Feel Free Read LaGuardia Institutional Research: Techniques and Findings RTF

In 2008 LaGuardia Community College gathered a team of institutional researchers to provide evidence of challenges and achievements. This book brings together 60 studies undertaken by the team on the effectiveness of policies, the forces thwarting retention to graduation, the effectiveness of interventions, models of student persistence, and financial projections. Links to all papers and to several spreadsheet models are provided in the book.Our research measured the importance of getting students to graduation quickly, before life’s events took them out of school. We also found more intensive advising to be ineffective for students on the cusp of dropping out. With each study our understanding grew.The book begins with an apparently easy question: how does changing major affect a student’s chance of success? The question turned out to be challenging. The book then moves on to policy research. The team analyzed restrictions on students taking partially online courses, course load restrictions, and the limitations of high school equivalency preparation. This is followed by an exploration of the college’s data and its meaning. Most of the papers referenced in this chapter were simple tests of markers of student persistence, each broadening how we conceived of the struggle students faced trying to stay in college.The book then pursues the topic of momentum. Student development leaders on campus focused on the idea that getting through college required something like mass times speed in physics. It’s an attractive concept, and we set about helping them define it in ways that we could measure. In doing so, we continued to build our understanding of the forces on students that made retention to graduation so challenging.Then the book presents a technique we used to test the success of retention programs. The technique employs comparing treatment individuals with all matching control individuals. We then developed another technique for testing retention program effectiveness and for setting goals. Using our strongest variables and stepwise, logistic regression, we calculated the probability that any student would either be retained to a second semester hence or have graduated before. While the probability was conceptually appropriate for individuals, it was most accurate for groups of students. Thus, we could test actual against predicted for a program and see how well the program worked.We also developed models of retention behavior based on the work that came out of a series of interviews of students who had reduced their enrollment intensities. Their decision-making calculus could be replicated with the data from our quantitative studies.The book also presents our work with enrollment projections and modeling. Our projections lacked great sophistication, but they tended to be accurate. In addition, we used Markov Chain modeling to explore the impact on graduation rates of various retention programs. The book ends with financial modeling. We developed a method for finding the lifetime cost of graduates, transfer-out students, and dropouts. This chapter also provides a strategic financial projection model workbook that combines enrollment and salary projections. While the research techniques will be of most interest to institutional researchers, the greater understanding of student retention behavior developed in the findings provides a solid basis for program development for all higher education professionals.