Adult Student Retention: A Practical Approach to Retention Improvement Through Learning Enhancement

Abstract

Adult student retention is an issue of growing concern for many institutions. It differs from traditional retention much like traditional students differ from adult students. As the majority of student body growth comes from adult students, adult student retention management will become critical to the majority of colleges and universities. To support this end, this article explores the forces producing a need for better adult student retention, provides methods for the development of institution-specific retention enhancement plans and retention measurement metrics, and provides a set of retention enhancement tactics.