Recruitment & Retention

Retention and student success is not about lowering standards or keeping in school students who should not be enrolled. It is not about increasing financial aid to keep students in school. It may not even be about graduation. It is about assisting each student with reaching his or her educational goal. This article includes 50 suggestions for helping the student reach that goal.

After reading The Washington Monthly article titled “The End of College Admissions as We Know It” about ConnectEDU, a data mining company, we happened to come across more coverage of this company in The Atlantic’s article “How a Match.com for Students Could Make College Admissions Obsolete.” Then the Chronicle of Higher Education got in the act with a long piece titled “Colleges Mine Data to Tailor Students’ Experience.”  We decided it was time to chat with the CEO and founder of ConnectEDU, Craig Powell. Here is our conversation.

The university website presents a “virtual face” to the world, conveying information and a perception of the institution to the user. To determine how useful this virtual face is to one of the most important populations of users—students—Katrina A. Meyer of the University of Memphis and Stephanie Jones of Texas Tech University conducted a study of graduate students in online and blended programs at their institutions. Their findings are important for all who depend on the Web to reach out to these distance students.

When Michael Shutt began as assistant dean for Campus Life and director of the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Life at Emory University in 2008, he did not see many engaged and “out” transgendered students, queer students of color, or queer students of faith on campus. To better understand the experiences of these populations, he decided to engage these students in an intentional way through a series of focus groups. In an interview with Recruitment and Retention in Higher Education, Shutt talked about this process, the findings, and subsequent program improvements.

After reading "Challenging Success: Can College Degree Completion Be Increased as States Cut Budgets," a compelling report based on a new survey of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges, we asked the authors to talk with us about the implications for enrollment managers.