ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries December 1 9 9 0 / 1035 Library jobs and student retention By Stanley Wilder Adm inistrative Services Louisiana State University Library The library can contribute to the university’s goal o f retaining students and enhance its own mission at the same time. C oncern over the role of the student worker in the academic library has traditionally focused on a set of narrowly defined obje usually related to topics such as productivity, tu rn ­ over, and absenteeism. This is natural in an envi­ ronm ent which is so d ep en d en t on students to perform such vital functions in its day-to-day op­ erations. The role of the student w orker in the academic library, however, can be considered from a wider perspective, one that includes the contribution that library em ploym ent makes to the university’s larger concerns. In particular, th e re is evidence that part- time, on-campus jobs te n d to increase retention rates among both white and minority students. Library adm inistrators n eed to be aware o f this additional benefit that th eir student jobs provide the university and should consider the possibility of adopting a m ore proactive approach to encourag­ ing retention. Such an approach could benefit the library and the university. Background Retention, also called persistence, is the rate at which new students at an institution go on to com ­ plete th eir program s there. Given that staying in c school is not in the best interest or even the objec­ tive for all students, why does the university place tisvuecsh, emphasis on it? On one level, increasing retention is simply an economic concern for the university. As Noel ex­ plains, universities face declining enrollm ents, which leads to losses o f revenue. This tren d is due in part to declining birth rates, a decline in the college-going rate for 18-19-year-old males, and a continued level o f high attrition (dropout) dating from the mid 1970s.1 In addition, rete n tio n has recently becom e im portant as an “educational outcom e” measure. American universities are now u n d er continuous pressure from state legislatures, accrediting bod­ ies, and the private sector to dem onstrate that increased, or even maintained, funding produces a corresponding increase in the quality o f services. Retention rates are one relatively firm m easure of 1 Lee Noel, “Increasing Student Retention: New Challenges and Potential,” in Lee Noel, Randi Levitz, D iana Saluri and Associates ed., Increasing Student Retention: Effective Programs and Prac­ tices f o r Reducing the D ropout Rate (San F ran ­ cisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), 4-7. 1036 / C&RL News the degree to which the university satisfies the needs o f its students. Perhaps the most pressing problem leading uni­ versity administrators to pay close attention to retention, however, is minority enrollment, and black enrollm ent in particular. Blacks stay in school at a significantly lower rate than do whites, leading university administrators concerned with minority representation to pay as much attention to reten ­ tion as to recruitm ent.2 Which students are at risk? It is not possible to create a precise profile of students “at risk” to drop out, but the literature consistently identifies several broad groups of stu­ dents with high attrition rates:3 1. Minority students 2. Low-income students 3. First generation students 4. Academically unprepared students 5. Students with uncertain goals 6. Students with full-time jobs 7. Com m uting students Nearly every retention study points out that while many college dropouts cite financial consid­ erations among their reasons for leaving school, lack o f money cannot be considered as a base cause for dropping o u t.4 “Low-incom e stu d e n ts” are cited above, for example, primarily because they tend to receive inadequate training in prim ary and secondary schools.5 The role of the part-time, on-campus job While there is no research examining the con­ nection between retention and part-tim e library jobs in particular, a solid body of work supports the proposition that jobs such as these do prom ote retention.6 The leading study in the area was con­ 2Alexander W. Astin, Preventing Students fr o m Dropping Out (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975). 3Louise Lonabocker, “Can an Institution C on­ struct a Dropout Profile?” College and University 58 (Fall 1982): 76. 4Vincent Tinto, “D ropout from H igher E duca­ tion: A Theoretical Synthesis of Recent Research,” Review o f Educational Research 45 (1975): 89-125. 5Leonard A. Valverde, “Low-Income Students,” in Increasing Student Retention, 78-94. 6For other studies linking part-time, on-campus employment to higher retention, see Tullisse A. Murdock, “The Effect of Financial Aid on Student Persistence,” paper given at the Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Meeting, San Diego, February, 1987; Richard Voorhees, “Finan­ ducted by Alexander Astin, who reports: “Having a job usually increases the student’s chances of fin­ ishing college. If em ploym ent is less than full-time (under twenty-five hours a week), the absolute benefits can be substantial: from 10 to 15% d e ­ crease in dropout probabilities. These positive ef­ fects o f em ploym ent are even m ore pronounced among black students.”7 Astin goes on to discount the type o f work as a factor in increasing retention: “Both work in an academ ic-related departm ent and work in a non-academic part o f the campus have similar positive effects for m en and women and for blacks and w hites.”8 A recent study by the National C enter for Education Statistics reports positive results even for students having trouble in school: “em ploym ent displayed a large, positive effect on persistence for low ability students. For example, 80% of students in public 4-year institu­ tions who did not work persisted. 98% o f students who worked during the academic year persisted.”9 The role of involvement No one suggests that there is anything intrinsic to answering phones or reshelving books that e n ­ courages students to stay in school. T here is, how­ ever, another body o f research which may point to the source of the connection betw een on-campus, part-tim e jobs and retention. A major them e of the retention literature is that students who avail th em ­ selves o f the means to becom e socialized to their new academic environm ent are more likely to persist in school.10 According to this model, any cial Aid and S tudent Persistence: Do F ederal Campus-Based Aid Programs Make a Difference?” Journal o f Student Financial A id 15 (W inter 1985): 21-30; Dawn Terkla, “Does Financial Aid E n ­ hance U ndergraduate P ersistence?” Journal o f Student Financial A id 15 (Fall 1985): 11-18. 7Astin, 5. 8Astin, 7. 9C .D ennis Carroll, College Students W ho Work: 1980-1984 Analysis Findings fr o m High School and Beyond (Washington, D.C.: National C enter for Educational Statistics, 1988), 71-78. 10F o r research supporting the connection b e ­ tw een on-cam pus activities and retention, see Astin, 89-145; J.M. Billson and M.B. Terry, “In Search o f the Silken Purse: Factors in Attrition Among First G eneration Students,” College and University 58 (Fall 1982): 57-75; L. Ramist, “Col­ lege Student Attrition and R etention,” College Board Report No. 81-1, (New York: College E n ­ trance Examination Board, 1981); W.D. Churchill and S.I. Iwai, “College Attrition, Student Use of Campus Facilities, and a Consideration o f Self- R eported Personal Problem s,” Research in Higher Education 14 (1981): 353-365. December 1990 /1 0 3 7 campus mechanism which tends to bring about a good “fit” betw een student and institution will improve retention rates. This research, taken together with the part-tim e em ploym ent research noted above, suggests that jobs in the academic library may help increase retention to the extent that they socialize students to th e university, and provide them with school- related support networks o f fellow students and staff members. Natural advantages of the library job It should be clear to any academic librarian, however, th at w here on-cam pus jobs are con­ cerned, the part-tim e library job has the potential to encourage retention in ways that other on-cam- pus jobs cannot. W ithout any conscious effort on the part of librarians, library student workers al­ ready benefit from certain “natural” academ ic advantages: 1. Library jobs demystify the library. F o r stu­ dents who would otherwise feel intim idated by the library, daily contact reduces anxiety and may p ro ­ duce a positive predisposition to further use. 2. T here may be a benefit to physically placing at-risk students in a study-related environm ent, in close contact with good academic role models. 3. Library work naturally exposes students to materials which can be useful in com pleting course work. The program at LSU T he LSU Library is preparing a proactive ap­ proach to the retention o f its student workers which is intended to exploit the natural advantages noted above. The following are the key elem ents o f that program: 1. D ata collection. No library will be able to make a case for unusually high retention among its student workers w ithout supporting data. LSU is able to track the retention o f its student workers by asking the university’s Budget and Planning Office to run its student payroll com puter tapes against its registration tapes. Students selected in this way are run through the university’s retention tracking com puter programs to insure comparability with university figures. 2. Retention awareness in new supervisor train­ ing. Supervisors m ust be made aware o f retention as an issue in student supervision, and how the supervisor and library can work together to encour­ age it. 3. Collection of up-to-date referral information. In many cases, the first person to recognize that a student is experiencing some kind o f trouble will be his or h er supervisor. W ith the aid o f a handbook, a 1038 / C&R L News supervisor should be able to refer the student to the appropriate counseling services, health services, tutoring programs, wom en’s transit, or other serv­ ices. 4. Training new workers in library skills. The library should determ ine that all student workers, regardless of job, be trained in basic library skills such as using the online catalog, print indexes, and the location of materials in the library. This can be accomplished by holding seminars at the beginning of each term , possibly in conjunction with a video­ tape production which could be viewed on a more flexible schedule. 5. Library training outreach. The library might consider opening such seminars up to new student workers in other parts of the university, so as to prom ote the special relationship that library skills have to retention. 6. Network and promotion. The library must network with other campus bodies concerned with retention to share information. At LSU, the Office of Instructional Developm ent is the center of the campus’ concern for retention, but other valuable allies are to be found among the education and English departm ent faculties. Finally, the library must publicize its efforts to university administra­ tors and faculty governing bodies. Can libraries afford to pay such systematic atten­ tion to an issue which lies outside their immediate domain? In fact, a successful program could pay off in very concrete terms: 1. H igher retention of students should mean lower turnover of student workers. This will lead to lower training costs and higher productivity. For libraries with an unusually high percentage of total FT E in student assistants, this factor is critical in term s of efficiency. 2. The library benefits from taking a leadership role in contributing to a campus-wide approach to retention. By asserting itself into the university’s retention efforts, the library brings itself into closer alignment with the university’s mission, and adds a new dimension to the range of services it provides the university. 3. The library can agree to take on students the university has identified as being “at-risk.” In re ­ turn, these students can be paid from the univer­ sity’s budget, rather than the library’s budget allo­ cation. 4. Training helps student assistants help others who may approach them in the stacks, thereby increasing the overall level of service in the library. 5. Minority student assistants form a valuable pool from which tomorrow’s minority professionals may be recruited. Helping these students to stay in school may increase minority representation in the profession as a whole. It should be emphasized that the contribution the library can make to the university’s retention rate is inevitably small; there are many factors affecting retention, and the library’s student work force is just a small fraction o f the student body. But the very diversity of factors affecting retention underscores the need for a campus-wide approach to the problem, and increases the relative im por­ tance of each piece of the solution. The challenge for the academic library is to recognize its own contribution to that solution and to act on it. ■ ■ University librarians attend Nordic seminar Eleven North American librarians and archivists attended a seminar in Oslo Septem ber 3-9 that was organized by Riksbibliotektjenesten, Norway’s na­ tional office for research and special libraries. The seminar had five objectives: to prom ote co­ operation and exchange of information among Nordic, American, and Canadian librarians, archi­ vists, and information specialists; to improve the quality of information on Nordic countries avail­ able in Canada and the United States; to provide participants with information regarding the most recent Nordic reference sources; to improve com­ munication between North American academic libraries and the publishers and book trade rep re­ sentatives of Nordic countries; and to improve bibliographic access by exploring possible coopera­ tive efforts in such areas as library com puter n et­ working, electronic indexing of periodical litera­ ture, and specialized bibliographies. The eleven North Americans attended as repre­ sentatives of im portant Nordic collections: Univer­ sity of Alberta, Augustana College (Swenson Swed­ ish Immigration Research Center), UCLA, Uni­ versity of Chicago, the Library of Congress, Uni­ versity of Manitoba, McGill University, University of Minnesota, Pacific Lutheran University, and University of Washington. They heard leading specialists from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Fin­ land, and Iceland in the fields of bibliography, automation, publishing, manuscripts, and govern­ m ent publications and information services. ■■