College Attrition at American Research Universities:

Sound Bite

Undergraduate attrition is an issue of growing concern in the field of higher education - it now even has its own scholarly journal. This work is the first book on college attrition to present case studies based on specific institutions of higher learning, examining in detail the practical concerns that cause students to drop out and what can be done to cut the drop-out rate. The book adds an important voice from the students themselves, whose views have often been omitted from the discussion.

About the Book

College Attrition at American Research Universities offers a rare inside look at why students leave some of the nation’s most selective institutions—and what colleges can realistically do about it.

Drawing on a multi-year study of four major U.S. research universities, John Hermanowicz combines institutional statistics and other data with in-depth interviews with students who actually left before graduating. Their stories put human faces on retention statistics, revealing how departure decisions are often quiet, fast, and shaped by incomplete information rather than clear “bad fit.”

The book traces who leaves (by gender, race/ethnicity, academic profile, and financial aid), when they leave, and the reasons they give. It contrasts “quiet and quick” attrition processes at most schools with a “loud and lengthy” process at one institution that has unusually high graduation rates. Hermanowicz shows how that school’s residential college system, freshman counselors, and “culture of enforced success” create dense networks of interaction that make it hard for students to slip away unnoticed.

Beyond numbers, the book situates attrition in organizational context: how admissions selectivity, campus structures (advising, housing, financial aid), and campus culture (norms, expectations, peer roles) combine to either sustain or undermine student persistence. It engages with Vincent Tinto’s influential theory of academic and social integration, extending it by highlighting how institutional context and culture shape the very interactions thought to matter most.

This book will appeal to:

• University and college administrators focused on retention
• Directors of student affairs, advising, and residential life
• Institutional researchers and assessment professionals
• Scholars and graduate students in higher education, sociology of education, and education policy
• Foundations, policymakers, and consultants concerned with college completion

For anyone serious about understanding—and improving—student retention at selective institutions and beyond, College Attrition at American Research Universities offers both insight and direction.

Introduction

Everyone who has come into contact with American higher education, whether their relationship has been brief and fleeting or long-lived and intimate, has been exposed to one of the few phenomena shared by the more than 3500 motley schools in the system: college attrition. Parents of students, friends, relatives, high school teachers and guidance counselors, college administrators, university faculty and advisors all know that many students do not complete their programs, for various reasons. They know attrition not necessarily through cold-blooded statistics but more probably through the stories of warm-blooded students who have experienced college departure, those whose vantage points are undoubtedly the most direct and personal.There is indeed irony in the thought that the failure to educate is the single principal attribute binding schools together in the highly differentiated system we call higher education. While schools do educate, and do so in relatively large numbers, and thus produce and transmit knowledge as their function prescribes, they do so in proudly different ways that yield different outcomes and identities, both collective and individual. Yet when colleges and universities lose students, they fail; and their outcome and identity are one. Why do some students quit? What can be done to help students make it to graduation? Are we doing enough to reduce the drop-out rate?

Table content

INTRODUCTION Research UniversitiesInteraction and School Organization: A Contextual View1. DESIGN AND METHODS The Schools The Data 2. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF ATTRITION Gender, Race, and Ethnic Profile Academic Profile Financial Profile Summary 3. THE PROCESS OF ATTRITION Departure Timing Departure Reasons The Character of the Departure Process Interaction Students' Re-assessments Summary 4. STRUCTURE AND CULTURE OF RETENTION A Retention Success Story: Case in View Cultural Attributes of Schools and Success Summary 5. LEAVING RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES Summary and Discussion Generalizability Lessons from a Contextual View APPENDIX Interview Protocol REFERENCES