Waverly Hart
Managing Editor
Over the past few years, retention rates at The College of Wooster have become an increasingly prevalent conversation topic among students. With many students having at least one friend who has transferred from the College, one might think C.O.W.’s retention rates are relatively low.
According to a graph from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), The College of Wooster’s retention rates are, on average, slightly lower than those rates at other Ohio higher education institutions.
“Our first year to sophomore retention rates sit just under 90 percent (retention rates for international students at Wooster are typically the same as, or slightly higher than, the retention rates for U.S. students in recent years),” Dean of Students Scott Brown said.
Since 2002, the College’s retention rates have seen little fluctuation and are higher than many students think. In the 2002-03 school year, the retention rate from first years to sophomores was 86 percent. Its lowest was at 85 percent, in the 2007-08 school year. The highest the retention rate ever reached was 90 percent, during both the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years.
The most recent retention rate, for the 2017 cohort, is 87 percent.
Students transfer for a variety of reasons.
Nick Whaley, formerly in the class of 2020 at the College, transferred for financial reasons.
“With all of the tuition increases, my family can’t afford for me to go there anymore,” Whaley said. Whaley is now at Columbus State Community College.
While financial reasons are a common motivation for leaving the College, others transfer because they miss home or simply don’t fit in with the culture at Wooster.
“I think where you choose to go to college is one of the biggest, most important decisions you will make in your life,” said Raegan Palmer, formerly in C.O.W.’s class of 2020. “That’s where most people find their lifelong friends, where they make connections with professors and could possibly live after college. When you choose your college, it really does need to be your ‘home away from home.’ I personally didn’t find that in Wooster and knew early on that something wasn’t clicking. Transferring seemed like the only option for my happiness. Luckily, I found a university that is my home away from home! Wooster will always have a special place in my heart, but it just isn’t where I am supposed to be!”
After completing her first semester of her first-year at Wooster, Palmer transferred to Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., a school that has about 11,000 more students than The College of Wooster.
Brown did not speak to the reasons why students transfer out of the College.
The retention rates among international students are slightly better than those among domestic students. In the past seven years, the retention rate between first-year and sophomore international students has never dipped below 87 percent. Instead it has gone above 90 percent four different years and, at its highest, reached 92 percent in 2013.
The retention rate among “domestic multiethnic” students (those who are not international and who are documented as not “white” or “race unknown”) is also similar to the trends in the retention rate in general. The 2016 year saw the lowest retention rate in the past eight years, at 83 percent.
“They were down a little last year, but up again this year,” Brown said of the general retention rate trends. “They are very similar to those of our peers in the Great Lakes College Association (GLCA), but we want every Wooster student to thrive, succeed and graduate, so we are looking into the factors that are most important for student experience as part of the larger strategic planning process.”
From 2002 to 2016, the Ohio Five’s average retention rate per year has ranged from 87 percent to 91 percent. During those same years, the median for the GLCA has never risen above 89 percent. Compared to similar colleges, Wooster’s retention rates are nothing out of the ordinary.