Customer Reviews

College Student Retention: Formula for Student Success (American Council on Education/Oryx Press Series on Higher Education)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this book to help with background information for a doctoral dissertation that I am writing. It is an excellent source of "all things attrition/retention" in higher education. Many of the big names in attrition research have contributed to this effort including Braxton, Bean, Astin, and Tinto. It has a very nice chapter on the history of attrition/retention in higher education as well as covering materials on first year attrition, finance, and perspectives on future research.
I would recommend this book highly for anyone interested in attrition/retention of students in higher education or as a resource for anyone researching or doing a literature review about the subject. There are nice reference lists at the end of each chapter and the book is presented in a way that is easy to use and understand.

Having read a lot of the literature on persistence and retention, this book remains my favorite. As the other reviewer says, many of the top experts weigh in here, and, what I like best, it's research-based. Too many studies of persistence and retention are based on conjecture and guesswork. This book clarifies why that is -- both the difficulty of getting the numbers and of interpreting them. It also gives you a solid overview of directions in studies into research in higher education. If you're going to buy just one book on this topic, in my opinion this is it. Note: this is not a general reader book that you would read straight through "for pleasure." Certainly for curiosity. Definitely for research. Even then, it's not a "fast" read. Take it section by section. I learned a lot from it, and found it well worth the buying.