Learn how to use the Postsecondary Data Partnership Retention and Persistence Institution-Level dashboard to measure the impact of attendance on first-time student retention and persistence rates.
Transcript
In this tutorial, we demonstrate how to use the PDP retention and persistence institution level dashboard to measure the impact of attendance on first-time student retention and persistence rates.
The retention and persistence institution-level dashboard reports the first-to second-year retention and persistence rates for students who attended your institution. There are three possible outcomes. In the student's second year after enrolling at your institution, the student could have remained at your institution or completed a credential, transferred to another institution, or left college before completing a credential at any institution.
Why is this dashboard needed? A student's second year is an important transition point, particularly for first-time college students. Understanding their retention and persistence helps to inform initiatives to increase Student Success rates. A student's first and second years are determined based on when they enrolled in college for the first time or transferred to your institution.
What is the difference between retention and persistence?
Retention describes how many students are still enrolled at or have earned a credential from our institution before the end of their second academic year. This is a measure of how well our institution retains students.
Persistence describes how many students are enrolled in their second academic year or have completed a credential at another institution. This definition may differ from how your institution defines persistence. Check with your institution's PDP administrator if you have questions about how your institution defines persistence.
Let's use this dashboard to answer this research question: is there a difference in retention rates for first-time students who attend full-time versus part-time?
Navigate to the retention persistence dashboard. Since we are interested in the outcomes of first-time students, let's apply the filter for first-time students. To do that, click the edit button in the chart settings area. In the enrollment type dropdown, deselect "transfer in". Next, because we want to compare the retention and persistence rates for students attending college full-time or part-time, we need to apply a dimension. Select attendance from the dimension drop-down. Leaving students whose attendance status is unknown will not help us understand this data, so let's filter those students out. To do that, click the attendance dropdown, deselect unknown and click apply settings.
Now, our dashboard shows data for first-time students who attended college full-time compared to part-time. If we examine the line chart, we notice that the retention/persistence filter is set to retention/persistence, which tells us that the lines in the chart represent first-time, full or part-time students who either retained at our institution for the second academic year or transferred to another institution and persisted there. Also notice that there is a gap between the blue and orange lines which tells us that there is a difference in retention/persistence between our student populations.
Now, let's determine what the gap is for the most recent cohort. Hovering over the 2021-22 data point, we see that 80% of first time full-time students retained or persisted into their second academic year compared to 67% of first-time part-time students. This is a 13 percentage point difference. While there is still a gap, it has narrowed significantly over the past several years. Now, let's change the retention/persistence filter to retention. Now the line chart represents the retention rates of first-time students. Hovering over the 2021-22 data points we find that 53% of first-time full-time students retained at our institution for their second academic year while 49% of first-time part-time students retained. This is a 4 percentage point gap, which is slightly larger than the gap for retention and persistence combined, but notice how this gap has narrowed significantly over time.
Now let's change the retention/persistence filter to persistence, which changes the line chart to represent the persistence rates of first-time students. We noticed two things about these results. First, the persistence rate for part-time students is higher than full-time students for the cohorts represented and second, the gap between these two populations for the most recent cohort has nearly disappeared. Hovering over the 2021-22 data point for part-time students, we see that 18% of first-time part-time students and 17% of first-time full-time students have transferred out and persisted at another institution.
Let's reset the retention/persistence filter to retention/persistence. Now let's investigate if the gap in retention/persistence rates by attendance changes depending on the term during which a student entered our institution. To explore the impact of cohort terms on this population, click the edit button which opens chart settings. Then change the cohort term to fall and click apply settings.
Now the students represented in this dashboard are first-time students who entered our institution in the fall term because the lines in the line chart are separated. That tells us there is a difference in retention/persistence rates between our full-time and part-time first-time students who entered our institution in the fall term. Hovering over the 2021-22 data point for full-time students, we see that 74% of that population retained or persisted into their second academic year compared to 67% of part-time students. This is a 7 percentage point difference. Notice how this gap has narrowed significantly over time.
Let's see if there are similar results for first-time students entering the spring term. Click the edit button in the chart settings area and change the cohort term to Spring. Then click apply settings.
We find something interesting happens. For spring entering first-time students for the most recent cohort, part-time students are retaining and persisting at a higher level compared to full-time students. Hovering over the 2021-22 data point, we see that 64% of spring entering part-time first-time students retained or persisted into their second academic year compared to 43% of our spring entering first-time full-time students. This is a 21 percentage point difference and the trend appears to be widening.
Let's summarize what we learned about first-time students for our institution. While the retention rate for full-time students is higher compared to part-time students, the gap has narrowed significantly over time. While the persistence rate for part-time students is higher compared to full-time students, the gap has narrowed significantly over time. Full-time students entering in the fall retain and persist at higher rates compared to part-time students entering in the fall term, but the gap in those rates has narrowed significantly over time. Part-time students entering in the spring term retain and persist at higher rates compared to full-time students entering in the spring and the gap appears to be widening. This information will be useful as our institution works to improve Student Success metrics like retention and persistence rates. In this case, special outreach to different student populations may be needed to keep them engaged in our institution specifically and higher education in general.
What percentage of your full and part-time students retain or persist into their second academic year? We encourage you to take the time to explore your institution's PDP dashboards to find out.
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