The State of Student Retention in 2027: Key Trends and Strategies

TL;DR

College retention rates are improving from pandemic lows, but only 68% of students return to the same institution, and the gap is wider for Hispanic, Black, and Native American students. Mongoose’s research points to one lever schools are underusing: sentiment. Students who have a positive conversation, even about a hard topic like withdrawal, are far more likely to stay engaged than students in a neutral or negative one. This piece covers what’s driving retention trends in 2027 and how Smart Messages help colleges turn more conversations positive.

• Only 68% of students return to the same school
• Positive sentiment drives 86% continued engagement
• Neutral conversations are the biggest missed opportunity
• Lake Land College saw a 200% engagement lift

For college and university retention teams—including VPs of Student Success, Advising and Academic Support Directors, and Retention Specialists—the state of students’ tenacity at their chosen schools is a classic good-news, bad-news situation. 

First, the good: According to a recent study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, rates of both persistence (when students return to any institution for their second year of college) and retention (when students return to the same institution) are steadily improving from pandemic lows.

The bad news: Even at these improved rates, the study showed that merely 68%—just over two-thirds of students—are returning to the same institution at which they began their education. 

The problem is particularly pronounced for students of color: The same study showed that institutions continue to retain Hispanic, Black and Native American students at significantly lower rates than the national average. Moreover, a report from Inside Higher Ed shows that financial considerations, followed closely by “motivation or life challenges,” are the top two reasons students leave school—with academic difficulties following as a close third. 

The takeaway from these trends in university education is a profound need for improvement in student communication and support.

Bluntly, education in 2027 means finding ways to have difficult conversations with students, maintaining their engagement in the process, in order to work through challenges and keep student bodies attending and thriving.

The Importance of Sentiment: Benchmark Data

Recently, Mongoose conducted an in-depth study of 2-year and 4-year institution engagement and retention trends, which we compiled into our Benchmark Report. Our research unequivocally demonstrated the value of an important secret weapon: sentiment. Our data shows that students who have positive conversations—even around really difficult topics, such as withdrawal from school or financial challenges—are far more likely to continue engaging in the conversation. 

Notably, the difference isn’t just pronounced around positive versus negative conversations, but also positive versus neutral conversations: Our study showed that 86% of 4-year college students who had a positive conversation kept engaging, whereas only 62% did when the conversation was neutral or negative.

And while student engagement in negative conversations remained fairly steady, neutral conversations showed a drop from 30% in the first conversation to 20% in later conversations. The results were consistent in 2-year colleges; while these students were less likely than their 4-year peers to opt-out mid-conversation, the highest rates of disengagement (and lowest resolution) were in neutral or negative sentiment conversations.

These findings show that, from an engagement perspective, neutral conversations are often resulting in missed opportunities—and represent an area where colleges can make significant improvements.

Get the Free Mongoose Benchmark Reports for 4-Year and 2-Year Institutions

Emerging Solutions to Retention Challenges

Consequently, one of the main challenges in developing retention strategies for higher education is creating protocols for these difficult conversations, around topics like withdrawal, financial aid, academic support, or tech support issues, that build on positive sentiment and lead to resolution instead of opt-outs.

Increasingly, college and university retention teams are moving past “old” communication methods like phone calls, emails, and even postal mail. Instead, they’re using Web Chat and Smart Messages to meet students where they already are: on their phones.

There are a couple of ways to do this: Traditional batch messaging generally involves sending one-way messages to a large group, with no particular expectation of a response.

Smart Messages, a core part of Mongoose’s AI Engagement Platform, turn these communications into interactive, two-way conversations that invite a response and surface real-time feedback. These messages ask questions, use branched responses, and offer a personalized approach, which drives greater engagement and gives universities valuable, data-driven insight.

Most importantly, Smart Messages build on positive sentiment. They create dialogue and capture student interest, which reduces opt-outs and lets retention staff adjust conversations based on what students actually need.

Leveling Up Student Messaging

Lake Land College, a two-year public institution in Illinois, serves a diverse student body with a mission of providing affordable, accessible higher education. Since 2021, the college has been focused on increasing student engagement, using personalized communication to improve the overall student experience and promote greater retention.

Before implementing Mongoose, retention personnel at Lake Land experienced challenges typical of many higher ed institutions: Traditional communication channels like mass emails and batch messages failed to create meaningful interactions.

They found this to be a particular problem with adult learners, TRIO program participants, and multilingual populations. Retention teams realized that they were in need of a more dynamic communication approach that needed a more dynamic communication approach, one that could build active, timely engagement and make the most of positive sentiment in these conversations.

Lake Land adopted Mongoose for precisely this purpose. Using the platform, Lake Land moved from mass blasts to genuine two-way conversations, using Smart Messages and automated replies to streamline outreach. In particular, they were conscious of supporting multilingual messaging in Haitian Creole, French, and Spanish—languages frequently spoken by their student body—to enhance understanding and generate engagement. 

The results were impressive: After using Smart Messages and targeted outreach through Mongoose, a two-month campaign focused on TRIO students achieved a 6% participation rate, up from 2% over the preceding five months, a 200% improvement in engagement.

They found that multilingual messaging not only increased student satisfaction, but yielded meaningful boosts in event attendance and enrollment in learning opportunities and extracurriculars. 

Lake Land’s financial aid office, in particular, found an excellent tool in Mongoose’s platform for real-time scholarship updates, ensuring students received critical deadlines promptly. Creating positive conversations around this challenging topic proved instrumental to students’ academic success and well-being, and ultimately improved student retention year-to-year. 

“We appreciate how Mongoose adapts to our needs and continuously improves. It’s an essential tool for our student communication strategy, and we would recommend it to anyone looking to enhance their outreach and engagement.”

PEIGHTON HINOTE, Coordinator for Student Communication and Initiatives at LAKE LAND COLLEGE

Looking Ahead

Higher education retention personnel—VPs of Student Success, Directors of Advising, Academic Support Services administrators and the like—have their work cut out for them; in an economically and socially uncertain era, they are working tirelessly to help students stay in school, to follow the educational pathways that will create the most opportunities for them down the line. 

Positive, personalized communication is one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal, enabling them to engage in valuable two-way conversations that surface student priorities and needs, driving greater engagement, fewer opt-outs, and better resolution rates. Most importantly, these conversations support better retention: students staying, and staying engaged, where they are.

To learn more about how Mongoose’s AI Engagement Platform can support student retention at your college or university, book a demo below.

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