Teaching university students how to learn matters for retaining them

• High school students across the country are waiting, nervous for that “yes” or “no” from the colleges and universities where they’ve applied.
• But what happens when students arrive where they’ve so wanted to go?
• In my doctoral work in holistic learning strategies, in professional consulting work supporting students and in my publications, I have focused on how learning interventions can support students.

Learning and teaching gaps

• Post-COVID-19 learning gaps are heavy on educators’ minds.
• Pandemic-related school closures led to significant learning losses.

Learning how to learn

• The importance of learning strategies (sometimes called metacognition) has been well studied, and it’s clear that acquiring learning strategies has a positive impact on students.
• Yet for many students I work with who are struggling with post-secondary studies, the notion of learning strategies is new.

Each academic year, colleges and universities experience students not returning. Attrition rates average between 10 to 20 per cent of their learners. In the 2023 academic year in Canada, McGill University had the highest retention rate at 94.3 per cent, while Laurentian University had the lowest at 71.4 per cent.

Read more:
What universities can do to keep students from dropping out

Role of academic performance

• After family and finance, academic performance is a significant variable.
• Leavers are “less likely to have higher grades during their first year of post-secondary education.” In a six-college attrition study, available student services like academic support and on-campus tutoring were barely relied upon by the majority of students who left.
• Ability and performance increase when learners are taught how to learn, yet metacognitive skills continue to be minimally implemented.

High cost for leavers

• Graduation rates are an incomplete metric, because this misses students who step away but not drop out — who transfer, or take parental or medical leave.
• This comes with a high cost: for institutions via lost tuition, and for students who won’t “reap the benefits of a completed credential, such as increased earnings and lower unemployment rate.”

Challenges with student retention

• More emphasis is placed on recruitment rather than retention.
• For example, one-fifth of Canadian students struggle with significant mental health challenges.
• Feeling welcome, experiencing affinity and healthy relationships with peers and professionals on campus are essential to a student staying.

Importance of academic skills

• A 2019 study on “academic skill deficiencies” revealed through surveying more than 2,200 students at four Ontario university campuses that over half were “at risk” or “dysfunctional” in their scholastic abilities.
• And that was pre-pandemic, and before generative AI like ChatGPT became widely available to users.

Financial and moral consequences

• The average cost of losing those students after their first year, in the form of lost unrealized grants and a spectrum of expenses, was just over $4.4 million dollars.
• To retain a student isn’t just a financial gain, it’s a moral obligation.

Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer owns and operates Awakened Learning, a learning strategy coaching business.