October 30, 2012

Student Retention Formula: P + P = R

Oct. 30, 2012 at 10:14 AM | By Phil Jones | Comment Count

In the retail industry, it’s all about location, location, location. In the higher education industry, it’s all about retention, retention, retention. To be clear at the start, maximizing student retention numbers is not about reducing the quality of education in order to pass students just to keep them ‘in the loop’. Here, I’m talking about the thousands of students we all know that have the potential to graduate, yet decide (many times on their own without proper guidance) that dropping out is the best, or only solution, to overcoming all of the obstacles they’ll surely face during the college years. I think many of these students would stay in college if they had someone they felt they could talk to, or know which college services and resources were available to them. I know from personal experience, that many of my students who were at the brink of dropping out, stayed in college because I sent them to talk to someone in counselling services or the financial aid office. This has shown me that it’s all about the ‘human’ connections at the college that will help keep a student from dropping out. The simple formula for student retention, therefore, is P (People) + P (Processes) = R (Retention).

Read more at the Superstar Professor blog.

Phil Jones is a program coordinator and professor at the AlgonQuin College School of Business. This post is a contribution from Phil's blog SuperStarProfessor.com, a blog dedicated to sharing insights and personal opinions about all things ‘Higher Ed’.