Give Students A Sense Of Belonging And They Are Less Likely To Drop Out, Study Finds

Students who are encouraged to feel that they belong in college are more likely to complete their first year, according to a new study.

Even a relatively brief and low-cost intervention can have a marked effect in reducing drop-out rates, according to researchers.

Fewer than two thirds of those who enroll in college finish their degree, with completion rates even lower for women, as well as Latinx, Black and Native American students.

One of the most significant obstacles to completing the first year is a feeling among some students that they don’t fit in and that college is not for people like them. Difficulties in making friends and poor grades can exacerbate the feeling of alienation.

But researchers found that showing students that others share those feelings and have gone on to be successful could play a key role in helping overcome initial doubts that college is the right path, according to a study published in the journal Science.

More than 26,000 students across 22 four-year universities took part in the study, involving showing new students a combination of survey results and personal stories from older students recalling their own feelings when they started at college and how their dealt with them.

Participants were then asked to reflect on what they had seen, as well as any previous experiences of moving to a new environment and write about why their own fears were likely to subside over time.

The material was delivered online, and while this may have made it less likely that students would engage than if it was delivered face-to-face, it also meant researchers could reach a large number of students for relatively low cost.

The research team, led by Stanford University psychologist Gregory Walton, found that the likelihood of completing the first year of college among those who take part in the intervention rose by 2%.

Although this may appear relatively small, it “seems notable” amid the many other factors that influence completion rates, according to Nicholas A. Bowman, of the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership at the University of Iowa, who was not involved in the research but has written an accompanying perspective in Science.

It would also equate to an additional 12,000 students completing full-time enrollment every year across the 749 U.S. colleges and universities offering full-time degrees, Bowman adds.

The online materials used in the study are freely available, making it relatively easy for colleges to improve retention rates.

“Fortunately, colleges and universities can implement this established intervention as part of their efforts to bolster student retention and graduation,” Bowman writes.

While previous studies have found that interventions designed to enhance a feeling of belonging can improve academic outcomes at selective universities, this study suggests that students across a range of institutions can benefit.

The findings signal the importance of helping students realize that their concerns about fitting in are widely shared and ease over time, and that there are opportunities to enhance the feeling of belonging, according to the research team.

This may involve colleges supplementing the work of the online course by creating a campus culture that normalizes fears about belonging and emphasizing opportunities, such as through welcome addresses, events and in the teaching itself.

Colleges could also step-up efforts to improve representation on campus, support ethnic-themed clubs, events and activities and create opportunities for interactions both within and between different groups, researchers say.

“Belonging concerns are primary for many students as they enter college,” with the feeling that people like them don’t belong prominent among them, the study team writes.

“Because such fixed, global attributions can become self-confirming, it is important to forestall them.”