Improving Students' Satisfactory Academic Progress in a Community College Settin

Retention rates at many community colleges across America are low, because students withdraw prior to graduation, and financial aid rules known as Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) may compound the issue for the least advantaged students who have no financial or social safety nets. Some students find themselves cut off financial aid within their first year because they cannot anticipate the financial consequences of their decisions, particularly early withdrawals. Currently, there is no requirement about when and how the rules of the money are disseminated to students but there is a prohibition against requiring extra financial aid counseling, despite the instability withdrawals cause for students and schools alike. Embracing the managerial accounting theory known as Structuration Theory (ST), the researcher posited that students are not knowledgeable actors, able to make recursive positive contributions to their community college society if they do not understand the rules of accounting and accountability inherent in receiving student financial aid. In communicating the rules of SAP to a group of freshman students, the researcher tried to show that a treatment could help freshmen meet SAP academic requirements as well as improve persistence to end of semester compared with a control group. While participation was non-existent, the researcher was able to access archival data from a previous treatment given in person to a group of freshmen which showed a positive trend. Although only a small portion of the data was shown to be statistically significant using chi-square analysis, future research could expand upon this study with a larger population sample, in hopes of helping college administrators and policymakers understand how disadvantaged students consider financial aid allotments. It could also show a correlation of whether tying continued funding for future terms to academic success has 'perverse effects' which are in opposition to what is intended---preventing disadvantaged students from finishing a degree altogether instead of helping them graduate on time.