This session was provided by a former freshman, John Gardner, who was a multiply disadvantaged candidate for attrition in his first college years, as he shall explain, but who went on instead and pursued a higher education career to reduce student attrition. Gardner shares some of his insights on the factors that influence both attrition and retention. He pays particular attention to citing the characteristics of campus cultures of student achievement. A generic program model known as The First-Year Experience for increasing retention will be presented.
     Gardner argues that after 33 years of changing the characteristics of who's coming to college and engaging in extensive student bashing in the process, that it is high time for a new paradigm. He suggests in his remarks instead that we should be focusing on those variables we higher educators do control: our campus cultures, policies, practices, pedagogies-our structures. His argument is that student attrition will remain at unacceptable levels until we change the structures of college which were never designed with the welfare in mind of the students we serve.