Is student retention a key concern?

Student retention is a top concern for colleges and universities. Students enter school – on campus or online – with a lot of expectations. Expectations about their classes and what they'll learn, about their social lives and the people they'll meet, about the challenges they'll face and how they'll succeed.

Why is student retention so important?

Retention is a fundamental component of an institution's ability to carry out its mission. Low retention creates a financial loss but also appears as a symbolic failure for an institution. It is also more cost-effective to retain the students you currently have rather than recruiting for new ones.

Is retaining a student a good idea?

Answer: Yes. Several recent studies have found that retention in elementary school can be beneficial for students in improving middle school outcomes when the students most likely to benefit are identified and retention is paired with appropriate instructional supports.

Why is retention important in school?

Staying enrolled benefits students and universities

If they lose them before they graduate, they also lose their tuition dollars. Plus, they have to spend money on recruitment to make up for the loss. Similarly, students also benefit financially by remaining enrolled.

What are the negative effects of student retention?

Retention also has a direct cost to the students themselves: Many are delayed a year from entering the workforce because they have to spend another year in school. That can reduce their short- and long-run earnings. Plus, requiring students to take an extra year to graduate may cause more of them to drop out.

Academic Advising & Student Retention

Does retention help struggling students?

Evidence suggests that grade retention in middle or high school typically leads to worse educational outcomes, with little or no effect on academic achievement and higher levels of student disengagement.

What is student retention and why does it matter?

Put simply, schools measure the student retention rate as the number of students who re-enroll from one year to the next. The practice of student retention encompasses all the things the school does to influence this rate, working to prevent students from leaving school before completing their degree.

Why is retention crucial?

Retention saves not only money but also the time that can be spent on more productive activities that can drive the company forward. Employee turnover can significantly impact productivity. High turnover rates can cause disruptions to workflow, which can lead to lower productivity levels.

How does retention affect learning?

Learning retention is a person's ability to transfer new information into their long-term memory so that it is easy for them to recall and put that knowledge to use in the future. In simpler words, learning retention is all about making new knowledge stick for a long time.

What factors influence student retention?

What are cons of retention?

Retention does not reduce the range of academic achievement in any particular classroom and, in fact, usually creates even greater differences among classmates. Research on grade retention has shown that this particular practice results in a negative impact on a child's social and emotional development.

What grade do most kids get held back?

Most retentions occur in elementary school. Historically, roughly 5 percent of students in the first through the third grade repeated their grade, according to Child Trends.

Is grade retention ineffective?

Research has found that for most students, grade retention had a negative effect on all areas of achievement (e.g., reading, math, and language) and social and emotional adjustment (e.g., peer relationships, self-esteem, problem behaviors, and attendance).

How do you ensure student retention?

By providing support services, fostering a sense of belonging, improving the quality of education, and communicating with students, institutions can improve student retention and create a positive educational experience for students.

Why aren t kids held back?

Now at least half of states do. Most of the educators I know don't like grade retention — the term of art for holding a student back. They prefer to help students improve without squashing their dreams and keeping them in place while their friends move forward.

What is the correlation between retention and learning?

Now, when it comes to the correlation between retention and learning, the general consensus is that there is a strong positive relationship between the two. In other words, the more effectively students learn something, the higher the likelihood that they will retain that knowledge or skill.

What is the theory of retention in education?

Learning retention is the process of transferring new information into long-term memory. This means you've effectively taken in the information and are able to recall it in the future. Without retaining what you've learned, it will leave your short-term memory after a certain amount of time has passed.

Does retention repeating a grade help struggling learners?

A child who's just been absent often is already at higher risk for dropping out of school. Repeating a grade increases the risk. Kids who are much younger than grade-level peers and who have a history of struggling academically can benefit from repeating a grade. It can be a better fit emotionally and age-wise.

Are there benefits to retention?

Retaining your employees can ultimately help boost both departmental or overall company profits. A business's revenue can increase based on several benefits it can receive from employee retention, including better customer service, reduced hiring costs and optimized employee productivity.

Why does knowledge retention matter?

By retaining knowledge within the organization, you seal the knowledge gaps and reduce the need for extensive training, saving time and resources. Faster problem solving: Experienced employees who have retained their knowledge can help solve complex problems more quickly.

Why is retention a challenge?

First and foremost, employee retention directly impacts an organization's stability and productivity. High turnover rates result in the biggest employee retention problems and in the loss of valuable talent, leading to costly recruitment and training processes.

Why is teacher retention a problem?

When teachers leave midyear, substitutes may struggle to successfully take over. Poor teacher retention has been shown to negatively impact students' educational achievement, according to the Learning Policy Institute.

Should struggling students repeat a grade?

Ideally, no. Repeating a grade―also known as "grade retention" ―has not been shown to help children learn. Children won't outgrow learning and attention issues by repeating a grade. In fact, repeating a grade may contribute to long-term issues with low self-esteem, as well as emotional or social difficulties.

Is it good to hold kids back grade retention?

Recent research shows that, for the most part, holding kids back a grade isn't the best practice. The National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) reports that some kids do better in school the first year or two after being held back.

What are the long term effects of grade retention?

Critics contend that retention detaches students from their peers and subjects them to social stigmatization and stress, which might negatively affect self-confidence, motivation, and interpersonal relationships (Anderson et al., 2005; Goos et al., 2021).