A wide body of research over the last quarter-century has shown that, although financial problems and academic preparation can be important determinants of student persistence, the overall picture is a lot more complicated. Consider the story of Angela and Melissa Watson, sisters who, like Kassandra Nuenoom, grew up in Westminster, Vt., and were the first in their families to attend college. Angela, the older sister and a business major, graduated in 2003 from Keene State College; Melissa will have transferred twice before completing her degree in nursing.
 | Angela Watson (left) and her younger sister, Melissa, took alternative paths in college, though both dropped out for a time. Angela earned a business degree at a four-year institution, while Melissa is in a nursing program at a technical college. |
Both sisters benefited from Angela’s involvement with the Vermont Student Association Corporation, a college preparatory program for first-generation college students. Their parents also were very supportive and excited about their daughters’ decisions to pursue higher education. Nevertheless, both Angela and Melissa were apprehensive about college, particularly its cost. Their anxiety grew when their father was laid off from work.
In the fall of 1998, Angela enrolled at Keene State College, located in Keene, N.H., about 30 minutes from her home. “My first day, I was so scared,” she recalled. “I had never been this scared. Orientation was good, but not very personal, so the second I got my schedule I found the exact location of every class and wrote down how to get there so I wouldn’t get lost.” She was surprised by the amount of reading required, as well as by the cost of books. In spite of her concerns, Angela engaged in campus activities and began to enjoy her life as a college student.
After her sophomore year, she decided to take a leave of absence. “I wanted some time to save money, to think, and to be near my sister,” she said. Angela’s decision disappointed her parents, and her mother insisted she take a job alongside her — on a factory assembly line — to give Angela a glimpse of what awaited her if she failed to earn her degree.
Angela eventually regretted her decision to leave the campus. She says, “I missed college, my friends, and even homework.” When she returned to campus the following January, she found a supportive professor who became her adviser. Her classes were fairly small and intimate. She resumed her role as a campus tour guide, began work as a resident assistant, took part in a radio station and wrote for a newspaper.
Melissa chose to attend a large state institution roughly two hours from home. A nursing major, Melissa was in several large lecture classes, including an introductory psychology class with about 450 students. “We had to sit with a name card in front of us,” Melissa recalled. “When they randomly selected a name to answer a question, we would have to raise our hand, stand up, show our card and then answer the question.”
Like her sister, Melissa struggled with the cost of books as well as nursing equipment. “Nursing books cost almost $1,000 a semester,” she points out. Unlike Angela, Melissa did not seem to have time for campus activities, although she did have a social outlet through her friends. “Every time I talked to her at school, she was always studying for a test or doing homework,” recalled Angela.
At the end of her second year, Melissa missed the minimum standard by one point in a general education class and was faced with the prospect of enrolling in summer school to keep up with her class. She sought help from her adviser, who passed her on to the librarian. Neither provided Melissa with much help, and in the end she was unable to enroll in the course she needed.
Crushed by the experience, Melissa reluctantly decided not to return to the university. “No adult knew who I was or seemed to care, not even my adviser,” she recalled. “During the summer my dad was in a car accident, my grandmother was sick with cancer, and my mom lost her job, so I decided to stay home and help.”
After returning home, Melissa enrolled in New Hampshire Technical College, where she is now taking courses while she works. She plans to move to Maine or to Burlington, Vt. — places where she can pursue a nursing program in an area that offers promising job prospects after graduation.
Clearly, many factors influenced the differing paths that Angela and Melissa took in postsecondary education: their individual personalities, their choices of majors and the institutions they attended. But experts on college retention would certainly suggest that Angela was aided by her ability to be actively and constructively involved in campus life. Indeed, the concept of “student engagement” has become a dominant theme in discussions of college retention and student attainment.
“We’ve added the word ‘connections’ to the university dictionary,” said Theodore W. Elling, vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “We found that if new freshmen are exposed to a person, an activity group on campus, a structured program, or if they have a relation to a faculty member, then they are much more likely to persist and do well.”
Noted researchers Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick T. Terenzini have found that the rate at which first-year students returned for their second year was “positively and significantly related to the total amount of nonclassroom contact with faculty, and particularly to frequency of interactions with faculty to discuss intellectual matters.”
