When we included metrics and target numbers in the Augustana 2020 strategic plan, we made it clear to the world how we would measure our progress and our success. As we have posted subsequent updates about our efforts to implement this strategic plan, a closer look into those documents exposes some of the organizational challenges that can emerge when a goal that seemed little more than a pipe dream suddenly looks like it might just be within our grasp.

Last week we calculated our first-to-second year retention numbers for the cohort that entered in the fall of 2016. As many of you know, Augustana 2020 set a first-to-second year retention rate goal of 90%, a number that we’d never come close to before. In fact, colleges enrolling students similar to ours top out at retention rates in the upper 80s. But we decided to set a goal that would stretch us outside of this range. To come up with this goal, we asked ourselves, “What if the stars aligned with the sun and the moon and we retained every single student that finished the year in good academic standing?” Under those conditions, we might hit a 90% retention rate. A pipe dream? Maybe. But why set a goal if it doesn’t stretch us a little bit? So we stuck that number in the document and thought to ourselves, “This will be a good number to shoot for over the next five years.”

Last year (fall of 2016), we were a little stunned to find that we’d produced an overall first-to-second year retention rate of 88.9%. Sure, we had instituted a number of new initiatives, tweaked a few existing programs, and cranked up the volume on our prioritizing retention megaphone to eleven. But we weren’t supposed to have had so much success right away. To put this surprise in the context of real people, an 89% retention rate meant that we whiffed on a whopping seven students! SEVEN!!! Even if we had every retention trick in the book memorized, out of a class of 697, an 88.9% retention rate is awfully close to perfect.

So what do you do when you find yourself close to banging your head on a ceiling that you didn’t really ever expect to see up close? The fly-by-night thought leader tripe would probably answer with an emphatic, “Break through that ceiling!” (complete with an infomercial and a special deal on a book and a DVD). Thankfully, we’ve got enough good sense to be smarter than that. In reality, a situation like this can set the stage for a host of delicately dangerous delusions. For example, if we were to exceed that retention rate in the very next year we could foolishly convince ourselves into thinking that we’ve discovered the secret to perfect retention. Conversely, if our retention rate were to slip in the very next year we could start to think that our aspiration was always beyond our grasp and that we really ought to just stop trying to be something that we are not (cue the Disney movie theme song).

The way we’ve chosen to approach this potential challenge is to start with a clear understanding of all of the various retention rates of student subpopulations that make up the overall number. By examining and tracking these subgroups, we can make a lot more sense of whatever the next year’s retention rate turns out to be. We also need to remind ourselves that for an overall retention rate to hit our aspired goal, all of the subpopulation retention rates have to end up evenly distributed around that final number. And that has always been where the really tough challenges lie because retention rates for some student groups (e.g., low income, students of color, lower academic ability) have languished below other groups (e.g., more affluent, white students, higher academic ability) for a very long time.

With all that as a prelude, Let’s dive into the details that make up the retention rate of our 2016 cohort.

Overall, our first-to-second year retention rate this fall is 86.5%. No, it’s not as strong as last year’s 88.9% retention rate. Even though our three-year trend of 3-year retention rate averages continues to improve (84.7%, 86.0%, and 87.2% most recently), I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t just a little disappointed by the overall number. Yet, this sets up the perfect opportunity to examine our data more closely for evidence that might confirm or counter the narrative I described above.

As always, this is where things get genuinely interesting. Over the last few years, we’ve put additional effort into the quality of the experience we provide for our students of color. So we should expect to see improvement in our first-to-second year retention rate for these students. And in fact, we have seen improvement over the past four years as retention rates for these students have risen from 78.4% four years ago to 86.1% last year.

So it is particularly gratifying to report that the retention rate for students of color among the 2016 cohort increased again, this time to an impressive 89.8%! Amazingly, these students persisted at a rate almost five percentage points higher than white students.

That’s right.  Retention of first-year students of color from fall of 2016 to fall of 2017 was 89.8%, while the retention of white students over the same period was 85.6%.

Of course, there is clearly plenty of work for us yet to do in creating the ideal learning environment where, as a result, the maximal number of students succeed. And I don’t for a second think that everything is going to be unicorns and rainbows from here on out. But for a moment, I think it’s worth taking just a second to be proud of our success in improving the retention rate of our students of color.

Make it a good day,

Mark