The First Year of College: Research, Theory, and Practice on Improving the Student Experience and Increasing Retention

This book is premised on a very powerful social/educational concern about college retention rates: one-third of first-year students seriously consider leaving college during their first term, and only half of all students who start college ultimately graduate. This book examines the first year of college from a variety of perspectives to paint a comprehensive picture of the intersecting challenges facing today's students and higher education institutions. Technological advances, increases in college attendance costs, and increasing political pressure on colleges to prove their value have changed the landscape of the first year of college, but researchers have identified new approaches to improve student and institutional success that have shown considerable success and promise. In this comprehensive volume, top educational researchers explore topics of student success, persistence, and retention in the first year of college.

Robert S. Feldman is Deputy Chancellor and Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he has authored numerous scientific papers and books, including editing or co-editing several volumes, among them The Social Psychology of Education (Cambridge, 1990); Applications of Nonverbal Behavioral Theories and Research (1992); as well as The First Year of College (2005). He is also the author of P.O.W.E.R. Learning: Strategies for Success in College and Life (seventh edition, 2017) and Understanding Psychology (fourteenth edition, 2018).