Staying in the Fast Lane: Predicting Adult Student Retention in an Accelerated Degree Completion Program

Abstract

The study of adult student retention has primarily focused on demographic, financial, and academic, and psychological variables that may influence the decision to withdrawal or complete. The present research was conducted to help gain understanding of the demographic, academic, and financial factors that may contribute to withdrawal or completion from an accelerated degree completion program at a small Catholic private institution. This understanding can help institutions, organization, and public policy makers implement strategic initiatives to help reduce adult student attrition. Descriptive statistics and Logistic regression (LR) were employed in this study. The descriptive statistics findings showed a distinction between the completion group and withdrawal group with respect to marital status, adjusted gross income, Estimated Financial Contribution (EFC), and institutional GPA. The findings of the logistic regression showed that the model was significant at predicting completion or withdrawal when compared to the baseline (constant). The logistic regression analysis found that institutional GPA and adjusted gross income were significant predictors of withdrawal or completion in the sample.