Summer Months
I think all of us as managers have discovered June, July, and August to be the most significant drop in retention. For the most, part there are issues concerning child care and finance. Most of our students are the sole providers of their families and most work during times kids are out of school during summer months. In Texas, a child cannot stay alone in a home unless they are 14 years old. This is a huge factor when it comes to a student making a decision to stay in school versus their children compliance to state laws as well as their safety at home.
We have found our biggest drop in students over the holidays. Students get busy with their families, stop doing work, get overwhelmed by the remaining assignments, and drop out. We have told our teachers not to assign work over the holidays because it is too much for our students. Instead, papers should be due before vacation or several weeks after it.
This sounds like a win situation for all parties. I assume that the Day Care Fair concept doesn't work in November and December because the providers want longer commitments.
Ricky -
We have implemented a DayCare Fair. Every May we invite all day care centers from the tri county area on a big exam day. We provide them with a table and sometimes we even offer our students a 'treat' to walk through the fair. Providing access to the information has greatly reduced our summer time drops.
Now, I wish I knew how to do that for November and December.
Terri lynn
Some students "stop out" during the summer for the wrong reasons; others have to because their children are out of school and need care. The challenge in any case is to build incentive to return in the Fall. If the dream is alive, they will be back. If they don't see a future, they will move in another direction.
Summer is difficult just competing with the sunshine and all the available reasons not to be in class. It can be beneficial to let students know that being in class now that they will finish school that much sooner and be able to have all the time in the world to devote to their family and actually be able to afford to do some things that might be a struggle now.
Recently we have change our overlapping problems at our campus at SBC and now beginning on 10/17/11 we will start our quarters the same time. However, we have extended them for 5 weeks presently. This change will work great for our students, faculty, and administration and now have such an overlap which will allow us to retain our students.
Our quarters kind of overlap, so that is not true over our summer quarter. Our biggest dropoff is over our overly long Christmas New years break. This needs to be shortened in order to increase retention.
