Student Progress in Higher Education: Examining and Predicting Retention

Trends in Ohio predict declining high school graduates for the foreseeable future. This trend, coupled with increased competition from two-year institutions offering lower-cost four-year degrees and many potential students choosing online boot camps or certificate program alternatives, has left many four-year colleges and universities struggling to attract, retain, and graduate a smaller pool of students. This project aimed to utilize predictive logistic regression and machine learning techniques (k-means clustering) to examine the effect of traditional student success factors on retention.