Even though most of us only wonder about retention in the fall, down here in the belly of the data beast we’ve been paying closer attention to our term-to-term retention rates for each cohort of students. Although those numbers can fluctuate more, they can also give us an early hint about whether we might be trending in the wrong direction, in the right direction, or if we are just holding steady. More specifically, in the context of last year’s excitement over a record high fall-to-fall retention rate for first year students, it makes some sense to have a look and see if our broader retention efforts are continuing to hold strong … or if all of last year’s hubbub was just that.

So now that we’ve locked in our enrollment numbers for the spring term we can calculate fall-to-spring retention rates for each cohort. Although we also record winter-to-spring retention rates, it seems like it’s a little easier to make sense of fall-to-spring numbers since winter-to-spring rates are, in essence, a percentage of a proportion (i.e., the number of students enrolled in winter term is only a percentage of those who enrolled in the fall, so a winter-to-spring retention rate by itself can be deceiving).

To put our present numbers in context, the table below shows last year’s fall-to-spring (2015-16) retention rates, the prior three-year average (Academic Years 2013, 2014, 2015) fall-to-spring retention rates, and finally our most current fall-to-spring retention rates.

Cohort	2015-16 Fall/Spring	Prior 3-Year Average (13/14, 14/15, 15/16)	2016-17 Fall/Spring
1st year	94.2%	93.7%	93.8%
2nd year	96.8%	95.9%	97.2%
3rd year	97.5%	97.0%	98.1%
4th year	92.9%	93.4%	95.2%

A couple of things jump out. First, our first-year fall-to-spring retention rate is down slightly from last year’s high. To put this difference in real terms, we would have needed to retain three additional students to match last year’s percentage. However, we did manage to beat the prior three-year average by a hair, which is often a good way to tell if we are headed in the right direction. It’s also good to remind ourselves that a few years ago, we estimated that if everything went perfectly with a first-year class, the best retention rate we could hope for would be 90%. Last year we hit 88.9%. So we are already close to banging our heads on the proverbial ceiling. We will just have to wait to see how this translates into a fall-to-fall retention rate for the first year cohort.

Retention within the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year cohorts is a different story. In each case, our fall-to-spring retention rate clearly beats both last year’s rate as well as the prior three-year average. Some folks have rightly suggested that we should be careful not to lose touch with the needs of upperclass students as we strive to bring up our first-year retention rate. These numbers seem to suggest that we might have managed to maintain that balance pretty well.

And if you are wondering if all of these increased retention rates translate into more students on campus this spring, indeed they do. Last year at this time, we had a student FTE of 2345 (FTE stands for “full-time-equivalent” and is calculated by taking the number of full-time students and adding a third of the total number of part-time students – supposedly, three part-time students roughly equals one full-time student). Coincidentally, the prior three-year average spring FTE is also 2345.

But this spring, our FTE is 2399. That’s the largest spring FTE we’ve ever recorded.

Congratulations to everyone for your hard work on behalf of our students! In the face of all the budget pressures that we can’t control, it’s really heartening to see us so successful on one metric that we can influence.

Make it a good day,

Mark