UWM has made meaningful progress on a key higher education metric: Retention of first-year students from one fall to the next. 71.0% of new first years in 2014 were retained into their second year; we retained 75.5% of new first years in fall 2018, continuing an upward trend. This is good news, of course, but we still have significant work to do to attain rates comparable to aspirational peer urban institutions like Georgia State and Wayne State.
Retention is a tricky problem to solve, because students decide to leave universities for a wide range of reasons, including finances, personal issues, academic failure or dissatisfaction with the university experience. Some of these reasons are out of our control, but we can control the student experience we deliver. The focus of these student success communications will be on small, pragmatic things we can do to help students succeed.