Retention Expert: Data Is Key to Driving Improvement

Student retention expert Lana Low encourages schools to focus on four key areas when they study the relationship between retention and financial literacy:

• Affordability.
• Unmet need.
• Financial education.
• How efficiently students can complete their degrees.

“You need to ask yourselves questions about how your students are affected by these issues and look at the numbers. Then work to create partnerships to increase your resources to address these issues,” she told attendees at the recent 2008 Institute for Higher Education Policy Symposium on Financial Literacy and College Success at Minority-Serving Institutions.

The symposium, sponsored by USA Funds^®, offered financial aid administrators, enrollment managers, academic affairs staff and others ways to develop comprehensive strategies to improve student financial literacy and build institutional capacity.

Low shared with attendees data that shows why the core retention and financial literacy issues that she noted will grow in importance in the future:

• The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that by 2015 the number of students enrolled in college will increase by 22 percent. The NCES projects that 80 percent of the increase will come from students of color, and half of them will be Hispanic.
• Students double their average credit card debt and triple the number of credit cards in their wallet from the time they arrive on campus and the time they graduate, according to the Jump$tart Coalition, which focuses on improving financial literacy of young adults.

When she helps schools tackle retention and financial literacy issues, Low says, she uses a three-step process.

Examine success, financial issues
In the first phase, she encourages schools to focus on data to answer their basic questions about students’ success and their financial situation before implementing new programs and services. “You don’t need new data. Look at the data you already have,” she says, noting that she calls this phase the “I wonder” phase.

Consider finding answers to these questions:

• What is the term-to-term attrition by class and major?
• How many sophomores have selected a major?
• How many students work part time — on campus or off campus?
• How many freshmen maintained their scholarships?
• How many “top 10” entering freshmen made the dean’s list the first term and the second term?

Once schools have answered these questions and others, in the second phase they can use the information to create programs and services that focus on specific desired outcomes.

For instance, Low says, if schools find they are losing one-third of their freshmen and decide they want to increase the retention of freshmen by 5 percent, they have to determine what programs or services to implement to accomplish that goal. Schools then should use outcomes data to determine the impact of their efforts. For example:

• How did participating in a learning community affect students’ course completion rates?
• What was the retention rate of conditionally admitted students after participating in a mentoring program?

Create partnerships
After schools have measurable outcomes from newly implemented programs, they can use that information to move to the third phase. That phase focuses on using outcomes to garner more resources and create partnerships on campus and off.

“If you are running a financial literacy program in the college of business, and you think the program should be adopted campus-wide, what are your chances of getting it implemented without having data to show the impact you are making?” she says.

“Oftentimes individual departments operate as silos and confine their efforts to one area,” she says, noting she encourages institutions to work across department lines and outside of their silos.

“We live in a data-driven society, and data will become more important as funds get tighter,” she says. “If schools can use data appropriately and encourage a culture of accountability, both the students and the institutions benefit.”