Student retention holds steady despite pandemic
When COVID-19 sent Trevecca students and faculty scrambling to figure out online learning last spring, Megan McGhee, the director of new student programs, said student development went into crisis mode.
“In the spring, I think it was all so new that, to a certain extent, we were all just trying to survive,” she said.
The crisis in question? Convincing students to return to Trevecca in the fall.
Jeff Swink, the coordinator of retention and assessment, defines this problem as “trying to make sure that every student is retained at the university each semester.”
Across the United States, the average student retention rate at four-year institutions is 81 percent. Trevecca’s average retention rate in the past has been 87 percent.
This year, largely because of the pandemic, the ...