With the release of this comprehensive new report, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership has provided the mentoring field with important new data about the scope of mentoring in the United States. This report advances what is understood about mentoring in several important ways. First, it moves beyond a simple head count to explore Americans'…

Doctoral student enrollment and study require significant resources such as faculty time, student time, and funding. However, doctoral student attrition is a serious problem nationwide, especially at the dissertation level. When doctoral students do not complete their dissertations, their potential contributions to society are substantially…

Over the last 5 years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have increasingly provided learning opportunities across the world in a variety of domains. As with many emerging educational technologies, why and how people come to MOOCs needs to be better understood and importantly what factors contribute to learners' MOOC performance. It is known that…

This study expanded on prior satisfaction and retention research by exploring this relationship within the online for-profit sector. An ex post facto design was utilized at an online for-profit undergraduate institution with programs in the creative arts to explore the relationship between student satisfaction as measured by the Priorities Survey…

This report for Success Boston, The Boston Foundation and the Boston Opportunity Agenda explores the many reasons why students at two institutions, Bunker Hill Community College and UMass-Boston, "stopped out" of their learning without a degree, and the reasons they did (or did not) return. The report also discusses ways in which other…

Noncognitive factors, such as academic self-efficacy, motivation, and sense of belonging, predict college students' academic performance and retention. It is unclear if varying profiles of academic mindset are differentially associated with student success. We examined first-year college students' academic mindsets (perceived academic…

Data were collected from 353 online undergraduate introductory statistics students at the beginning of a semester using the Goals and Outcomes Associated with Learning Statistics (GOALS) instrument and an abbreviated form of the Statistics Anxiety Rating Scale (STARS). Data included a survey of expected grade, expected time commitment, and the…

The purpose of this study was to determine if engagement and mentoring of African American male students were a predictor of graduation. The participants of the study were engaged with mentors, instructors and learning communities from the beginning of their community college experience. This research study was guided by the two primary questions:…

The study of retention is important to the institution, to assist in ensuring financial stability, and to the student, to provide an environment supportive of student needs for success. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the relationship between the subscales of the Priorities Survey of Online Learners (PSOL) and the enrollment…

Retention is high on the list of priorities for both college and university administrators, as well as policy makers. It raises the question what high school data are known before a student attends a college that are predictive of student retention? This study examined 3445 first-time-in-college students from three academic years. Predictors…

Validity evidence to support the use of exam scores for admission to postsecondary institutions is generally provided in the form of correlation coefficients. The measures used to establish the correlations are scores on a particular entrance exam and most typically a student's first-year college grade point average (FYGPA). Correlations…

This study examined the relationship between college readiness of student veterans and retention, graduation, or transfer. I analyzed transcript and administrative data for student veterans who used GI Bill benefits at a public two-year college in Wisconsin. Results from logistic regression show that successful course completion rate (earning a C…

In recent times when there has been a shift in public benefit of education from the higher education to basic education, beneficiaries of higher education take responsibilities of most of their financial commitments as students. The focus of the study was to find out the extent to which financial responsibilities affect the persistence of female…

Student engagement is a recognized factor within higher education when understanding student satisfaction, retention, and persistence. The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) has been used across the nation since 2000 to measure the engagement behaviors of first year and fourth-year students at four-year institutions. The results of the…

This article examines the professional integration of beginning teachers in French-speaking Belgium and the factors predicting an exit from the profession during the first years of their careers. The analysis of four successive cohorts of new teachers indicates that exit rates are very high during the first year but show a gradual decline…