The president and the provost were talking about their biggest challenge: retention. Between students’ freshman and sophomore years, the college was losing almost 40 percent of its students. For many students, the causes were well documented: time and money. The college’s “average student” was no longer an eighteen-year-old white male coming straight from high school and taking a full load of five courses while living on campus. These days, the typical student was a 32-year-old Latina mother of two with a job at a big-box retail store taking one or two courses at a time. That described most students at the college: nontraditional learners had become the majority, a group not tied to the campus or able to focus on study full time: both danger signs for retention problems. If work or family demands became too pressing, adult learners dropped out of college temporarily or permanently.
Why We Need to Fight for Our Students: The Example of Stephanie Land
It is a commonplace to say that our campuses need to be “student centered.” That we need to “meet students where they are” and recognize that our students are less
Constance C. Relihan
January 2, 2024
