Model, mentoring and monitoring
What do you do and how can you make a student who originally is the only one in the family to go to college, about to graduate and drops out saying "it's not for me"?
Bela,
The student you describe, the first in his family to go to college, is pretty common in career colleges. Over 70% of our students are first generation. This makes our job tougher.
The trick is to find ways to establish an environment in which the student has early success and can internalize that college is for him.
It is not uncommon for a few students to drop out as they get close to graduation. Many times there is a fear of the unknown. Sometimes they are just worn out. often they have lost some of the support they had outside of school.
The best thing to do is continually reinforce that you believe in the student's ability to make it. As a school, perhaps there are ways to keep the student in with a reduced load. For those that do drop close to the end, schools need to make it easy to reenter whenever possible. Stay in touch with these students. Many will return.
