UCLA community college review: campus environment: a missing link in studies of community college attrition.

This paper explores the overlooked influence of campus environment in community college attrition. It discusses the campus ecology perspective, which raises awareness that the myriad of mutually interdependent relationships among community college inhabitants, environments, and activities can support or hinder the traditional goals of student growth and development. After decades of focusing primarily on student-based measures of attrition, the article proposes that the influence of the community college environment might be key to understanding student attrition. The remainder of the article, drawing on the author's experience as a nontraditional community college student, offers examples of possible environmental enhancements that can support retention and success for students.

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These are challenging times for community colleges. Enrollment is up, funding is unreliable, and colleges are increasingly held responsible for learning outcomes of an ever more diverse student population. Community colleges serve 53% of all first-time students enrolled in public higher education, including disproportionate numbers of working, first-generation, adult, and other traditionally underrepresented students (Snyder, Tan, & Hoffman, 2004). Nine of ten first-time community college students intend to earn a certificate or associate's degree or to transfer and earn a bachelor's degree. However, only 36% achieve a formal credential within 6 years, although an additional 8% are still enrolled at that time. Of the remaining, 11% never intended to earn a certificate or degree, and 45% leave without achieving their original educational objectives (Hoachlander, Sikora, & Horn, 2003).

High levels of first-year attrition are a longstanding problem. About half of all first-year community college students leave higher education before the beginning of their second year--a rate that has held steady for over 40 years. Although many scholars have examined the forces that contribute to student attrition throughout the college experience, Tinto (1988) noted that "the forces that shape departure during the first year of college, especially during the first six weeks of the first semester, are qualitatively different than those that mold departure in the latter years of college" (p. 439).

Community college attrition--especially early attrition--deserves serious attention, since access to higher education and the resulting private and public benefits are undermined when students do not achieve their educational objectives (Bowen & others, 1977; Cohen & Brawer, 2003). Attrition interferes with individual, institutional, and social well-being, depleting the future pool of skilled workers and educated citizens needed to participate in an increasingly sophisticated economy and complex civic life (Merisotis, 2005). Children of students who drop out are less likely to complete high school or college than are children of college graduates, which suggests that the harmful effects of attrition are intergenerational (Astone & McLanahan, 1991; Kojuku & Nunez, 1998). Moreover, institutional planning, budgeting, and economic stability become less manageable in colleges with excessive attrition (Ansalone, 2002).

Economic, societal, psychological, organizational, and interactionalist perspectives have shaped most studies of college student persistence (Braxton, 2000). Tinto's (1975, 1988, 1993) interactionalist model of student departure is probably the best known, modeling attrition as a lack of fit between student characteristics and the requirements of college. In this person-environment fit model, student characteristics such as poor academic preparation, part-time enrollment, full-time employment, and delay in beginning college after high school graduation predict lower levels of academic and social involvement or integration and, therefore, higher levels of attrition (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1998; Tinto, 1975, 1988, 1993).

Four-year models of attrition have been applied to community colleges with mixed results. The majority of these studies account for 8% to 25% of the total variance in attrition, suggesting that we do not yet understand why most students depart before completing their educational objectives. In addition, the low predictive power of the models suggests one or more of the following problems: the guiding conceptual framework may be distorting or limiting the analysis, the model may lack variables that are powerful predictors of attrition (such as those having to do with the community college environment), or the variables may be improperly operationalized (Brower, 1992; Gates & Creamer, 1984). Although it has often been treated as a trivial component in attrition models, the influence of the community college environment might be key to understanding student attrition. Unfortunately, the influence of environmental variables on attrition has not been fully explored.

Why is the college environment important, and why should we study its influence on attrition? The college environment contains, supports, and communicates with the student, provides a setting for social and physical interactions, and links the student with the symbolic and the functional content of the college experience. As Astin (1993) writes,

   Environmental assessment presents by far the most difficult and
   complex challenge in the field of assessment. It is also the most
   neglected topic. In its broadest sense, the environment
   encompasses everything that happens to a student during the course
   of an educational program that might conceivably influence the
   outcomes under consideration ... includ[ing] not only the programs,
   personnel, curricula, teaching practices, and facilities that we
   consider to be part of any educational program but also the social
   and institutional climate in which the program operates. (p. 81)

Thus, while individual characteristics and behaviors definitely matter in attrition, environmental influences do too. This paper explores the overlooked influence of campus environment in community college attrition and sets forth a preliminary perspective on community college attrition from an environmental perspective that is largely drawn from the campus ecology work of Strange and Banning (2001).

Institutional Roots of Attrition in Community Colleges

While attrition occurs in all types of postsecondary institutions, community colleges have a particular responsibility to minimize attrition since, for many students, "the choice is not between the community college and a senior residential institution; it is between the community college and nothing" (Cohen & Brawer, 2003, p. 53). The following section explores why community college attrition rates are so high and whether individuals or institutions should be held more responsible for attrition.

Some scholars and practitioners argue that community colleges cannot do much about high rates of attrition because the primary causes identified in student integration or involvement models (such as students' lack of academic preparation, lack of campus engagement, and work and family responsibilities) are largely beyond the control of the institution. Yet rates of degree, credential, and course completion are found to vary significantly even among colleges with similar student demographics and curricula, suggesting that some institutional best practices exert influence on students' experiences and behaviors and improve local success rates (Bailey, Jacobs, Jenkins, & Leinbach, 2003; Tinto, 1982). After decades of focusing primarily on student-based measures of attrition, it is time to supplement integration and involvement models with a better modeling of the influence of campus environment. As Zwerling (1980) concluded in his study of institutional factors influencing attrition, "To reduce significantly the staggering attrition at the average community college, it appears necessary to shift the focus from what is wrong with the student to what is wrong with the institution" (p. 56).

In 1989, Brint and Karabel found that the relatively nonacademic climates prevalent at community colleges had "negative effects on ultimate educational attainment even after differences in student background and measured ability are statistically equalized" (p. 161). Similarly, Tinto (1993) observed that less than 25% of students drop out because of academic failure; more than 75% of all students who leave college do so because of difficulties related to a lack of fit between the skills and interests of students and "the organization of educational institutions, their formal structures, resources, and patterns of association" (p. 89). Theoretically, this lack of fit (and subsequent attrition) could be reduced if the student adapted to the institution, if the institution adapted to the student, or both. However, departure from college before achieving educational goals is overwhelmingly viewed as the student's choice, or at least something beyond the control of the college.

Defining attrition as simply a student-driven phenomenon rather than an interaction between the student and college environment is demonstrably false. For example, consider that students attending four-year institutions report lower rates of attrition and more frequent contact with faculty outside class--a confirmed predictor of persistence and success--than those attending community colleges. On the surface, it may appear that community college students are choosing failure by neglecting to initiate out of class contact with faculty. After all, the reasoning goes, if students choose not to visit faculty outside of class, it is beyond the ability or role of the college to somehow force them.

However, this reasoning conceals an important institutional characteristic: approximately two-thirds of community college faculty are part-time employees who are rarely paid for office hours and who may leave campus immediately after class to teach at another institution (Grubb & Associates, 1999; Snyder, Tan, & Hoffman, 2004). This hidden structural condition makes it harder for community college students to connect with faculty. In addition, although part-time faculty are generally well-qualified to perform their duties, they tend to have fewer years of teaching experience and fewer opportunities to develop the strong connections to students, colleagues, and institutions in ways that have been tied to enhanced student persistence and success (Schuetz, 2002). Therefore, while measures developed to study attrition at four-year institutions (such as surveys tracking hours of student-faculty contact per week) are often convincing, they may also be misleading, encouraging college personnel to blame the student while neglecting the social and structural aspects of persistence. Such a student deficit model ultimately interferes with honest assessment and positive change (Smith, 1999; Wolf, 1996).

Tinto (1982) offered a cautionary note, suggesting that static rates of attrition may be an indication of having reached system limits: "It seems unlikely that we will be able to greatly reduce dropout without some very massive and far-reaching changes in the higher educational system, changes that go beyond the mere surface restructuring and institutional differentiation that has marked past educational changes" (p. 695). However, even if this is so, Tinto (1982) asserts that improvement is always possible on an institutional level. Much evidence exists to show that a person-environment model might be the missing link in studies of community college attrition.

A more nuanced understanding of institutional environment is needed to understand the interaction between student agency (which is influenced, although not determined, by student characteristics) and campus environment. As Tinto (1993) observed, "as far as we can tell, only 15 to 25 percent of all institutional departures arise because of academic failure ... [the remaining] voluntary departure appears to be the result more of what goes on after entry to the institution than of what may have occurred beforehand" (p. 82). Before moving to discussion of the environmental aspects of "what goes on after entry," a methodological issue is addressed.

Operationalizing Variables

Without clearly defining terms, the power of any study to inform practice is limited. For example, attrition is meaningful only in relation to students' educational objectives. If a student intends to take a class or two for personal or professional reasons, it would be a mistake to conclude that the student has failed to persist or to succeed when he or she does not return for a third. However, measuring attrition against educational objectives is not always simple.

About 40% of community college students drop in and out of college, skipping academic terms and then reenrolling, which makes it difficult to determine whether non-returning students have taken a temporary break from classes, transferred to another institution, or dropped out altogether (Hoachlander et al., 2003; Hoyt & Winn, 2004). In addition, student responses to questions about educational objectives vary depending upon the way in which a question is asked. For example, Berkner, He, and Cataldi (2002) found that beginning community college students responded differently when asked to identify their degree-certificate plans than when asked to identify their primary reason for enrolling in college. Depending on the phrasing of the query, between 54% and 74% of these students reported that they were seeking a degree or transfer and between 11% and 26% were seeking a certificate. Without the text of actual questions or specific criteria used to operationalize variables included in the report, other researchers would not have a clear picture of the study findings and conclusions.

Since educational objectives (and other variables of interest) tend to vary across student subgroups, data should be disaggregated whenever possible to allow more nuanced interpretation of results and more targeted institutional support for student success (Wild & Ebbers, 2002). Finally, educational objectives data are typically collected during initial enrollment, but student objectives may change over time. Since community colleges seldom systematically update records of students' educational objectives, accurate assessment of students' educational objectives after initial enrollment may be difficult. Recency of educational objective data should be scrutinized closely and data should be "refreshed" at the beginning and end of the timeframe of attrition studies when possible.

Person-Environment Fit Perspectives

Kurt Lewin postulates that behavior is a function of a person and his environment: "From a certain total constellation--comprising a situation and an individual--there results a certain behaviour" (Lewin, 1936, p. 73). He proposes that three interacting forces--the student, the instructor, and the learning environment--have to be in balance for effective learning to happen. Bloom (1971, 1976) reiterates this statement in proposing that student cognitive characteristics, affective entry characteristics, and the quality of instruction account for variance in student learning.

Research linking environment to community college attrition is sparse, though four-year studies offer some direction. Godwin and Markham (1996) conducted preliminary field observations and semi-structured interviews with state college freshmen as these freshmen interacted with various administrative offices in order to assess the influences of campus environment on students. They found that students learned grudging compliance, fibbing, avoidance, creating psychological distance and other strategies to cope with long lines, paperwork, waiting, staff impersonality, rigid and contradictory rules, and the runaround. The authors speculated that these newly learned strategies led to a better fit with the college bureaucracy. However, bureaucratic ways of thinking and behaving may not improve classroom experiences. Therefore, disaggregating campus environment from classroom behavior decreases college leverage for positive change in attrition.

As Rapaport (1982) notes, the physical environment communicates to students through nonverbal cues "the most appropriate choices to be made: the cues are meant to elicit appropriate emotions, interpretations, behaviors, and transactions by setting up the appropriate situations and contexts" (as cited in Strange & Banning, 2001, p. 16). The following section explores one type of person-environment fit framework, campus ecology, in more detail.

Campus Ecology as a Frame for Understanding Student Attrition

   Environments exert their influence on behavior through an array
   of natural and synthetic physical features, through the collective
   characteristics of inhabitants, the manner in which they are
   organized and as mediated through their collective social
   constructions. (Strange & Banning, 2001, p. 200)

The concept of campus ecology was first developed in the 1970s to represent the college campus as a living interdependence of people, settings, and activities, rather than as a static collection of statistics. Banning (2004) describes the campus as an "ecological system made up of three components: organisms-inhabitants (students, faculty, staff, visitors, and others); settings-environments, both social (the curriculum, the co-curriculum, the extra-curriculum, and other social functions) and the physical (buildings, landscapes, walkways, and other natural and built features of the environment); and activities-behaviors (learning, research, personal development, and other outcomes specific to higher education)" (para. 3). The campus ecology perspective raises awareness of the myriad of mutually interdependent relationships among community college inhabitants, environments, and activities that can support or hinder the traditional goals of student growth and development. And because campuses vary radically in each of these three areas, it is possible that environmental factors can contribute much to models of attrition. In describing their campus ecology model, Strange and Banning (2001) identify four sources of environmental influence on student behavior: physical, human aggregate, organizational environments, and constructed environments.

Physical

Many nonverbal cues to students come from campus building designs, spaces, signage, paths, symbols, landscaping, and similar elements that shape the larger flows of pedestrian and car traffic while influencing behavior through a "whole set of cues ... meant to elicit appropriate emotions, interpretations, behaviors, and transactions by setting up the appropriate situations and contexts" (Rapaport, 1982, pp. 80-81). For example, a small seminar room sends different cues about pedagogy and expected behaviors than does a large lecture hall with stadium seating (in part through the physical distance between participants and teacher, the relative sizes of screens and whiteboards, and students positioned as either participants or audience members). Campus values or concerns can also be transmitted to students through the physical interface of campus environment. A campus with a dedication to multicultural education might have artwork from different cultures, multicultural events scheduled and posted, or multicultural peer models and counseling available. Clear cues (typically signage) that help students to negotiate through campus to find the classrooms and services they need are especially important for new students who often feel overwhelmed. Thus, a well-designed campus environment can help foster a sense of belonging and perhaps help suppress early attrition.

Human Aggregate

Moos (1986) points out that "the character of an environment is implicitly dependent on the typical characteristics of its members" (p. 286). Strange and Banning (2001) concur, positing that student subcultures can foster certain meaning-making patterns with respect to achievement and persistence. For example, Clark and Trow (1966) identify four student subcultures: academic, nonconformist, collegiate, and vocational--each of which captures the intensity with which students do or do not identify with ideas or with their institution. For example, an academic identifies with both ideas and the college, studies hard, and values performing well academically. A collegiate, on the other hand, identifies more with the college, and less with academics, valuing participation in extracurricular activities. Dominance of one subculture or another influences campus environment and culture. Several other typologies of student subcultures exist (for examples, see Astin, 1993; Kolb, 1983), and many scholars agree that it is the degree of fit between the student and a campus environment flavored by subcultures that predicts a student's stability and persistence.

Organizational Environments

"Organizations can be thought of as environments with a purpose" (Strange & Banning, 2001, p. 61). Educational organizations are characterized by various degrees of complexity, centralization of power, formalization of policies and regulations, stratification (e.g., class levels, majors), production (e.g., students enrolled, courses completed, certificates and degrees granted), efficiency of operation, and morale. The character and size of the organizational environment influences the organizational performances of flexibility or rigidity in innovation, efficiency, production, and morale (Strange & Banning, 2001, p. 81). Innovative, flexible, and engaging educational environments best support student outcomes.

Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum (2003) found that community colleges require "social know-how" to navigate the bureaucratic structures of the college environment and that this know-how is less available to marginalized students. They identify seven environmental obstacles to student success: bureaucratic hurdles, confusing choices, student-initiated (rather than college-initiated) guidance, limited counseling availability, poor advice from staff, delayed detection of mistakes, and poor handling of conflicting demands. However, the authors recommend that public colleges learn from the example of the private occupational college and take steps to remove the need for social know-how, thereby adjusting to the student.

Constructed Environments

Moos (1974) observed: "The arrangement of environments is probably the most powerful technique we have for influencing behavior" (p. 4). The effectiveness of the environment in guiding productive behavior is directly related to the degree of fit between student characteristics (dispositions, interests, attitudes, and skills) and the educational potential of the environment. Of course, a community college campus is a collection of many sub-environments, rather than a single homogeneous environment. Each sub-environment expresses itself through a signature combination of physical properties (e.g., size, location, furniture, spatial qualities, quality of light) and ambiance related to the composite activities, characteristics, norms, and expectations of dominant student, staff and faculty groups. For example, a church and a cafeteria would probably exert different environmental influences on occupant behaviors and attitudes. Interestingly, individuals who are less confident (for example, first-generation community college students) tend to be more open to constructed environmental influences (often called environmental presses) (Murray, 1938; Pace & Stern, 1958; Stern, 1970). Thus, it might be possible to change campus environments to inoculate first-generation freshmen against attrition.

Several instruments are designed to measure campus environmental press and to provide a profile of the general intellectual and non-intellectual climate of a college. For example, the College and University Environment Scales (CUES) developed by Pace (1969), and the College Characteristics Index (CCI) developed by Pace and Stern (1958) and revised by Walsh (1973), are both available to community college practitioners (Strange & Banning, 2001).

While student satisfaction surveys are useful, the data collected are as distinct from evaluating campus environment as results from a survey of teacher satisfaction with a class differ from student grades. The first is an informal collection of perceptions based on limited experiences, while the latter assesses knowledge or skills based on specific criteria. Moos (1979, 1986) developed environmental press instruments specifically for residence halls and classroom environments. These concepts and instruments were intended to increase understanding and effectiveness of the influence of environmental press on student success.

As Kuh et. al. (1991) observed, successful colleges support student involvement and learning by shaping a community of learners through physical design of campus, valued qualities of the human aggregate, organizational characteristics, and constructed environments. Rather than placing the blame for attrition solely on student agency or on institutional structure, the campus ecology model presented by Strange and Banning (2001) balances the influences of individual students and campus environments with one another.

Identifying Environmental Influences on Attrition

A few studies have examined the ways in which community colleges interact with students through the physical environment, administrative and instructional practices, and social and institutional climates and how these interactions influence student success. Early examples of such studies in community colleges include London (1983), a field study of the culture of a community college and how that culture fits into the larger social system; Richardson, Fisk, and Okun (1983), a study of critical literacy in a community college and the environmental means by which literacy is influenced; and Weis (1985), who considered themes of agency and cultural reproduction in a large urban community college where opportunity for social mobility interacted with institutional and individual reproduction of social inequality.

Other studies explore one or two aspects of the campus environment and its influence on attrition. Heverly (1999) found that community college attrition was associated with students' positive or negative experiences in administrative and instructional settings. Sturtz (1995) suggested that a student decides to leave (or perhaps return to) college under the influence of institutional, situational, and psychological factors--all of which can be ameliorated to some extent through changes in the college environment. Mohammadi (1994) finds that attrition is influenced not only by institutional factors but by "external forces, particularly those related to community forces in the immediate geographical environment of the college's service area" (p. 39). Rendon (1994) suggested that modifying community college curriculum and organizational structure to be more accepting and reflective of student diversity could reduce attrition of an increasingly diverse student population. More recently, Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum (2001) suggested that colleges could improve retention by fitting themselves more to the students--by identifying and eliminating bureaucratic barriers, resolving confusion over college and program requirements, and reorganizing services to help students develop the organizational know-how required to navigate the college experience, especially during the first semester and year of attendance.

Campus social climate is another environmental factor that has been thought to support student retention. According to Moos (1979), it does so through three interrelated spheres of influence, including relationships among people in an environment, opportunities presented by the environment, and behavioral expectations and avenues for change in the environment (Moos, 1979). According to this theory, these relational aspects of a campus environment can help students to see opportunities and interact with the campus to actualize those opportunities, thereby guiding students toward social integration rather than attrition. Increasing awareness of the institutional influences on community college student perceptions and persistence may help colleges to adjust their operations better to support student persistence and success.

Tinto (1997) suggested that enhanced learning experiences could be created by requiring students to register for two or more themed classes together and to form a study community. This framework increases academic and social integration, leading to improved retention. For example, Seattle Central Community College offers students the opportunity to enroll in a Coordinated Studies Program. The students enrolled in this program take classes together and meet as a group two or three times a week for between 4 and 6 hours per meeting. These students persisted at a rate approximately 25% greater than students enrolled in traditional coursework (Tinto, 1997). Currently there are relatively few part-time students enrolled in learning communities. Faculty might design a learning community with one of the teamed classes offered online to accommodate part-time students.

Many researchers dismiss the importance of environmental predictors of attrition, pointing to multiple regression studies with relatively small associated changes in squared multiple correlation coefficient. However, Astin (1993) cautions "even when the multiple correlation is quite modest and the percent of variance accounted for quite low, differences represented by the extremes of the independent variables can be of great practical significance" (p. 296). The Lumina Foundation, the American Association of Community Colleges, and other national and regional partners are following up on possible links between variables related to campus environment and student success through an initiative of great promise, titled Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. Bailey et al. (2004) conducted preliminary research on the influence of campus environment on attrition as part of this multi-year initiative. Using 2002-2003 IPEDS data for a sample of students attending 915 accredited public two-year institutions, three categories of independent institution-level variables were modeled: institutional characteristics (rural, suburban, or urban), college characteristics (size, percent enrolled part-time, percent female, and number of certificates versus degrees granted), and financial characteristics (average in-state tuition, instructional expenditures, academic support, support services and federal aid--all per FTE). While many of these findings were statistically rather than practically significant, this study is valuable, as it demonstrates a method with promise for evaluating the influence of campus environment on student outcomes.

Visualizing an Environmental Model for Community College Attrition

   ... our central concern will be to understand how events within
   the institution come to shape the process of departure from that
   institution. In effect, we will ask how an institution comes to
   influence the leaving of its own students (Tinto, 1993, p. 34,
   italics original).

A powerful environmental model of community college attrition must include variables that are subject to change. While this observation may seem obvious, many studies of attrition involve primarily variables that participants, practitioners, or policymakers cannot change, or that have no practical significance, thereby limiting the impact of their work. "From a practitioner's standpoint ... if a variable cannot be changed, knowledge about its effects cannot lead to policy changes, no matter how intellectually interesting it may be" (Ruback & Innes, 1988, p. 683).

For example, decades of statistical regressions confirm that part-time students who work full-time will tend to drop out more often than will full-time financially dependent students who engage in extracurricular activities on campus. The question remains: What can be done to reduce this kind of attrition? Barring a lottery win, a student who attends college part-time while working full-time is unlikely to adjust these variables into full-time college attendance and involvement in clubs and other organizations without the distraction of a job. Considering background variables that are unlikely to change (such as the socioeconomic status of an incoming student) may add to our understanding of attrition or help to stratify study of diverse populations but may offer little direct leverage to reduce attrition. Perhaps this is one reason why first-year rates of community college attrition remain stubbornly high. What additional variables might provide leverage on attrition?

Community colleges have a bone structure, a range of immutable environmental and student characteristics. They are commuter institutions with two-thirds of their students enrolling part-time in pursuit of everything from a single, non-credit class to an associate degree to transfer to a four-year college. However, many institutional characteristics vary between--or within--colleges. Even students attending the same college may have very different environmental experiences--for example, day and evening students occupy the same physical campus, but social climates and access to financial aid, counseling, tutoring, student activities programming, the cafeteria, the library, and other services are very different for these students.

Environmental variables of community colleges include size (total enrollment or enrollment by departments), location (urban, suburban, or rural), proportion of part-time faculty, proportion of part-time students, students' home neighborhoods, institutional completion rates for courses, certificates and degrees, average expenditures per FTE in instruction, student support services and administration, and composite characteristics of students, faculty, and staff groups (such as gender, race-ethnicity, socioeconomic status, incoming levels of academic preparation, declared educational objectives, financial aid per FTE). These types of variables are environmental, influencing the daily experience of students in profound and subtle ways.

The remainder of this section draws examples of possible environmental enhancements from my several years of experience as a nontraditional community college student. I observed that it is important to facilitate access to campus, classrooms, and services, especially for nontraditional students who have little time to spend on campus outside class. Students who develop an early sense of belonging are less vulnerable to attrition (Allison, 1999; Tinto, 1993). There is nothing like circling for an hour to find parking, then not being able to find your classroom until you are 30 minutes late to start off the term feeling as if you might not belong in college. If there are 2,000 parking spaces for 30,000 students (admittedly, not all attending at the same time), the college should provide advance and on-site information to students, recommending options such as public transport or shuttling from remote lots.

Clear campus signage is critical to help new students find their way to classes and services--one counselor said that if a 12-year old could not find campus registration and a randomly assigned classroom within 20 minutes, better signage or other campus directional indicators were needed. Location and availability of key student services such as registration, admissions, counseling, financial aid, and the job center should be available from multiple sources: campus mailings, campus posters, flyers given to faculty to distribute, information service operations, and articles in the school newspaper. When students try and fail because of confusing, missing, or contradictory information, they lose self-confidence as well as time. Resource fairs, where representatives from various services set up tables of information and speak with student passersby early each term, put a friendly face on services and encourage more students to engage.

Orientation programs, tutoring, access to computer facilities, counseling, and other services should be ongoing and adapted for part-time or other nontraditional students. Innovative ways of connecting students with counseling information must be developed and implemented. Scheduling small group counseling sessions for students on the same academic path and providing interactive online counseling sessions may help. Building a two-unit counseling, study skills, and time management course (face-to-face or online) into early course requirements for undecided or underperforming students could also help steady marginal students.

The only campus resource large enough to develop face-to-face contact with new students is the rest of the student body. Colleges should capture and disseminate the knowledge that experienced students have developed, embedding it within peer support systems. Friendly students who "know the ropes" can be trained to respond to basic questions (such as the location of the financial aid office) from new students. New students who might feel intimidated by teachers and counselors may be more likely to ask questions of an informed fellow student, and the student worker would benefit as well.

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a proven curricular innovation that spreads expertise among students. Colleges pay an experienced student to work under a teacher's supervision as a facilitator for students enrolled in a class with historically high withdrawal or failure rates. SI facilitators attend classes and meet with students once or twice per week outside class, using class material as a form to help students develop skills in note taking, textbook reading, and other basic areas. Employing more students on campus as mentors or facilitators is a relatively inexpensive way to personalize the college experience and decrease confusion and stress for those students most likely to leave college before their educational goals are attained.

Conclusion

Open-access community colleges provide a much needed bridge to higher education for many individuals who might otherwise be limited by lack of education or finances. However, access is not complete until students are fully supported in persisting and succeeding in their varied educational objectives. Attrition--especially early attrition--deserves serious attention since it undermines access to higher education and resulting private and public benefits.

Leaving college before achieving educational goals is typically seen as the individual's choice, or at least something beyond the control of the college, rather than as a shared responsibility. However, most attrition research leading to this conclusion has been based on student involvement or integration theories that were developed for four-year residential institutions and may be inappropriate for two-year colleges. High rates of attrition over many decades suggest that a different approach is needed.

Person-environment theory, and specifically campus ecology, is an excellent candidate for more effective framing of investigations of attrition. More research is needed to describe how the community college environment--including the physical environment, bureaucratic activities, teaching practices, and social and institutional climates--might better evolve to support retention and success (Bailey et al., 2003).

Quantitative studies that are based on a positivist illusion of objectivity ("students fail when they don't put in the time") obscure the day-to-day reality of student experiences that foster attrition. Most quantitative research tends to document demographic differences between students who leave and students who stay--but does little to inform understanding of how students' lived experiences in the institution may support attrition. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are needed to pursue the primary goal of advancing theory and making much needed changes in community college characteristics, practices, and policies that do not support persistence. A comprehensive approach to studying attrition is needed to stimulate dialogue, to empower alliances to promote persistence, and to evolve more democratic research practices that foster greater access to education and opportunity.

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Pam Schuetz holds a B.S. in engineering and an architect's license and is currently a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. [e-mail]