Kean University

My Role: A Graduate Assistant Researcher working with the General Studies Department.

Utilized competitive analysis and qualitative interviews to assess departmental strengths and provide options for further growth.

Executive Summary

Background/Objective

Kean is struggling with poor retention of first-generation college students, despite being voted one of the most diverse universities. In this study, we set out to:

  1. Assess what challenges first-generation college students are facing when considering whether to drop out

  2. Assess if other universities with similar demographic data are providing more resources than Kean

Participants

We interviewed five students from the freshman class who were attending academic supportive services through the university and were required to attend those services due to low performance on their course work in the previous semester. Of the students interviewed, two identified as male and three identified as female, and all five of them were second semester freshman students.

Methods

In order to assess Kean against other universities with similar demographics, we determined doing a comparative analysis with Howard University would give us a better understanding of any resource discrepancies between them. Then to better understand what gaps exist between the resources offered and the students experience of Kean, we utilized one on one interviews.

Findings

The results of the interviews were that 3 of the 5 participants cited home responsibilities, lack of space to study at home, and lack of time to study in their schedule. 2 of the 5 mentioned struggling with time management and not understanding the resources offered at the university. Analyzing the resources at Howard University, we found they offer similar resources to Kean University. Tutoring, computer loans, intro classes for incoming students, and counseling resources.

Regarding the comparative analysis, the number of resources Kean and Howard both offered to alleviate concerns regarding study space and technology access were similar. Something that was apparent throughout the interview was the high amount of commitments these participants had outside of just university work. The main observation was the lack of effectiveness of the current communication strategies being employed, as several participants were unaware of many of the resources and when it might be effective to use them. This suggests there should perhaps be more done to inform the freshman class about the resources and further, try to reduce the psychological barriers to asking for help from those resources as much as possible.

Background

Kean University was voted as one of the most diverse schools in the United States by US News and World Report. Working in the General Studies department, we were interested in what could be done to increase the retention rates of the freshman class students, ensuring they had access to the resources they needed to be successful in higher education.

In order to have more complete data, for the quantitative research on this study, I utilized fall 2018 data. This study taking place in fall of 2020, the 2018 data gave me a good sense of the retention numbers for that previous incoming class to then compare to other universities. In order to attain these numbers, I looked up Kean’s Institutional profile on their website. The retention rate in the third semester (fall of 2018) of first time undergraduate students was 71.9% (N=1,759) for full time students, while only 45.8% for part time students (N=24). This was down from some other similar institutions, such as Howard University who had a retention rate of 84.7% in the same year according to their institutional profile. While Howard accepted fewer total students and a much smaller percentage of their total applicants than Kean, the Department of General Studies felt an analysis of the data from Howard could yield important information for the university moving forward.

With more time, I would have liked to have compared three universities to Kean, to get a better sense of the competitive landscape, but because time was short, I was only able to look at one.

Research Questions

  1. What are some of the challenges students who are struggling in their freshman year face?

For this research question the intention was to get a sense for why students were struggling in their first few semesters. We hoped knowing the challenges would give us an idea of the types of resources that might better serve them.

2. Are other institutions offering additional resources to address these concerns?

This question lended itself to a comparative analysis. Ideally, this would have been an analysis with 3-5 different universities, but due to time constraints, we were only able to compare one university’s data.

Participants

We interviewed five students from the freshman class who were attending academic supportive services through the university and were required to attend those services due to low performance on their course work in the previous semester. These students were asked if they would participate in an interview to help improve the university resources for students. Of the students interviewed, two identified as male and three identified as female, and all five of them were second semester freshman students.

Methods

  1. Individual interviews

  2. Comparative analysis

Interviews

For the 1 on 1 interviews, we reserved an empty room and had a plastic fold out table and three chairs, two positioned across from each other and the third off to the side. There were two researchers and a participant present for the interviews, one researcher to take notes and the other to conduct the interview.

I had written out several questions to keep the interview semi-structured, while also trying to elicit a more conversational flow to the information gathering period.

The structured interview questions were:

  • Tell me about your experience of university?

  • Take me through a typical week schedule?

  • What areas of the university experience do you feel you excel with?/What areas do you feel are the most difficult?

  • Tell me about the process of enrolling at Kean University?

  • How much time do you devote per week to school? How much is in class vs outside of class?

  • Tell me about your experience of the school services (tutoring/library/student support)?

These questions were designed to attempt to elicit more open ended responses about their lives and how these portions of their university experience fit into their lives as a whole. Often these questions were not asked directly, unless a particular participant did not touch on a specific point in their explanation. The goal of the questions were as follows:

  • What are their sentiments of university

  • What obligations do they have outside of school work, particularly with family or work

  • Do they enjoy some aspects of university life, or do they tend to have completely negative sentiments about school

  • What was their intention with pursuing a college degree and how did they decide to come to Kean

  • Are they spending a lot of time on school work but finding they did not comprehend instructions properly or focusing too much on portions of projects that do not affect their grade or are they not able to spend enough time on school work outside of school.

  • Do they find these supportive services helpful and easy to use or frustrating and difficult.

If any of these ideas were not touched on in the interview, I would circle back to the idea and maybe ask a more direct question, but I tried to avoid this outcome as often the answer to direct questions is yes or no and lacks any contextual color.

Having the participant come into the interviewing space, both researchers introduced themselves and told the participant that they had a few prewritten questions for the interview. The researcher explained the notetaker’s role, discussing they would not speak but would just observe and write down the participants responses. The researcher also explained that this was a conversation for the Office of General Studies to better understand the participants circumstances and in turn, hope to help students in the future. The researcher expressed the participants were not being evaluated through this process but we wanted to better understand new student experience at Kean University.

After the interviews, the research team had some additional questions we thought could have been helpful to explore in the interview. Due to the challenge of pulling participants back into an interview after the fact, I instead sent out a two question, post hoc questionnaire, in which participants were asked to respond yes or no to the questions:

  • Do you utilize a calendar in your daily life or with school work?

  • Do you feel you utilize the tutoring services as much as you might need?

Comparative Analysis

The comparative analysis was conducted through the publicly available data on Howard University and Kean University. Since I was familiar with Kean’s resources, I looked through the Howard University website to source information about student resources they offered to their students and compare the offerings to Kean resources.

Findings and Recommendations

The results of the interviews were that 3 of the 5 participants cited home responsibilities, lack of space to study at home, lack of time to study in their schedule. Further, 2 of the 5 mentioned struggling with time management and not understanding the resources offered at the university.

In the process of the interviews, the recurrent themes among the participants were the circumstantial obstacles, which I grouped in the participants mentioning difficulties relating to their home lives and responsibilities in their schedule to their families, or the limitations in accessing usable study locations. Among these repeated topics were also the difficulties mentioned by just one participant which also included struggling to find access to technology to complete assignments, that lack of access leading to more difficulties with finding proper formatting for their assignments.

Then there were also topics of properly managing their time, with 3 of the 5 participants citing time management as a major challenge. One of these participants mentioned that once they find the time to study, they often struggle to focus once they do have time to study, and another expressed they spend a lot of their study time decoding the assignments in order to figure out exactly what was asked in their classes. In a post hoc questionnaire, we asked the participants if they used a calendar, and all 3 of the responders checked “no.” We also asked in the post hoc questionnaire if the participants felt they were utilizing the tutoring services enough, and again, all 3 respondents selected “no.”

All the theme data related to the research goals from the interview:

  • Home responsibility x3

  • Underutilizing tutors x3 (inferred)

  • Lack of space to study x3

  • Lacking time to study x3

  • Struggling with time management x3

  • Lacking understanding of resources to use them x2

  • Technology literacy

  • Struggling with focus due to time constraints

  • Lacking clarity in assignments

  • Lack access to technology at home

Through analyzing the data, I felt there are two main categories of obstacles the participants mentioned.

  1. Time constraints and time management related to responsibility or work

  2. Resource utilization, either due to lack of experience with technology or feeling unaware of the resources on campus

Examples of the first one are fairly obvious, picking up siblings from school, cooking for the family, or working a job to provide financial support. Examples of the second are utilizing counselors or tutors to develop time management strategies and/or computer skills classes.

Analyzing the resources at Howard University, we found they offer similar resources to Kean University. Tutoring, computer loans, intro classes for incoming students, and counseling resources. This analysis was done only over the computer, as an in person trip was not possible. This was challenging and brought up many more questions than answers, but this was the only data we were able to pull for this particular study.

Insights

Something that was apparent throughout the interview was the high amount of commitments these participants had outside of school work. The difficulty of communicating the time commitment of school assignments and the conflict that might have with obligations at home with family members, who often had not attended university themselves, was mentioned by one participant as a tall task. These challenges also further extended to the these participants ability to focus as well in their studying at home, asking for family members to remain quiet so they could focus or not to come into their study space and ask them questions while they are working on an assignment.

Some initial recommendations might start with looking at the methods of communication of the time commitment of their coursework to new students. Another area of focus could be exploring how to build that conversation with the students families through the students. This might include having brief discussion starters or role plays in some of the enrollment process with students. A challenge with these types of interactions is that FERPA laws may come into play, so speaking directly with family members can be a challenge after enrollment and orientation phases, and direct communication with parents is generally not compliant with those laws.

The second main theme was related to the ability to access coursework, commute, and interpret assignments. A lot of these were interesting because these were amplified by whether a student was a commuter student or an on campus student. Students on campus seemed to be better positioned to use study spaces and utilize the library resources. It was interesting to note the increased access seemed to be amplified in the retention data already too, with students living on campus finishing their degrees at a higher rate than commuter students.

Regarding the comparative analysis, the number of resources Kean and Howard both offered to alleviate concerns regarding study space, technology access, and confusion surrounding assignments was similar, and that similarity seemed striking given the differences in retention rates. It is possible given Howard’s smaller freshman class, disseminating information about resources to all the students is easier than it is at Kean. It is also possible there are other extraneous variables regarding cultural norms around studying or even support seeking behaviors among the two student bodies. This would be an interesting point of emphasis in future studies. Regardless of the extraneous variables however, the main observation was the lack of awareness the students at Kean had regarding the student resources and when to use them, suggesting there should perhaps be more done to inform the freshman class about the resources and further, try to reduce the psychological barriers to asking for help from those resources as much as possible.

Unanswered
Questions

The biggest unanswered questions all revolve around the competitive analysis. The first being, does Kean’s implementation of the resources for students match the implementation of Howard University’s resources. This is important, as the students sense of accessibility of the resources might have a bigger impact than the resources being offered themselves. If the implementation is the same, then other questions arise, such as student perceptions of the resources, location of the resources, staff recommendation of the resources, or even student orientation material around the resources directed to new students.

The second big unanswered question, is simply, what are other universities doing who have similar demographic information? Are they all implementing the same resources, and if so, what percentage of those student bodies are using those resources?

Another interesting idea, rather than looking at similarities in demographics, searching for resources at other universities that Kean is not offering and to look at the data surrounding those untapped resources to see if retention could be addressed through an additional avenue.

Finally, with these few interviews, it would be interesting to quantify some of these findings with a broader survey to see how many of these points are consistent in the student population. Or, if there is a theme among students who are struggling and perhaps which sessions of orientation were missed, to see if there is another commonality among students who are struggling. If any of these are the case, perhaps communication of resources needs to be broader and more frequent in order to reach the students more effectively.

Sources

  • https://www.kean.edu/news/kean-recognized-social-mobility-and-ethnic-diversity-us-news-world-report

  • https://www.kean.edu/media/graduation-rates

  • https://ira.howard.edu/sites/ira.howard.edu/files/2025-01/CDS%202018-2019.pdf