You Are College Material—You Belong: An Underrepresented Minority Student Retention Intervention Without Deception

Abstract

Declines in college persistence can lead to an array of negative individual-level consequences that can have implications for society in general. Dropout rates are higher among underrepresented minority college students (e.g., African American, Hispanic, and Native American/Alaska Native students) than among their nonminority peers. It has been postulated that these dropout rates are tied to social belonging; minorities drop out because they question whether they belong on a college campus. An earlier social-belonging intervention showed significant improvements in retention among minority students. The new randomized, controlled trial reported here tests, You Are College Material–You Belong, a brief social-belonging intervention. The sample for this study consisted of 207 students who self-enrolled in a section of the required freshmen preparation course at a community college; this location had the highest minority enrollment in the system. Of the 207 students, 102 were assigned to a control group and 105 to an experimental group. The results indicate that the fall-to-spring reenrollment rate was 17.4 percentage points higher among students in the experimental cohort than among counterparts in the control cohort. Studies in several disciplines have demonstrated that a sense of belonging is associated with a range of beneficial wellness and educational outcomes among all student racial groups. The results of this study suggest that social-belonging interventions can contribute to the improvement of academic retention outcomes for minority students.