Retention strategies

Retention strategies can include a number of social, personal, and academic initiatives. The key aim of these is to orientate and induct students to university.

Three areas of focus

• Academic skills — Strategies that focus on academic skills target the specific and general skills and knowledge deemed important to academic performance (e.g., note-taking, time management, writing skills, study skills)
• Self-management skills — Self-managements skills focus on individual/personal skills and traits and how these can be used to navigate and succeed at university (e.g., stress management, self-care, mental health interventions, self-compassion)
• Socialisation — Socialisation strategies are usually coordinated with commencing students or at the beginning of a teaching period. These strategies aim to build a sense of belonging between students, a sense of identity with their studies, and a connection with their university.

Various ways and means

• Intensive vs. distributed — Retention strategies can be either intensive (e.g., a socialisation strategy that is coordinated during the first week of semester) or distributed (e.g., a semester-long academic skills workshop series)
• Mentoring — Mentoring is a process of supporting students that involves a more experienced individual (e.g., faculty staff, alumni) offering support and guidance to a less experienced one. Mentoring is traditionally delivered face-to-face and one-to-one but can also be delivered in a group setting and virtually.

Although small, there are a number of strategies that have a significant effect on student retention. One strategy — putting an at-risk student on probation — doesn't.

Of all the strategies reported in the literature, helping students to manage stress and anxiety, and engage in positive self-care (i.e., self-management strategies) had the largest effect on student retention. Academic skills and socialisation strategies were effective but to a lesser extent. That said (and perhaps unsurprisingly), academic skills interventions had a stronger effect on academic performance than self-management strategies (see Robbins et al., 2009).

Mentoring was also effective for retaining students and helping them graduate (see Sneyers & De Witte, 2018). Also, having students express how what they're learning is of value to themselves and others had a small but significant effect on retention (see Solanki et al., 2020). One strategy that was found to have a negative effect on retention (i.e., more students withdraw from their studies as a result) was academic probation. Academic probation had a small but significant effect on attrition.

1. Focusing on academic, self-management, and socialisation,
2. Having staff support students,
3. Offering support to all students, and
4. Building a stand-alone curriculum leads to greater retention.

Retention strategies help build the motivational, emotional, and social resources that help students adjust to university.

There is a considerable body of evidence and commentary related to the mechanisms that underscore retention strategies. Some of this literature discusses coping theories, while others discuss identity theories. Regardless of the point of view, the majority of the literature focuses on retention being the product of successful transition.

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