The CARE Plan takes a holistic approach to our “pre” health care students – that is those students completing coursework in preparation for clinical health care and nursing programs. Using guided pathways, proactive advising strategies, career exploration, and targeted engagement activities, the CARE Plan is having a positive impact on the persistence of pre-health care students at PTC.
Higher education institutions are obligated to attend to their effectiveness at ensuring student retention, reasons including assurance to students of the value of their investments, assurance to funding sources as to the merit of investing resources at the institution, and also to maintain appropriate oversight of institutional financial stability. Institutions too often limit themselves in this respect by hoping for the best and viewing snapshots of retention data year to year. We propose that program-level trends analyses offer a more informative, useful perspective.
Included in our recommended methodology is a combination of in-depth internal analyses and the opportunity for further contextualization of trends by incorporation of external/peer institution data and trends. This includes not only fall-to-fall retention rates, but also attention to retention rate variation to better inform planning, implementation, assessment, and accountability for intervention strategies. We will also discuss opportunities with data visualization technologies to make this process more efficient and effective for meeting the needs of internal and external information audiences.
