ABSTRACT
Based on this study, it is clear that there were several factors that overwhelmingly affected whether a student continued his or her education at the college or university he or she was attending prior to Hurricane Katrina. These factors included the individual student’s future orientation; their connectedness or lack of connectedness to their schools and the people in them; the learning environment, which included the ability of the institution to maintain communication with the students, offer online courses, provide exibility in courses, both at the campus when school reopened and in accepting courses that students took elsewhere during fall 2005 when the students’ home campus was closed; and the structural limitation of nances and housing.
