TrueOutcomes™

Identify. Intervene. Retain

Maximize retention and campus resources with the Retention Alert System from TrueOutcomes™.

The Issue: Falling Retention Rates within Higher Education

Student retention within higher education institutions is a costly and problematic issue. Institutions are under greater demands to demonstrate their institutional effectiveness. To be done effectively, systemic change requires that all stakeholders (administration, faculty, staff, and support services) acknowledge the need to drive change. How can an institution identify the particular students at risk on their campus and develop the specific types of retention services that will maximize retention?

The Solution: The TrueOutcomes Retention Alert System

The goal of the Retention Alert System is to help institutions reduce student attrition by increasing the probability that a student will complete the current semester, register at the institution the following term, and ultimately take a step towards completing a degree program at an institution. To achieve that goal, TrueOutcomes offers an efficient and effective system that allows each institution to:

•		Identify early in the term students who are most “at-risk” of dropping out to allow time for interventions to be effective
•		Make better use of student support services already offered on campus, by enabling student advisors to direct students to appropriate support services offered by the institution (academic, psychological, financial, etc.) and by tracking student use of support services in a centralized database
•		Streamline communication across service groups and systems and demonstrate relationships between student retention and student use of institutional support services
•		Use a calibrated model to maximize student success and continuously improve retention rates

How the TrueOutcomes Retention Alert System Works

Step 1: Prediction

To predict the probability of students dropping out of a specific course, the Retention Alert System collects data on students in areas such as academic preparedness, emotional preparedness, classroom attendance, late registration, and performance on college level work. This data are aggregated and each student receives a score that represents the likelihood that he or she will drop out. For example, a student with an attrition score of 85% have an 85% probability of dropping out based on the historical performance of students with similar levels of preparedness and performance.

Step 2: Intervention

The goal is to reduce the level of attrition, not just predict it. The next tool in the Retention Alert System is documenting the services that students receive, such as academic advising, tutoring, career counseling, emotional counseling, financial counseling, etc. These data on student intervention services are combined with the individual scores to serve as the basis for measuring the effectiveness of interventions.

For example, the system could examine the academic progress of students who received three or more services (any combination of counseling, tutoring or advising) and see the impact on their performance. If the data showed students were out-performing their individual Retention Alert System scores, the institution could use these data to quantify the economic and academic benefit of intervention services, track the impact on retention of changes to the services, and develop continuous improvement processes to maximize retention. The bottom line is that the cost of attempting to prevent attrition (when it can be prevented) easily outweighs the costs of status quo.