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Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard published a new blog post this morning titled "Race and Retention at Western."

It begins:

We pay a lot of attention to various measures of student success and Western’s performance.  Hundreds of indicators.  Perhaps of top importance is our measure of first-year to second-year retention.

Certainly, graduation rates matter.  But, when it comes to continually improving a university, graduation rates, having as they do a six-year “feedback loop,” are of little value.  We cannot wait six years to see how today’s choices are working out. 

First-year to sophomore year is when we are most likely to lose students.  Take care of first-year to sophomore retention, and I figure graduation rates will take care of themselves.

Both retention and race, and understanding their interrelationships, are critically important to Western’s continuing success.  And, these matters are relevant to important conversations occurring around campus.  So, I am going to I share some of the latest findings on the relationships of race and retention at Western.

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