Term Paper on "Career Course"

Term Paper 20 pages (5392 words) Sources: 20 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Student retention has long been a concern for colleges and universities. In 1924, W.S. Brooks' article, "Who Can Succeed in College," admonished "college men" for "this wholesale dropping of students." The high school students graduate with high aspirations and then are massed at registration and crowded into classes. After four months, the college sends hundreds of them home -- disgraced and "branded as failures." They start a second choice of activity, but with a feeling of personal failure.

Since these challenges by Brooks, the national rate of student departure from colleges and universities across the U.S. has remained constant at approximately 45% (Tinto, 1982). In addition, Tinto (1993, p. 82) approximates that academic dismissals account for 15 to 25% of these departures. The present track record is not any better, despite the fact that increasing numbers of educational institutions are now putting a major emphasis on developing retention programs.

Two reports published by ACT (previously known as American College Testing) this year urge schools to continue their retention effort. "Retention of students remains a significant issue for U.S. colleges and universities, with a substantial number of students not returning for their second year of school," said Richard L. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive officer. "Our findings suggest colleges can do more to reduce those dropout rates."

Data collected by ACT show that up to one-fourth of all students at four-year colleges do not return for their second year of school. The National Center for Education Statistics indicates that dropout rates are particularly high for African-American and Hispanic students, in addition to those who are the first in their family to attend college, have limited English proficiency, and are following nontraditional routes such as returning adult students.

A high attrition rate results in a negative impact for the individual, the institution and the society. The New Millennium Project on Higher Education Costs, Pricing and Productivity (1998) was formed as a national initiative to study higher education fiscal policy. The individual who receives a college degree receives a 73% higher salary and with a high school diploma, including better healthcare, improved working conditions and higher level of financial assets and personal and professional mobility. Pascarella and Terenzini (1991) studied how students are changed through their collegiate experiences. These changes occur in the area of cognitive growth, psychosocial maturity and moral development. The students gain intellectual reasoning, writing and speaking skills, an appreciation for the arts and humanities and cultural and ethnic diversity. Meanwhile with attrition, the institutions lose funding, which limits their ability to offer optimal instruction and research and the society loses more individuals with greater capabilities.

In 1975, Tinto hypothesized that students enter college with various individual characteristics that impact departure. These student traits include family background, individual attributes, and pre-college schooling experiences. Family background characteristics include socioeconomic status, and parental educational level and expectations. Pre-college schooling background consists of the characteristics of the student's secondary school and record of high school academic achievement.

These traits directly impact the student's commitment to the institution and college graduation. He also hypothesized that these traits impacted the departure decision. The personal commitment to the school and having a goal of graduating will positively affect the student's interaction with the institution's academic and social structures. Further, Tinto (1975, p.104) believed that academic integration was defined by structural and normative dimensions. The former involves the meeting of specific standards and the latter to an individual's degree of identification with the academic system's normative structure. The greater the student's level of academic integration, the better the chance that the person will remain with the school. Similarly, the better the student's social integration, the more apt he/she will be to commit to the school (Tinto 1975, p. 110).

In other words, the student's goals and commitments interact over time with institutional experiences, the formal and informal academic and social systems of an institution.. The extent to which the individual becomes academically and socially integrated into the formal and informal academic and social systems of an institution determines the individual's departure decision (Tinto, 1993).

It is determined that the most critical period or stage of vulnerability for student attrition occurs in the first year of college ("Learning Slope, 1991). More than half of all students who withdraw from college do so during their first year (Consortium for student Retention Data Exchange, 1999). Retention research hypothesizes that the degree that the student commits to educational and career goals is the most important element correlated with remaining to degree completion (Wyckoff, 1999). Cuseo (date?) believes that this research suggest that difficulty finding or committing to long-term goals will increase the risk for attrition. In addition, if students develop a workable plan for the identification of a college major and career compatible with their abilities, interest and values, then their overall satisfaction level with higher education institutions should increase. "In turn, student retention at their chosen college should be increased, because there is a well-established empirical relationship between students' level of satisfaction with the postsecondary institution they are attending and their rate of retention at that institution" (np).

One of the ways that students become more integrated into a school is through their involvement with the faculty members. In fact, students often attend specific colleges or universities in some cases specifically for a particular faculty member(s) who are well-known in a field. Studies (Smith, 1994; Nordquist, 1993) find that the students' decision to re-enroll or leave will be based on faculty perceptions.

Even more essential to the student than faculty involvement, however, is the involvement of the academic advisor, who students rely on not only to orient them to the university but also to the outside working world. Wyckoff (1999) notes, "To establish a high degree of commitment to the academic advising process, university and college administrators must become cognizant not only of the educational value of advising but of the role advising plays in the retention of students" (p. 3). One productive way to encourage students to seek advising support is to develop programs that relate to their personal needs. The advisor can first help students explore majors and careers and then, once a decision is made, select appropriate courses and arrange schedules. Working in collaboration, the advisors and students can analyze options, gather information, and make decisions. This will increase student involvement in the institution and encourage enrollment until graduation.

A collaboration of institution administrators, coordinators, advisors and support personnel on an advising system is advantageous for the school. When representatives from these groups develop, implement, and evaluate advising, they can create a cooperative network that can be utilized by other areas of the college. They also act as representatives of the collaborative process for students. Program planning focused on the institution's strategy and students' needs can result in a dynamic advising system with the capacity to adapt to ongoing internal and external change (Frost, 1991)

Transitioning from a traditional advising system based solely on responding to students' questions about coursework registration to a system of academic planning takes time, since it is a paradigm shift for an institution. The move has to be a collectively planned effort involving changes in practices and perspectives. This change is not easy and most colleges and universities will continue to focus on normative activities (Habley and Crockett, 1988).

Frost (1991) notes that "If applied creatively and with an eye to the future, perhaps academic advising relationships can provide learning experiences that prove valuable to students during the college years and beyond." She makes specific recommendations regarding improvements that can be made to the advising structure:

1) Consider advising as an institution-wide system that centers around student involvement and positive college outcomes; 2) Emphasize concepts of collaborative responsibility for both students and the institution; 3) Initiate the relationship with a understanding of the larger purpose of advising and move to a more detailed approach;

4) Aim for success. Everyone on the advising team needs to participate in a continuous strategic effort that centers around a meaningful mission; 5) Evaluate the results of the program and individual contributors and make change; and 6) Collaborate. A shared advising relationship encourages students to contact a variety of college representatives for answers to questions that arise in academic planning.

First-year college university students are faced with many challenges, including what career to follow. Unfortunately, a large number of these students often experience career indecision, which is conceptualized as "a construct referring to problems individuals may have in their career decision (Gati, Krausz, & Osipow, 1996, p. 510). Although few of these new institution students are ideal career planners because of the complexity of developing a strategy, some have an easier transition to making decisions than others.

The authors (Gati, Krausz, & Ospipow, 1996, p. 510) determined that the decision-making process included ten categories that must be addressed. The first three categories deal with the student's personal level of readiness: 1) a lack of motivation to begin career decision-making; 2) a general indecisiveness that permeates all types of… READ MORE

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