#CSAM18 Day 28: Retention, Persistence, and You: Partners in College Student Success*
This is a long one, folks. The tl;dr is that retention and graduation are byproducts of success, and that our work should be driven by theory to implement programs and services that we know improve student success. If you’re in for a longer read than that sentence, read on, dear reader. ********* We bandy the terms retention and persistence around all the time, and often use them as the driving force behind the initiatives we create and implement. And, quite frankly, we should, at least to some extent. But here’s the thing. First, terminology. Students persist, colleges retain. The act of persisting is done by the one actually moving through a situation, while colleges work to retain students at a given institution. They are not the same term, and should not be used interchangeably. Second, focus. Retention and persistence (and, ultimately, graduation) are byproducts of student success. Kuh and Pascarella (and Astin, and Levine, and Padilla, among others) touch on this in their writing...