College Student Performance, Satisfaction and Retention: Specification and Estimation of a Structural Model.

Despite the existence of an extensive literature on the factors that are associated with college students' persistence, the need remains for the development of a comprehensive model of college student adjustment and retention that not only captures the underlying structural relationships of the process, but that is also operational in the sense that it can be effectively used by the individual institution. The development of such a model, however, has been hindered by the failure to recognize that a multiequation model is required to adequately describe the structural relationships that determine the retention outcome. The theories formulated by both Spady [26] and Tinto [27] identify several levels of independent variables that affect student retention, with only a few major variables having a direct effect on retention and the remaining variables affecting retention indirectly. While both theories clearly call for more than one equation, a multiequation model has not emerged from either work, perhaps because neither theory has been developed mathematically into a formal model. Empirical studies of retention have not estimated formal-structural models, but rather they have attempted to test for association between retention (or persistence) and a series of potential explanatory variables.

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