Institutional Policies, Programs, and Practices Critical to Higher Educational Student Success
Abstract
A pressing issue facing American universities is the number of students’ high attrition rate. Nearly one out of five four-year institutions graduate fewer than one-third of its first-time, full-time degree-seeking first-year students within six years. This low graduation rate has a broad economic and sociopolitical perspective on the broader society. A large body of research exists on the causative factors - mostly students’ educational, financial and socio-economic background characteristics, pre-college experiences and institutional characteristic. This leakage in the educational pipeline is costly to universities scarce resources, local and national educational goals and a near term social and political consequences. This literature review attempts to address this set of critical issues by reviewing the literature and emerging findings related to student academic success to degree attainment. This article focuses solely on the higher educational institutional conditions – policies, programs, practices, structural and organizational characteristics, teaching and learning approaches are associated frameworks with a goal to develop an informed perspective on higher educational institutional policies, programs, and practices that can make a difference to satisfactory student performance, assist and support students’ academic and social success, which in turn improve persistence, retention to academic attainment.