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Rethinking College Student Retention John M. Braxton, William R. Doyle, Harold V. Hartley III, Amy s. Hirschy, Willis A. Jones, and Michael K. McLendon san francisco, cA: Jossey-Bass, 2013, 227 pages, $30.47 (hardcover)
The college completion agenda is near the top of the list of priorities for educators, administrators, and policymakers. Given this importance, Rethinking College Student Retention by Braxton, Doyle, Hartley III, Hirschy, Jones, and McLendon is a timely text for all higher education educators and officials who are struggling to identify ways to improve retention of college students. The authors' intent is to recommend research-based policies and practices to increase retention grounded in the understanding of student persistence.
The book builds on a series of studies. This sequential argument development is a major strength of the book. Tinto's Interactionalist Theory of Student Departure (1975) serves as the springboard for the research in this text. The authors explain a study by Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson (1997) who reviewed the literature to identify studies that validated Tinto's theory. While Tinto revised his theory in 1987 and 1993, Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson chose to use the 1975 model as there was little research seeking to validate the older models and "the formulations that characterize Tinto's theory as interactionalist exist in the 1975 formulations" (Braxton, Doyle, Hartley III, Hirschy, Jones, & McClendon, 2013, p. 77). Braxton, Sullivan, and Johnson concluded that while there is partial support for Tinto's theory for residential colleges and universities, the theory couldn't explain persistence in commuter institutions. The book's authors continue, outlining the work of Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon (2004) who attempted...