Although President Bahls announced it at last week’s faculty meeting, it’s possible that the news about our latest first-to-second year retention rates hasn’t quite made it out to everyone who reads this blog. So just in case you haven’t heard, let me share with you a little number that still has me shaking my head a little bit.

• 1st-2nd year retention rate of Augustana’s 2015 freshman class – 88.9%

Wow.  Just, wow.

So why am I so blown away by this number?

In the fall of 2010, we recorded a retention rate of 87.8%. At the time this was the highest retention rate we’d seen in 25 years of tracking the persistence of first-year students to the second year. For almost a quarter of a century, Augustana’s retention rate had bounced around somewhere between 82 and 87 percent. So in context, 87.8% was an awfully high number and more than a few of us (particularly me) didn’t think we’d be able to do much better than that.

But three years ago while we were in the midst of developing the Augustana 2020 strategic plan, someone asked me to estimate (AKA guess with data) what might be the best possible retention rate that Augustana could achieve given our student profile and educational resources. After crunching some numbers, I suggested that if the stars aligned we might be able to hit a retention rate of 90% in a given year. In all honesty, I wasn’t convinced that we’d ever break 88% since I’ve never seen the stars align outside of a Disney cartoon. Even in my most optimistic moments, I certainly didn’t think we’d crack 88% until we got all of the programming described in Augustana 2020 up and running and had worked out the kinks. If you had forced me to guess before the start of the fall term what our retention rate would be this year, I would have probably said something just short of 87%.

But we blew past 87%. We blew past 88%. We almost cracked 89%. Wow.

The part that is most surprising to me is that we have just started to get all of our programs aimed at first-year student success up and running. Folks have been working extremely hard, but I don’t think anyone would say that we have all hit our stride yet.

And as if all that weren’t enough, it appears that our retention efforts might just be spilling over to our second year students. Our retention rate for 2nd-3rd students this fall hit 94.4% – the highest for those students since we began tracking that number six years ago.

Now it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t acknowledge that this might be an anomaly; next year we could be lamenting a retention rate that is back within our familiar range. But maybe, just maybe, we might be on to something and all of the work that so many people have been doing over the last two years is starting to pay off.

Will we actually get to 90%?  I don’t know.  But the next time someone asks me to give them a ceiling prediction for what the Augustana community is capable of doing, I’m going to think twice before I tell anyone what I think we can’t do.

Congratulations to everyone who has worked so hard on behalf of our students.  It’s humbling to be on the same team with all of you.

Make it a good day,

Mark