Abstract:
College attrition studies indicate that a significantly large number of college drop-outs experience little or no close personal identification with other college students or groups. According to Astin, student involvement, including extracurricular activities, is one key to reducing attrition. Astin states that "efforts to increase student involvement will not only enhance the student's ability to persist but will also intensify the impact of the undergraduate experience on the student's personality, behavior, career progress, and satisfaction." If indeed, this lack of close identification with other students and groups is a primary causal factor it seems reasonable to assume that a systematic program to provide support of this nature for college freshmen would have a significant impact upon a student's persistence in college. An experimental program designed to address this problem was implemented during the fall semester of 1982 in the College of Agriculture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Keywords:
freshman, extracurricular activities, student involvement, attrition
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