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How Colleges Organize Themselves to Increase Student Persistence: Four-Year Institutions
Published by the College Board and available at the College Board Advocacy website at:
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/policy-advocacy/access/retention

Most of the relevant research on this crucial issue has focused on the role of student characteristics and experience in persistence and graduation. This study examines the critical role of institutional policies and practices in student persistence and graduation and how that role develops and is enacted in institutions’ efforts to boost these measures of student success.

How Colleges Organize Themselves to Increase Student Persistence: Four-Year Institutions
is highlighted in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: A Full-Time Focus on Retention in New Orleans:
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Full-Time-Focus-on-Retention/47961/

The Study of Institutional Practices Related to Student Persistence
Mary Ziskin, Don Hossler, & Sooyeon Kim
Published in the Journal of College Student Retention and available at the website of the Baywood Publishing Company at:
http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/main.asp?referrer=default

Using literature and illustrations drawn from a pilot study of institutional policies and practices surrounding student retention, the authors explore the theoretical and methodological challenges entailed in the study of student retention. The discussion centers on two efforts to expand the theoretical base and scope for research in this area: one argues that colleges and universities are optimizers of cultural capital and the other critiques the narrowness of the frames that predominate student retention research.

Getting Serious About Institutional Performance in Student Retention: Research-Based Lessons on Effective Policies and Practices
Don Hossler, Mary Ziskin, & Jacob P.K. Gross
Published in the journal About Campus and available at the website of Wiley InterScience at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122214074/PDFSTART

Drawing on their experiences in and findings from two distinct but complementary research projects that focus on institutional efforts to enhance student persistence and graduation, the Indiana Project on Academic Success and the College Board Study on Student Retention, the authors share their growing understanding of how institutions organize themselves to enhance student persistence and the extent and effectiveness of those efforts. This article can contribute to the ongoing discussion among scholars and practitioners around the country about how to increase persistence and graduation and, by extension, to improve student learning.