International Undergraduates’ Retention, Graduation, and Time to Degree

ABSTRACTRetention and graduation rates are important indicators of student success (Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, & Hayek, 2006). These indicators have been defined as "the percentage of a school's first-time, first-year undergraduate students who continue at that school the next year" and "the percentage of a school's first-time, first-year undergraduate students who complete their program within 150% of the published time for the program," respectively (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.). In addition to their importance for student success, retention and graduation rates are used for accountability purposes (Gold & Albert, 2006), enrollment-related funding and management (Berger, Ramirez, & Lyons, 2012), and compliance with the federal Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act (Cook & Pullaro, 2010). They also have attracted the attention of elected officials who have called for American universities to improve their students' retention and graduation rates (Asimov & Gutierrez, 2015; Obama, 2009). Efforts to improve retention and graduation rates at American postsecondary institutions recently have become more complicated due to the dramatic increase in their nonimmigrant international student populations. These institutions have admitted and enrolled increasing numbers of students from other countries in the years after the great recession of 2008. According to the Institute of International Education's (IIE) annual Open Doors reports, this increase amounted to 2.9% in 2009-10, 4.7% in 2010-11, 5.7% in 2011-12, 7.2% in 2012-13, 8.1% in 2013-14, and 8.8% in 2014-15 (IIE, 2015a). First-time international undergraduates' enrollment in American universities increased by 1.3% in 2009-10, 5.7% in 2010-11, 6.5% in 2011-12, 9.8% in 2012-13, 7.7% in 2013-14, and 3.0% in 2014-15 (IIE, 2015a). Increased international student enrollment has led administrators, faculty, and staff at a West Coast public university (hereafter referred to as "the University") which has been recognized for its excellence in academics and research (U.S. News and World Report, 2015) to become increasingly concerned about these students' prospects for academic success (see also Oliver, Vanderford, & Grote, 2012). Specifically, the concern is that international undergraduates collectively struggle academically (term grade point average [GPA] below 2.0 [C]) due to English weakness (Fass-Holmes & Vaughn, 2014). Concern at the University has increased despite historically strong support for international students through a wide variety of programs and services intended to optimize these students' satisfaction and engagement (Fass-Holmes & Vaughn, 2014), and thereby promote their retention and graduation (Tinto, 1975). To the extent that this concern is justified, however, the University's retention and/or graduation rates could be compromised by its international undergraduates' academic struggles.In addressing the above concern, the primary purpose of the present study was to measure retention and graduation rates of the University's international undergraduates, and to determine these rates' values during the six most recent academic years (AY) when nonresident enrollment grew dramatically (Dorado & Fass-Holmes, 2016). This study's results were expected to reveal whether these rates supported the concern that the University's international undergraduates collectively were struggling academically. The research hypothesis was that if these students in fact were collectively struggling, then their retention and graduation rates should be commensurately low.Two secondary purposes of this study were to measure the time to degree for the University's international undergraduates who did graduate during the five most recent AYs, and to identify what reasons were responsible for the University's international undergraduates not to be retained or graduate. The time to degree measurement could further reveal the extent to which the concern about these students' academic struggles was empirically supported. …