Retention is often framed as an academic effort: improve grades, strengthen advising, refine curriculum. But decades of research suggest something deeper is at work. Students persist when they feel they belong, their basic needs are met, and their well-being is supported.
Scholar Terrell Strayhorn defines a student’s sense of belonging as perceived social support on campus, connectedness, and the experience of mattering, or feeling cared about. In his foundational work, College Students’ Sense of Belonging, he argues that belonging is a basic human need that directly influences motivation and achievement and has measurable links to academic engagement and persistence.
In a landmark randomized controlled trial published in Science, Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen demonstrated that a brief social-belonging intervention designed to normalize first-year students’ concerns about fitting in produced long-term academic benefits for Black students and narrowed achievement gaps over several years. The intervention required minimal time and financial investment, yet its effects endured.
For student affairs leaders operating within budget constraints and enrollment pressures, the implications are clear. Retention strategies that overlook belonging and well-being leave measurable gains unrealized.
Belonging does not happen by accident—it can be designed. The Walton and Cohen intervention worked because it was structured and scalable. In the study, students read peer narratives explaining that doubts about fitting in are common and temporary, then reflected on their own experiences in writing.
Institutions can adapt similar models into first-year seminars, orientation curricula, or residence life programming. Embedding belonging reflections into orientation, featuring authentic peer narratives from first-generation and marginalized students, and training residence life staff to reinforce normalization messaging during predictable stress points, such as midterms, are all low-cost approaches that rely more on coordination than on new funding streams.
Identity-affirming community structures further reinforce persistence. A 2024 study published in Scientific Reports examined an identity-based learning community in the biological sciences designed specifically for first-generation students. Researchers found positive impacts on students’ experiences and retention following participation. The model emphasized cohorting, peer interaction, and mentorship rather than expensive programmatic additions.
The University of Texas at Austin’s University Leadership Network (ULN) similarly supports students from low socioeconomic backgrounds through a structured model that combines financial support with a tiered peer mentoring system. Evaluations describe ULN as a large-scale initiative that strengthens first-year persistence through consistent engagement and community-building.
Belonging alone, however, cannot offset financial instability. National data increasingly links insecurity in basic needs to enrollment disruption. The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs’ 2023–2024 survey found that among students who had stopped out or were considering it, a substantial proportion identified financial pressures and unmet basic needs as contributing factors. Housing and food insecurity, transportation challenges, and unexpected expenses can quickly escalate into withdrawal decisions.
Emergency aid programs provide a practical intervention. Scholarship America reports high rates of term completion and next-term enrollment among students receiving emergency grants, underscoring the preventative value of timely financial support.
Institutions can implement centralized intake forms for basic needs, develop rapid-response microgrant processes with defined award caps, and conduct proactive outreach during predictable high-risk periods, such as registration or tuition deadlines. These measures typically require process redesign and cross-campus coordination rather than substantial new funding.
Technology can complement these relational efforts. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research examining digital messaging interventions in higher education suggests that text-based communications can positively influence student behavior.
The evidence indicates that implementation context matters. Generic reminders are less effective than personalized outreach linked to real human follow-up. Institutions that use these at predictable friction points—such as financial aid verification or registration holds—while ensuring immediate access to advising support, are more likely to see measurable effects.
The broader retention landscape reinforces the urgency of these strategies. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show persistent gaps in first-year retention across demographic groups, with first-generation and low-income students facing disproportionate challenges. As demographic shifts intensify competition for enrollment, institutions must consider retention not simply as an academic metric but as a comprehensive institutional strategy.
