Timothy ReesFollow

Date

8-2018

Department

School of Education

Degree

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Chair

Brian C Yates

Keywords

Enrollment Yield, Faith-Based Institution, Student Attributes

Disciplines

Adult and Continuing Education | Education | Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research | Educational Psychology | Higher Education

Abstract

Lifetime earnings of Americans increase when they hold the credential of a bachelor’s degree. Understanding what factors likely lead to successful candidacy for said degree has been the subject of study in higher education for more than three quarters of a century. With the advent of affirmative action in the late 1960s, issues of access to higher education were somewhat mitigated and the field began to focus on issues of persistence to graduation. From Tinto’s (1975) interactionalist theory of student departure through the present day, a plethora of studies have explored and uncovered many factors that are relevant to persistence. These factors include, but are not limited to: academic preparedness, ethnicity, socio-economic status, and cultural fit. Despite over four decades of study not much progress has been made in improving retention issues. Curiously, many of those same learnings have not been studied concerning enrollment yield to determine if root causes of attrition can be addressed earlier in the process. Additionally, the perspective of a faith-based institution has not been sufficiently addressed in relation to said factors of persistence. The researcher attempted to extract best predictors of enrollment yield by conducting a correlational logistic regression study of several recent cohorts at a faith-based university in south central Virginia.

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