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November 4, 2009
By John Tienken
Columnist
John |
In a report released by the Illinois Policy Institute and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, less than a week ago, UIS was second to last in retention rates of the 12 state universities in Illinois studied.
Using all applicable data, UIS had the largest drop in retention rates of any school over the period from 2002 to 2007. It was a 12 percent drop.
Retention rates are key figures applied to schools. It is a statistic that measures the number of full time, first year students that complete their first year and return to the same school the next. The statistic is an expression of the health of a university; it is like a blood test showing whether or not the antibiotics of academic environment and social experience that the school provides to students are working.
Often in the hustling and bustling of college life, we lose ourselves in the moment, unable and unwilling to take a step back and analyze the bigger picture. We fail to see and realize some of the true issues that affect our daily lives such as the number of students who we won’t see next year. Many times we fail to analyze the foundation upon which the institutions we know depend.
For universities, the foundation is the people in them. They are raw and empty structures without the students to walk through the halls, without the faculty to instruct them or the sense of community to bind them together.
The statistic should be frightening when so many are leaving. When looking around campus, if using 2007 numbers (the most recent available), we know that only two-thirds of the freshmen will be back this time next fall.
Only two-thirds will be sophomores, but how many more will stay until junior year when potentially a third of their friends have departed?
To be fair, UIS is new in having first year students, with less than a decade of them. Yet, despite all the improvements made to the school in that same period, and all of the improvements made to keep people here, the percentage of students staying as decreased.
Before University Hall or Founders or TRAC, more people stayed at UIS. Clearly something is going on when the university spends millions and still people leave in larger numbers than all other state universities in Illinois, save one.
I don’t have the answer to why for so many UIS is not the school. But what I think we all need to realize is that from these statistics that there is a disconnect between the school and its students.
There is a disconnect that is making UIS a pit stop for students on the way to other schools or no college at all.
There is a disconnect that for a large number, the sun truly shines brighter on the other side.
This disconnect is in large part preventing a true community from developing at UIS.
So as the semester ends and time goes on, look around and take your head out of your textbooks or face out of email. See that the students you see now, many you won’t see come back.
If UIS is important to you, start thinking as to why it is not working for them and maybe with individual effort on a large scale from students, professors, and administrators, we can turn the tide and keep more students here. Maybe with the work of so many on behalf of UIS, our university can develop a true community indebted to one another, student to school, school to student.
