The Impact of an Inaugural First Year Experience Program on the Retention of Full-Time and Part-Time Community College Students

Student retention has been studied widely as an intermediate process to address the student completion issue in community colleges. Retaining an existing student is much less costly than recruiting a new student, in keeping the same enrollment level. Since time to completion of a credential is the most common way to measure student success, a retained student should finish his or her education faster than a new student.
The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of an inaugural first-year experience program on first-time college student retention of full-time and part-time students in a community college. Three sets of interrelated retention data were analyzed, namely: multi-year macro retention, first-year experience inaugural year micro retention, and first-year success seminar faculty survey.
The multi-year macro retention data set established historical retention rates as a basis for comparison with the retention rate of the first-year experience inaugural year. The first-year experience inaugural year micro retention data set included student intrinsic academic and non-academic factors. The non-academic factors were a combination of many factors, including the socioeconomic and environmental factors. The first-year success seminar faculty survey data set comprised faculty rated student non-academic quantitative data and first-year success seminar focused qualitative data.
Astin’s input-environment-outcome framework was used to structure the investigation. A mixed-method approach was carried out by conducting quantitative research of student academic factors and faculty survey responses based on interactions
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with students, as well as observations and perceptions of student non-academic factors. Open-ended responses to questions in the survey were analyzed by a qualitative method.
Key findings revealed that the impact of the inaugural first-year experience program on student retention was not statistically significant. However, the outcomes of the first-year success seminar influencing student retention were statistically significant. Students who passed the first-year success seminar had a higher retention rate than those who failed the seminar. It was also statistically significant that full-time students had a higher retention rate than part-time students.