Investing in Success: Evaluating Barriers to Student Retention

Session Abstract: Your institution has been gifted funds to be used to help students with “financial need”. How can you make sure you allocate them in a way that will most positively impact retention? This is a question we set out to investigate. Using several measures of “financial need” (including the FAFSA calculation of unmet need, outstanding balance in the first fall, bright futures scholarship award, and grant/loan receipt), we reviewed rates of these characteristics across retained/not retained students in our FTIC cohorts. Join us as we identify which indicator(s) proved the most notable for us in the comparison of these measures.

Keywords: Unmet Need, Financial Aid, Student Success, Retention