Topic: A Critical Examination of Retention and Dropout

Preferred language style: English (U.S.)

The Learning Alliance for Higher Education, an educational consulting firm based at the University of Pennsylvania, was hired by City College in 2011 to investigate and make recommendations for improving undergraduate retention and graduation at the College. Even though most City College students receive financial assistance, have decent high school grades, and live at home with their parents ? factors that should contribute to good graduation rates ? in fact, currently only 7% of students admitted to the College graduate from it in four years. Only 36% graduate in six years. Indeed, roughly half of the students admitted drop out completely within two years. Students who transfer to City College from another school, either inside or outside the CUNY system (e.g., a CUNY community college), disappear even faster: Half leave the College, and half of those leave by their first year at the College.

The goal of Fun Paper #1 is to use your critical thinking skills to evaluate the consultant?s report and consider hypotheses for explaining and improving the low City College graduation rate. We want you to write a paper that considers the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence and arguments, provides interpretations, and reaches your own conclusions using psychological science. Begin by reading the report, which is included at the bottom of this assignment.
First, title your paper ?A Critical Examination of Retention and Dropout at City College?. Next: FOLLOW EACH OF THE FOLLOWING FIVE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY (The following is a detailed outline on how you should write this paper):
Your paper should consist of five paragraphs corresponding to the 5 questions below. DO NOT write an outlined paper: It needs to be in essay format. Within each paragraph, please be clear on which letter you are answering by placing a bold letter in front of the sentences. If you are answering ?1a? place a letter ?a? before the sentence/s. (Here?s an example: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a summary of a report conducted by City College to make recommendations for student admission to the College. I found several strengths in this report. 1 a. One of the most convincing statements by the report?s author was?)

1. Begin the first paragraph of the paper with these sentences: ?The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a report conducted by The Learning Alliance to investigate student retention at City College. I found several findings from this report helpful in illuminating the retention problem.?

a. Which combinations of ethnicity and gender are most vulnerable to becoming college dropouts at City College? Which combinations of ethnicity and gender are least vulnerable to becoming college dropouts? Develop one hypothesis for why certain ethnic/gender groupings tend to drop out. (5 pts).
b. Describe the correlation between when someone is admitted to the College and the tendency to drop out? Has this correlation increased, decreased, or stayed the same between 2004 and 2006? Suggest one interpretation of this correlation and its trend. (5 pts).
c. City College dropout rates appear to depend in part on where someone originally comes from: the city, the state, or outside the country (which could include both the documented and the undocumented). How does where you come from affect dropout? Develop one hypothesis for why place of origin affects retention. (5 pts).

2. Begin the second paragraph of the paper with this sentence: ?The retention problem may be due in part to the background preparation of students for college.?

a. Describe the relationship between retention at City College and scores on pre-admission indices such as high school grades and SAT scores. What do these indices and this relationship suggest is one reason why City College students drop out in such great numbers? (4 pts).
b. Describe the relationship between retention at City College and the numbers of courses students take and receive credit for each semester. Why would the number of courses taken affect retention? (4 pts).
c. Use the relationships you have described in the second paragraph to develop a hypothesis about the role of background preparation for college in explaining dropout. (5 pts).

3. Begin the third paragraph of the paper with these sentences: ?The retention problem may also be due in part to the reasons students come to study at City College, which has a lower retention and graduation rate than other senior colleges within CUNY. For example, many students come to City College to become engineering or pre-med majors.?

a. Describe the relationship between students? preferences for CUNY colleges and retention. (4 pts).
b. How do engineering or pre-med majors fare here compared with other majors at the College? (4 pts).
c. Describe how student preferences and area of major might jointly explain low retention at City College (hint: return to your hypothesis about background preparation for college). (5 pts).

4. Begin the fourth paragraph of the paper with these sentences: ?One limitation of the report by The Learning Alliance is in the research strategy they used, which focused on associations between retention rates and a set of academic factors such as demographics and performance.?

a. Name three variables not considered in this report that you think would have a strong relationship with retention at City College. For each variable, describe how you would collect the data and what relationship to retention you hypothesize. (6 pts).
b. Explain the weakness in the research strategy used by The Learning Alliance. Why is it difficult to explain the high dropout rate at City College when relying exclusively on the relationships among variables (6 pts).
c. What alternative research strategy would you recommend that obviates the problems of the one used by The Learning Alliance. Why is your recommended research strategy better? (6 pts).

5. Suppose you hypothesize from The Learning Alliance report that the high dropout rate at City College might be alleviated if at-risk students could be identified early with immediate intervention. Bob agrees to test your hypothesis using the current class of students enrolled in PSY 102. You divide students in the class into two groups: (1) Intervention Group: Sections in which the teaching assistants meet individually each week with any student who misses a class or an assignment; and (2) Baseline Group: Sections in which teaching assistants post grades and absences on Blackboard, but don?t meet specially with at-risk students.

Begin the final paragraph of the paper with this sentence: ?I have designed a study to test a hypothesis intended ultimately to improve the retention rate at City College.?

a. Describe the study, including how and when you plan to measure retention and how you plan to control for any preexisting differences between the groups. (3 pts).
b. How can you tell whether any improvement in retention in the Intervention Group is due to at-risk students getting more attention from teaching assistants, developing better college learning skills, or something else entirely? How would you control for the different alternative explanations? (7 pts).
c. Describe the statistical test you would perform to test the difference in retention between the two groups. What is the numerator of your statistical test? The denominator? (4 pts).
d. Create a chart in Excel to show what you expect to find. Label the independent and dependent variables. Paste the chart into your fun paper. Write a concluding statement that summarizes your results from the chart and their implications for students entering City College this year. (7 pts).

A fifth of your grade will be based on the following:
a. Effective written communication (4 pts)
b. Critical thinking and logical reasoning ability (4 pts)
c. Ability to formulate questions, hypotheses, and research designs (4 pts)
d. Proper use of psychological concepts and theories (4 pts)
e. Competence in quantitative reasoning and analysis of research findings (4 pts)

? With the exception of the instructed sentences, the entire paper must be in your own words, in essay format and typewritten (double spaced) using Microsoft Word.
? Quoted, paraphrased, or borrowed sentences or phrases are not allowed. DO NOT USE ANY OF THE TEXT FROM THE LEARNING ALLIANCE REPORT, EVEN IN QUOTES. These will be regarded as plagiarism, which will be penalized by a zero on the assignment and a report filed with the Office of the Academic Integrity Official. Plagiarism software will be used to analyze your paper prior to grading.
? Do not use external references outside of lecture notes, the retention report, and the textbook.
? The paper should not exceed 4 pages.

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