Why Is the Retention Rate Slipping? Pt. 1

From the 2017-2018 school year at Eastern Washington University, the retention rate for first year students continuing into their second year went from 74.5% to a lesser 70.1% in the 2018-2019 school year. An all time high for first year student retention in the last decade was 77.8% in the 2014-2015. Why aren't students returning to the university?

For the 2018-2019 school year, the percentages for students not returning for a second year under the university average of 70,1% are broken down by diversity here:

American Indian or Alaskan Native - 43.8%

Black or African American - 66.3%

Two or more races - 68.1%

Hispanic/Latino is on the cusp of the average at 70.2%

All four of these races and ethnicities retention rates have been on the decline for the past few years or more. Why are many students of color not returning to the university for a second year?

Students may not be returning to Eastern because, first and foremost, the university uses their diversity as a major point of recruiting incoming students. In the "Fast Facts" section of the EWU website, one of four bolded "fast facts" is "EWU NAMED #1 COLLEGE OF DIVERSITY IN WASHINGTON BY HEED." Not only just a selling point on one section of the website, but on the homepage's "about" section the "Diversity" tab is just second to "Life at EWU." "Life at EWU" is presumably intended to be used to market itself for people interested in attending the University and having the page that links to awards about diversity right under that makes it feel like a selling point also.

Many students who I talked to while creating this project all seemed to share similar feelings about diversity at Eastern (interviews which you can find quoted throughout this website). These feelings that were shared by students of color all seemed to loop back to the testament that the university uses the diversity statistics as a selling point rather than promoting the inclusion part of diversity. One black student who is a junior, but first year at Eastern, relayed this common feeling explicitly in a sit down interview we had:

"Eastern to me, when you come in, you think because of the many cultures that are here it would be more diverse and includes everyone and [the university] actually cares, but when you look at it and see the issues that happen on campus you realize that it really is a predominantly white institution, it acts as such. You feel like a quota at a certain point."

And they are not wrong, as of the fall of 2017, Eastern has a 58% white student population and the instructional faculty, as of fall 2018, is 82% white.