ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the college student recruitment and retention literature to highlight a relatively stable set of preexisting institutional norms, or expectations for behavior that previously governed college recruitment and retention processes. It describes how various environmental drivers have considerably shifted these norms over the past 2 decades. The chapter outlines the implications of these shifts for future research into four previously identified factors that influence college student persistence: student perceptions of institutional integrity, entering characteristics of students, student social and academic integration, and institutional concern for student welfare. For decades, student outreach has largely been conducted in a “push” manner, with institutions primarily defining their prospect pools and pushing their messaging out to potential students. College and university retention offices focus their efforts on the centralized collection of information across multiple departments and divisions.
