About Us
traditions in order to improve policymakers' information about the best possible designs for improving
student retention and completion.
College completion remains one of the most important policy issues in higher education
today. Of those who enrolled in higher education in 1996 with the intention to complete a
bachelor’s degree, only 58% had done so six years later. Measuring Up 2000, the state-by-state report
card for higher education, brought into focus what many had known about student departure at the state
level—in many states, fewer than half of first-time, full-time freshmen complete their bachelor’s degrees
within six years at the institution where they began.
Very little research exists to provide state or federal policymakers with concrete
direction on steps that could be taken to increase student completion of college. Researchers
have, however, amassed a large body of knowledge regarding the root causes of student
departure at the institutional level. This research provides specific institutional policy solutions
that can be quite effective in reducing rates of student departure.
Our project is unique in melding state policy research with institutional level analysis in
order to better understand how state and institutional activities intersect to influence student
college completion. We seek to document and explore the relationships between state and
institutional policies in order to better understand how policymakers and institutional leaders can
best work together to reduce the rates of college dropouts.
Our work covers three important phases:
- Audits of state and
institutional
policies for student completion
- Studies of state level
factors
that influence student completion
- Institutional-level
studies of
student departure