College Attrition at American Research Universities: Comparative Case Studies

Undergraduate attrition is an issue of growing concern in the field of higher education - it now even has its own scholarly journal. This work is the first book on college attrition to present case studies based on specific institutions of higher learning, examining in detail the practical concerns that cause students to drop out and what can be done to cut the drop-out rate. The book adds an important voice from the students themselves, whose views have often been omitted from the discussion.College Attrition was written as a result of the author's scholarly interest in the question of Why students quit, combined with the concern expressed by the leaders of the four institutions in the study. While responding to and building on trends in existing work in this field, the current work departs from existing literature both empirically and theoretically. The book studies university drop-out rates, looking at quantitative data but also, and primarily, relying on qualitative interviews with students who have left school. Students' accounts, most often the unseen side of the equation, reveal extraordinarily consequential insights into the attrition process itself and to what interventions can be effectively introduced to stem it.Theoretically, the work is set in a context that is enlarged by examining attrition within the organization - right in the schools in which it is found. Most previous research has treated attrition as an abstract process.While the data are based on and are primarily focused on research universities, the findings and many of the conclusions are germane to a host of other institutional types.