Persistence is a group project

”Finish what you start.”

That advice echoes in our memories, doesn’t it? We’ve all heard it countless times, and we’ve all used it, too — to admonish a distracted child, cheer a flagging athlete or support a discouraged peer.

Like most memorable lines, its power is in its simplicity — its ability to cut a straight, clear path through the complex and often contradictory forces that govern human behavior. Those four little words make it sound so easy: Just keep going until you’re done.

But it’s not always easy. Ask anyone involved in postsecondary education today, and you’ll learn quickly that students don’t always finish what they start. In fact, some measures of student attrition are downright alarming. For instance, recent data from the National Center for Educational Statistics show that, even after six years, two of every five students who enroll at four-year institutions with the goal of earning a bachelor’s degree fail to reach that goal.

Not surprisingly, dropout or “stop-out” rates are even higher among traditionally underserved populations — low-income students, first-generation students, students of color and adult learners. Many of these historically underserved students face multiple barriers to success in college: lack of funds, inadequate academic preparation, family or work obligations, unfamiliarity with the academic environment, insufficient support from family or peers.

For many students in these vulnerable populations, staying in school requires extraordinary effort — from the students themselves, from the colleges and universities they attend, and from the public policies and resources that set the environment. Demographic and economic trends aren’t helping either. The number of low-income and minority students is growing rapidly at the same time our economy is demanding an increasing percentage of college-educated workers.

This issue of Lumina Foundation Focus takes a detailed look at student success (what colleges and universities often refer to as “student retention”). We use the term to describe the process of keeping students enrolled and on track toward their educational goals, whether in a four-year degree or certification program.

This issue — which features the work of noted higher education writer Edward B. “Ted” Fiske, author of The Fiske Guide to Colleges and former education editor at The New York Times — examines student success from several angles.

You’ll read about the struggles of people such as Christina Dorman, a first-generation student who, in her first year of college, attended three separate institutions in two states; Angela and Melissa Watson, New Hampshire-born sisters who took widely divergent college paths — with widely differing results; Tecreshia Hoover and Judy Tran, Michigan State University students who say they’ve benefited greatly from the university’s transitional program for first-year students; and Donnell Bivens, an athlete-turned-scholar who thrived in a mentoring program at Iowa State University, earned his master’s degree and is now a mentor-counselor at a New York college.

We hope these real-life stories — as well as the insights shared by noted researchers, campus officials and retention experts across the nation — will deepen our collective understanding of the many factors that affect student success. The deeper our understanding, the better able we’ll be to raise the level of that success, particularly among the nontraditional students for whom higher education was not originally designed. And that goal —increasing postsecondary access and success — has been Lumina Foundation’s mission from the start.

Admittedly, we started something we can’t truly “finish,” but the job is too important to avoid. Fortunately, it’s also a job we share — with the people profiled in these pages and with thousands of other committed citizens just like you.

Martha D. Lamkin
President and CEO, Lumina Foundation for Education