ABSTRACT
The increased global competition for educated workers (Chapter 4), the rising costs of attending public and private colleges (Chapter 5), and the emphasis on public accountability have converged to create a focus on improving degree attainment in the early 2000s. A few publications have called attention to troubling retention rates and possible remedies (e.g., Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009; Carey, 2008; St. John & Musoba, 2010). The long tradition of research on retention and persistence in higher education suggests a potential for using studies of interventions to inform the dissemination of innovations and their adaptive redesign. Yet government responses to budget constraints in 2011 have created new challenges for federal, state, and institutional efforts to promote persistence in higher education.1 Government constraints on higher education only increase the need for innovation; further advances in research and intervention are needed. This chapter describes how state and federal policy, funding, and programs link to persistence and degree completion; examines trends in degree completion by diverse groups using indicators of retention; and reviews research linking policy to retention, persistence, and degree completion. We use the term retention for continuation at the original campus and persistence as the process of educational attainment inclusive of transfer.2
