Colleges and universities across the country are investing significant time and resources in improving student retention — especially as parents and students increasingly use retention rates as indicators of institutional value and return on their investment. Institutions are also facing policy and funding pressures that tie student outcomes more directly to institutional accountability. New initiatives are launched every day and support services expanded, often without the coordinated effort needed to produce meaningful change. For many institutions, retention remains largely unchanged — not because the work is not happening, but because it is not integrated into the day-to-day operations of the campus's most effective units. The challenge is not a lack of effort; rather, it is how the effort is organized and deployed.
Retention is often treated as a student issue, but in reality, it is a function of institutional design and the institution’s ability to execute that design in real time. How institutions structure advising, academic support, and other student-facing services ultimately shapes persistence. The financial reality is clear: student attrition directly impacts both outcomes and institutional stability. Each student retained is not only an academic success but a direct stabilization of institutional revenue, reinforcing the connection between student success and financial sustainability.
At Florida Memorial University (FMU), a small private four-year liberal arts university in South Florida, we found ourselves in a similar position. Best practices were in place, but coordination and collaboration across units were limited. Our first-year retention rate hovered around 47 percent, while multiple areas across campus were actively working to support students. However, these efforts were not always aligned, and students often experienced them as fragmented rather than coordinated efforts to support their success.
That realization led us to shift our thinking and view the university from the student perspective. We asked a simple question: If I were the student, what would I need from this institution to persist? That led us to reimagine how we approached the work — one that required administrators, faculty, and staff to rethink how retention shows up in our day-to-day operations. Retention is not simply a program or a set of initiatives. It is a function of how the institution operates and how effectively we create belonging, engagement, and proactive support for students.
The Shift: Moving Beyond Fragmentation
At many institutions, student success efforts are distributed across the university, often with varying levels of intentionality. However, for us, these units frequently operated within their own structures, priorities, and metrics. In some cases, student success outcomes tied to retention were not clearly embedded in how units measured effectiveness.
While this allowed for specialization, it created communication gaps, delayed responses when students began to struggle academically, and missed opportunities to engage students early. In this type of environment, responsibility for student success was shared, but accountability was not always clear because student success extends beyond the classroom to advising, customer service, and support staff who intervene before challenges become critical.
