Table of Contents

Abstract

C OLLEGE STUDENT DEPARTURE poses a long-standing problem to colleges and universities that attracts the interest of both scholars and practitioners. Approximately 45 percent of students enrolled in two-year colleges depart during their first year, and approximately one out of every fourth student departs from a four-year college or university (American College Testing Program, 2001). These departure rates varied little between (American College Testing Program, 2001. These rates of departure negatively affect the stability of institutional enrollments, budgets, and the public perception of the quality of colleges and universities. Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson (1997) call this problem the "departure puzzle."The departure puzzle greatly interests scholars and practitioners for different reasons. Practitioners express an interest in solving this puzzle to manage the enrollments of their colleges and universities. This puzzle intrigues scholars because departure not only is a problem worthy of attention in its own right but also offers a window on the nature of the college student experience (Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson, 1997). Through this window, a better understanding of the student college choice process and the effects of college on students may result. Moreover, the considerable energy expended by high school students, their parents, high school counselors, and college admissions officers in the college selection process also makes college student departure a puzzling phenomenon (Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson, 1997).The departure puzzle has been the object of empirical attention for more than seventy years (Braxton, 2000a). During the past twenty-five years, considerable progress on understanding this puzzle has occurred (Braxton, 2000a). Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure Understanding and Reducing College Student DepartureSocial integration pertains to the extent of congruency between the individual student and the social system of a college or university. Tinto holds that social integration occurs both at the level of the college or university and at the level of a subculture of an institution (Tinto, 1975, p. 107). Social integration reflects the student's perception of his or her degree of congruence with the attitudes, values, beliefs, and norms of the social communities of a college or university.Tinto postulates that academic and social integration influence a student's subsequent commitments to the institution and to the goal of college graduation. The greater the student's level of academic integration, the greater the level of subsequent commitment to the goal of college graduation. Moreover, the greater the student's level of social integration, the greater the level of subsequent commitment to the focal college or university (Tinto, 1975, p. 110). The student's initial levels of commitments-institutional and graduation goal-also influence his or her levels of subsequent commitments. In turn, the greater the levels of both subsequent institutional commitment and commitment ...