‘RETENTIONEERING’ HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UK: ATTITUDINAL BARRIERS TO ADDRESSING STUDENT RETENTION IN UNIVERSITIES.

Veronique Johnston, Academic Development Adviser & Teaching Fellow, Napier University, Edinburgh;

Ormond Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Institutional Research, Institute of Educational Technology, Open University

Abstract

This article argues that universities’ attitudes to student retention are essentially ambivalent. For example, increased retention can be seen as a sign of lower academic standards and thus lower institutional status. The authors suggest that this need not be the case and that retention can be increased with no effect on standards. However ‘retentioneering’ an institution in this way is likely to require substantial changes in institutional structures and staff attitudes. This article suggest ways in which such attitudes can be understood and possibly changed.

Address for correspondence

Ormond Simpson


‘RETENTIONEERING’ HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE UK: ATTITUDINAL BARRIERS TO ADDRESSING STUDENT RETENTION IN UNIVERSITIES.

Introduction

Universities are curious entities. Individual universities have existed longer than almost any form of social structure other than the Church. Yet arguments about their functions continue as fiercely as ever (Denman, 2005). Central to their existence for example is the tension between research and teaching, which is still the subject of debate. This article will argue that there is also a fundamental tension in institutions’ attitudes towards one of their other important functions – the successful production of graduates.

This tension is most clearly manifested in attitudes to student retention and is perhaps illustrated in the comment made by the Managing Director of a small manufacturing enterprise in a survey undertaken by one of the authors (Simpson, 2003):

“Our businesses are not that different. We both take in tested raw materials and turn out a finished product. The difference is that I have to aim for at least 99.99% success rate for my products otherwise I’ll go out of business. You people in universities only have a success rate of 70% and seem happy with that.”

This may not be a fair comparison. But are universities sanguine about the waste of human resources involved in current educational policies? If raw materials in the shape of students are tested before they arrive then how far is it the responsibility of universities if substantial numbers of them then fail? An average of 23% of United Kingdom students starting during 1996/97 to 2003/4 will not gain a degree according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) performance indicators. And if government widening participation strategies succeed, then what implications will this have for future student retention and success?

Institutional Attitudes to Retention – Anderson’s model

Institutions’ attitudes to the enduring and complex problem of improving student retention are ambivalent (The Guardian, 5 October 2004). Allen and Fifield (1999) note that Universities generally lack customer-orientation in their processes, partly as a consequence of entrenched values and institutional politics. Similarly, Newton (2002) warns that ‘there are dangers in viewing organisations as entirely rational entities’. With respect to attitudes to students, Anderson (2003) maintains that there are two kinds of higher education institution – the ‘Survival of the Fittest’ or ‘Survivalist’, and the ‘Remedialist’. He suggests that the two types of institution are distinguishable by their attitudes and policies towards new students at admission, support after starting their course and the overall outcomes that are desired – see Table 1.

‘Survivalist’ Institutions / ‘Remedialist’ Institutions
1. Admissions Policy / Retention strategy centres on a strict admissions policy / Emphasis on marketing and recruitment and a flexible attitude towards entry qualifications
2. Support During Courses / Essentially ‘hands-off’ with the expectation that students will be self-motivated and self starting and only need support when faced with extreme pressures / Committed to students’ remedial support. But students are expected to identify their own weaknesses and to be sufficiently assertive to ask for help.
3. Expected Outcomes / High retention and the production of independent, confident and competitive graduates / Expectation that remedial support will reduce student wastage.

Table 1. Contrasting Features of ‘Survivalist’ and ‘Remedialist’ Institutions

1. Admissions policy.

In ‘survivalist’ institutions, Anderson argues that student retention strategy centres on admissions policy. The key is to refine selection procedures to identify those most likely to succeed. This usually means selecting the very top grades of the entry qualifications, a strategy which is demonstrably successful as research points to a clear relationship between students’ educational qualifications on entry and their subsequent retention (Simpson 2003, House of Commons Education & Skills Committee 2003, Woodley et al 1992). Of course, such selection can never be entirely accurate; there are always likely to be false positives – students who are selected but fail, and false negatives – students who are not selected but could have achieved as well or better than those admitted. This remains a serious problem for survivalist institutions.

‘Remedialist’ policies on admissions are rather more complex. Ostensibly fulfilling the same criteria as survivalist institutions, the actuality can be rather different. The emphasis is heavily on marketing and recruitment in order to stimulate demand (The Guardian, Wednesday February 8, 2006) and the attitude towards entry qualifications can be flexible:

“[I have just offered a place to a student] …with two D grades. Normally two C’s are required but he’s local and that helps” (University Admissions Officer quoted in the Guardian 19th August 2003).

2. Support during courses.

Anderson maintains that the approach of ‘survivalist’ institutions to support post-start is simply ‘hands off – it’s up to the students’. Whilst this is an over-simplification, such institutions have very high expectations of their students, amongst which are that students will be self-motivated and self starting and only need support when faced with extreme pressures resulting perhaps from external events. Even then, it is expected that students will be sufficiently perceptive to recognise their needs and sufficiently assertive to seek help when they need it.

‘Remedialist’ institutions are committed to students’ remedial support as they have admitted students with lower entry qualifications than survivalist institutions and therefore likely to generate more ‘false positives’ and a considerably lower retention rate. However, the support offered is generally reactive in nature – students are still largely expected to identify their own weaknesses and to be able to ask for help.

3. Expected outcomes.

As a result of its admissions and support policies the ‘survivalist’ institution expects to have very high retention and to produce independent, confident and competitive graduates. The consequence of the production of such graduates is that the institution expects to be seen as having high status and academic standards.

‘Remedialist’ institutions expect lower retention but that remedial support will reduce student wastage ( Yorke & Thomas, 2003).

Institutional attitudes to retention - other models

Whilst Anderson’s analysis is taken from US higher education there may be similarities to the UK worth examining. There may for instance be links between his analysis and the increasing divide in the UK between research and teaching intensive universities. There is certainly a close resemblance between Anderson’s model and Martin Trow’s (1973) distinction between ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ higher education where the attitude of elite institutions to issues such as access to higher education is that it should be seen as a privilege whereas mass institutions are supposed to perceive it as a right. There may be similar links between Anderson’s model and attitudes and concepts derived from psychological theories of the self (Dweck, 2000); that is between ‘entity’ theorists of intelligence who believe that intelligence is fixed and immutable and might therefore be identified with survivalist attitudes, and ‘incrementalists’ who believe that intelligence can be changed through effort and support, and who therefore might be seen as remedialists.

Institutional attitudes to retention – an essential ambivalence

The factors influencing student retention are inherently complex and problematic (Tinto, 1993). Curiously, it is where institutions are successful in reducing drop out rates that institutional ambivalence to retention is most keenly felt as ‘remedialist’ institutions may already suffer relatively low status. Read et al (2003) comment that ‘institutions which receive a large number of non-traditional students are subsequently constructed as ‘sub-standard’ and to some extent, therefore, ‘inauthentic’ institutions. As higher drop out is linked to a poorer quality student intake, a fall in drop out places an institution in danger of being accused of lowering its academic standards (THES, 19 November 2004). Thus there will be pressures on ’remedialist’ institutions to adopt the strategies associated with ‘survivalist’ institutions as well as their ethos. This will not be true of all staff in the institution but in general ‘remedialist’ institutions may very well be infused by staff with ‘survivalist’ attitudes.

As Peter Scott (1995) notes, the British have found themselves with a mass system of higher education in terms of ‘public structures’ but with an elite one in terms of ‘private instincts’. Thus some staff may maintain that students should be offered help but that if they do not take it up then the institution is not obliged to make further effort. For by not taking up help, students reveal themselves to be those who are destined to dropout anyway and thus in effect, be part of the dropout needed to maintain standards. So institutions offer help reactively to those students who seek it but do not necessarily see the need to give support proactively to those students who do not respond immediately to offers of help. Such an institution is illustrated in the quote below:

‘In the first year at X University students are not closely monitored. There are few coursework marks available before late in the year and what does exist is not used to identify weak or unmotivated students. Staff started taking attendance data this year but have yet to decide what to do with it, tutorials sessions with academics are available weekly but most students choose not to attend. The general ethos is that staff make available learning and support opportunities but if students don’t take advantage of them there is little comeback’ (from a UK listserv 2003).

Of course, as universities are made up of individuals, no institution is entirely survivalist or remedialist. Institutions will fall somewhere in the spectrum between these two approaches. A ‘survivalist’ institution will certainly support those of its students who are experiencing external difficulties. Students experiencing academic difficulties will also receive help although a point may soon be reached where they will be deemed beyond help. But, as suggested above, there will also be ambivalent attitudes in ‘remedialist’ institutions which may also be subject to survivalist attitudes (THES, 19 November 2004), even if the point at which students will be deemed to be beyond help is later in their progress than in ‘survivalist’ institutions.

This ambivalence is central to shaping efforts to increase student retention in UK higher education institutions and it may be the biggest single barrier to developing appropriate strategies. But such ambivalence is increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of the Government’s determination to widen participation in higher education, evidenced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s participation performance indicators (HESA, 2006), the recent establishment of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA, 2005) and high profile media rewards for widening participation activity such as the annual Times Higher Educational Supplement (THES) ‘Widening Participation Initiative of the Year’. Indeed, there appears to be growing recognition amongst some of the principle ‘survivalist’ institutions that relying only on entry qualifications and interview, may be producing false negatives amongst students from relatively deprived educational backgrounds who have lower entry grades (The Guardian, 18 December 2002, The Scotsman, 10 November 2004). They are therefore exploring the possibility of adjusting their admissions processes. However, evidence suggests that this is likely to be accompanied by a decrease in retention unless the issues of attitudes and policies are addressed at the same time (Furlong & Forsyth, 2003).

Improving retention

If institutions are to merely maintain current retention levels, let alone increase them, then new approaches will be necessary. Anderson (2003) argues that reactive contact with students is not enough to affect retention rates significantly – “Student self-referral does not work as a mode of promoting persistence. Students who need services the most refer themselves the least. Effective retention services take the initiative in outreach and timely interventions.” In other words there is a need to recognise that many students at risk of dropping out are likely to have a limited ability to recognise and diagnose their own weaknesses, and are also likely to be insufficiently assertive to respond to offers of help. In essence, institutions will need to move beyond ‘survivalist’ and ‘remedialist’ reactive modes of student support to ‘retentionist’ proactive modes. There is considerable evidence that proactive modes of support has marked retention effects (Simpson, 2003).

Both remedialists and survivalists may argue that this is ‘force-feeding’ students. The thesis of this article is that proactive support is a response to the fact that new students from widening participation backgrounds will need more active support if they are to survive. It may no longer be possible to rely on such students being sufficiently assertive to seek support (Yorke & Thomas 2003). Zepke et al (2006 ) conclude that improving student retention requires the institution to accept and recognise diverse learners goals and cultural capital and adapt their mores and practices to accommodate these in a learner-centred way.

It is also a thesis of this article that retention can be increased without any reduction in academic standards. There is evidence of this from various sources such as the work carried out at Napier University (Johnston, 2001) where despite increasing diversity increases in retention of 9% have been achieved in first year pass rates without any effect on course standards. In part-time higher education, increases in retention of 3-4% have been made at the United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) by proactive contact with students, again without any effects on course standards (Simpson, 2003). Whilst such retention gains may seem small there is evidence that they may be significant in terms of the positive benefits for students, institutions and society as a whole (Simpson, 2005).

Of course some dropout is inevitable through illness, employment domestic circumstances and so on. This is ‘institutionally unavoidable dropout’ and, for example, from considerations of the entry characteristics of UKOU students Simpson (2003) suggests that the maximum possible increase in retention in the UKOU lies somewhere between 7 to 12%. Thus 3% may represent nearly half of the maximum increase that could be achieved through institutional action. Different institutions will have different levels of ‘unavoidable’ dropout that may be similarly calculable and thus allow the setting of realistic targets for improved retention.

In addition many staff in higher education will argue that there will always be students for whom dropping out is the ‘right’ decision. This is undoubtedly true, but there seldom seems to be any estimates of how much this ‘rightful’ dropout should be, and there is the uneasy feeling that such a phenomenon is something of an excuse for the application of survivalist policies. Given that there is evidence of the negative effects of dropping out of university such as increased levels of depression, lower pay, higher unemployment, physical ill-health and partner violence (Bynner et al 2001) it would seem unwise to accept the current level of ‘rightful’ dropout uncritically.

Barriers to retention

If the case for increasing retention is accepted then what are the barriers to that objective? If it thought desirable to convert universities from ‘survivalist’ and ‘remedialist’ institutions to ‘retentionist’ institutions, we suggest that there will need to be a change in sectoral and institutional attitudes. Critically, institutions have to recognise retention as a priority (Beatty Guenter, 1994) and to believe that change is possible. However, there is great comfort to be drawn from inertia and existing cultures are extremely tenacious. The status quo may not be perfect but does represent a form of agreement. Change that benefits the institution does not necessarily bring benefits to all the individuals in that institution and critically can disrupt the distribution of power. Those threatened with loss of power are unlikely to give it up lightly (Trowler et al, 2003).

Efforts to stimulate change are further complicated by the unique features of each institution. ‘The size, stage of development, strategic priorities, blend of organisational politics and even the particular vulnerabilities of a college are key considerations. They represent a complex combination of constraint and opportunity.’ (Newton, 2002).

The most important route to retentioneering an institution and its staff may be to identify implicit ‘survivalist’ attitudes and unwrap them so that they can be recognised and addressed with a view to transforming them. For example in the period of writing this article one of the authors was in correspondence with an administrator in his institution over a decision, made on grounds of economy, to withdraw the paper application form from its brochures and require applicants to apply online or by phone. In response to a query suggesting that this decision might disadvantage potential students who did not have easy internet or phone access, the administrator responded that perhaps these then were students we did not want – an archetypal survivalist attitude.

Transforming attitudes

Transforming such attitudes will probably have to be achieved through processes of motivation and empowerment at sectoral and institutional levels. (Table 2)

Critical Factors / Sectoral Level / Institutional Level
Motivation / Finance
Environment
Reputation
Performance Indicators / Leadership
Institutional Values
Finance
Reputation
Empowerment / ‘National Centre for Retention Studies’
‘Retention awards’ / Institutional Learning /Feedback
Planning Process
Resource
Challenging entrenched values
Rewarding individual endeavour

Table 2: Critical factors in Transforming Institutional and