course understood their higher education experiences. The researcher used a basic interpretive qualitative methodology to uncover how the value of higher education was constructed within those discussions. Five purposively selected students participated in one-on-one semi structured interviews. The participant's understandings were highlighted independently, reflecting a wide range of sentiments that were largely self-directed in essence, at times ambiguous and yet, complex in nature as the women made sense of their experiences. Through the use of thematic analysis, three dominant discourses about the value of higher education were identified as opportunity and defined as: 1) Personal Fulfillment and Intrinsic Motivation, 2) Financial Stability and College as Insurance against Poverty, and 3) Social Obligations: Breaking Stereotypes and Setting Examples. The data coupled with researcher reflections serve as the basis for implications for Student Success faculty and administrators in the areas of pedagogical strategy, marketing, resource creation, and program restructuring. Lastly, recommendations were made for future research studies.

Career services in higher education has a long history of supporting student development and post-graduation success (American Council on Education, 1937; Rayman, 1999; Dey & Cruzvergara, 2014). However, there is a dearth of research identifying specific connections between engagement with career services and student success. College student thriving has been established in previous studies as positively contributing to traditional measures of college student success, including intention to persist, grade point average, institutional fit and satisfaction, and self-reported learning gains (Schreiner, 2013). Examining the relationship of student experience with career services and thriving provides a new way to evaluate the contribution of career services work to college student success. This study utilized the Thriving QuotientTM (Schreiner, 2016), a valid and reliable survey instrument, with 952 clients of Career Services at Brigham Young University. Three career services variables included are frequency of interaction, satisfaction, and quality of engagement with career services. Confirmatory factor analysis established thriving as a second order latent construct and confirmed other latent pathway variables to thriving in the model. The final model explains 72.1% of the total variance of student thriving with excellent model fit. Student experience with career services does not directly contribute to student thriving, but it does strengthen other thriving-supportive variables. Sense of community and major certainty has the strongest overall contribution to thriving. Satisfaction with career services has the largest effect of the career services variables on factors which contribute to thriving: spirituality, sense of community, major certainty, experience with faculty, feelings of institutional integrity, and campus involvement. The contribution of student experience with career services to thriving is indirect, with small to moderate correlations through thriving pathway variables. Thriving Quotient scores of various student demographic groups are compared using independent sample t-tests and one-way ANOVA tests. Students with higher grades and seniors have higher thriving quotient scores; sophomores have lower scores. No significant differences are noted for first-generation students or non-white students.

Understanding undergraduate student success is central to addressing issues in the current education climate. Many barriers exist for students; however, even more barriers exist for first-generation college students. Especially difficult for first-generation college students is access to social capital with regards to higher education. The current study focused on addressing the following overall research question: does having a sibling who attended college make a difference in the academic outcomes of a student? The sample for the study included all undergraduate students who enrolled as first-semester freshman in a large, Research 1 university in the Northeastern United States from fall 2016 through fall 2021. Transfer students were excluded. The data were provided by the selected institution’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (IRA). These data included the primary variables that were used to define academic success-- the student’s first semester GPA, first to second semester retention, first to second year retention, and four-year graduation rate. Additional variables were collected which included student’s SAT scores, high school GPA, gender, and data from a survey that is administered to all incoming freshmen- the New Student Questionnaire (NSQ), which included information about the level of education of each student’s mother, father, and siblings. The analysis of the data revealed that as the number of family members who attended college increased, so did high school GPA, 1st semester GPA, 1st to 2nd semester retention, and 4-year graduation rate. Ultimately, this indicates that as the number of family members who attended higher education increases so does student success. Siblings play a critical role in that they add an additional access point to social capital for the student in question. While siblings are important though, the results suggest that the number of family members who have attended college and not the relationship to the student may be a more important consideration. / Educational Leadership

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The purpose of this non-experimental, quantitative correlational study was to investigate whether any significant relationships existed between one-way student commute distance and retention for first-time, community college freshmen. Additional student success metrics such as three-year graduation rates, enrollment status, credit hours attempted and completed, and GPA were also analyzed for any possible relationship with commute distance. Archival student data were collected from the participating institution, a public community college in the southeastern United States with four separate instructional site locations. This study followed the incoming class of 2016, entering in the fall semester, through the end of their third year, completing in Spring 2019. The sample included all first-time freshmen at the institution who were taking all their classes in-person (N = 1,320). Students’ residential ZIP codes and location of classroom instruction were collected to calculate the one-way commute distance in miles. Chi-square test of independence, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and a Pearson correlation coefficient were utilized to analyze the research questions for significant relationships among the study’s variables. Results indicated that commute distance for first-time community college freshmen does not have a significant relationship with freshman to sophomore retention, overall GPA, or three-year graduation outcome. This study identified a significant, positive relationship between commute distance and credits attempted and credits completed during the first semester of enrollment. Student ethnicity was also found to have a significant relationship with commute distance. Minority students were found to be less likely to commute longer distance compared to their peers. Students attending classes at the institution’s main campus instructional site were found to be significantly more likely to graduate in three years compared to those attending classes at satellite locations, regardless of commute distance.

As a growing number of higher education institutions commit to first-generation student success, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers should aim to better understand how to deliver on promises to first-generation students within institutions and across the higher education landscape. First-generation students are a particularly important population of study due to their heterogeneity and because they comprise a large and growing share of current college-going or college-ready students. It is also important to understand how different types of institutions are supporting first-generation students, as institutional diversity is a hallmark of American higher education. This qualitative multiple case study investigates three diverse institutions—a comprehensive regional public university, a moderately selective private liberal arts college, and an elite historically Black college—and their unique approaches to enacting a stated commitment to first-generation student success. Through document analysis, interviews, and site visits, this study explores how policies and practices relate to this commitment; which institutional stakeholders are engaged in promoting first-generation student success; how institutions define, support, and measure first-generation student success; and whether enacted commitments to first-generation student success inform a broader culture of student success. In addition to investigating institutional perspectives, this study considers how first-generation students experience and perceive their institution’s efforts and explores alignments or misalignments between these two perspectives. Findings offer new insights into how distinct types of institutions—types underrepresented in research on student success—approach first-generation student success and contribute to a growing literature that takes an asset-focused, intersectional approach to understanding the experiences of first-generation students. Findings suggest that the first-generation identity, when understood in concert with students’ other identities, helps students make meaning of their college experiences. Explicitly recognizing first-generation students as a population—including by disaggregating institutional data on first-generation students—helps to ensure that institutions design programs, supports and initiatives that meet the specific needs of this population. Additionally, findings suggest that constituents—including students—across institutional contexts play important roles as cultural navigators for first-generation students and may serve as change agents who can help identify and resolve disconnects between institutional decisions and students’ experiences. Finally, the analysis suggests that approaches to student success can be rooted in an institution’s distinct culture, but institutions must work toward a holistic understanding of students’ identities, needs, and goals and dismantle biased or hegemonic practices that obscure and reinforce inequitable outcomes. / Policy, Organizational and Leadership Studies