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Thank you - your post for me thinking about how these reports reflect the anxieties of the societies they originate in. I was reflecting last night about the lofty ambitions of the Robbins Report’s four aims: “instruction in skills; the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women; to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth; and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship” (ripped from Wikipedia obviously) With the current UK legislation which is mechanistically just about graduate employment. Best wishes Ed Sent from my phone On 7 Jan 2019, at 00:40, Alisa Percy <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: Hi Ed I guess it depends on how ‘student retention’ is framed as a particular kind of government agenda. This may be slightly left field, but… In Australia, the first real concerns at a government level regarding student failure in higher education - defined in economic terms as ‘academic wastage’ - can be found in the Murray Report 1957<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.voced.edu.au%2Fcontent%2Fngv%253A53782&data=01%7C01%7Ced.foster%40ntu.ac.uk%7Cb233855d227743149e4b08d67438ba15%7C8acbc2c5c8ed42c78169ba438a0dbe2f%7C0&sdata=tZWzmZdUk%2F4Ek5zRw8dEiz2%2B84sWbjpxoR4fpAQTDQM%3D&reserved=0> (p. 35). In my PhD, I trace the origins of Learning Development as we might recognise it today in Australia back to this particular point in history (see Percy, 2011<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fro.uow.edu.au%2Ftheses%2F3362%2F&data=01%7C01%7Ced.foster%40ntu.ac.uk%7Cb233855d227743149e4b08d67438ba15%7C8acbc2c5c8ed42c78169ba438a0dbe2f%7C0&sdata=REflUEgtOR0acci7YWo1HG31El4WeP%2FvYPnTJujzTfk%3D&reserved=0>, Chapter 4, ACT-1). I would have to go back and check, but I think you are probably right that the word ‘retention’ as a particular kind of political and economic agenda probably doesn’t feature until the 1990s, but it may be worth considering how the emergence of the term ‘retention’ might be understood as the reframing of an older concern with the University’s role in a country’s economic performance. It is always interesting to do some genealogical work on these terms to see how they morph over time to do particular kinds of work in specific historical contexts. Regards Alisa Alisa Percy, PhD Senior Lecturer | Academic Development and Recognition Learning, Teaching & Curriculum | Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) | 39C.254C University of Wollongong NSW 2522 Australia T +61 2 4221 3289 http://works.bepress.com/apercy/<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fworks.bepress.com%2Fapercy%2F&data=01%7C01%7Ced.foster%40ntu.ac.uk%7Cb233855d227743149e4b08d67438ba15%7C8acbc2c5c8ed42c78169ba438a0dbe2f%7C0&sdata=%2Bt3Hy%2FoLyOCwU1OIYHc%2BxOSk%2FiRQAyMY4OgC%2FLTtpf8%3D&reserved=0> Senior Editor, Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) <image003.png> I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the Land I work on as the first people of this country. University of Wollongong CRICOS: 00102E Your feedback is appreciated and can be submitted at: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> NOTICE: This email is intended for the addressee name and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify the sender. Please consider the environment before printing this email. From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Foster, Ed Sent: Monday, 7 January 2019 9:12 AM To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Student Retention Literature (definitely low priority an ignorable) Dear all I'm working my way through a paper (woo) on improving student retention and I keep coming across phrases such as "student retention has become an increasingly important agenda recently". I'm having a slightly twitchy reaction to this (I think it's because I'm getting old) because it's just not true. So I reckon that the first significant studies into retention/ students success are: UK - Yorke et al & Ozga & Sukhnandan (1997) Undergraduate non-completion in higher education in England Australia - McInnis, C. and James, R., with McNaught, C. (1995) First year on Campus, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne/Australian Government Publishing Service.<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmelbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au%2F__data%2Fassets%2Fpdf_file%2F0011%2F1714682%2FFYE.pdf&data=01%7C01%7Ced.foster%40ntu.ac.uk%7Cb233855d227743149e4b08d67438ba15%7C8acbc2c5c8ed42c78169ba438a0dbe2f%7C0&sdata=JypEpsjTbowwLEwHYA44DOggsQhn0jNtBk5uG1ddlng%3D&reserved=0> USA - Tinto (1975) (although I think most people have only read the 1993 book (miaow)) I've blogged<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flivinglearninganalytics.blog%2F2019%2F01%2F06%2Fstudent-retention-research-a-history-lesson%2F&data=01%7C01%7Ced.foster%40ntu.ac.uk%7Cb233855d227743149e4b08d67438ba15%7C8acbc2c5c8ed42c78169ba438a0dbe2f%7C0&sdata=bUBVTAcOY6LEi1r%2B62SpvfbS%2F0DOZNb4kRrfKxtR66Q%3D&reserved=0> it, but am I miles out? Are there really important antecedents that I'm missing? And * Anyone from a country not mentioned got thoughts on early work in your own national context? * Any thoughts on significant studies/ reports/ edited books (published in 2010 or otherwise)? Best wishes and happy new year Ed DISCLAIMER: This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private and confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, please take no action based on it nor show a copy to anyone. In this case, please reply to this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this email that do not relate to the official business of Nottingham Trent University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the University. Nottingham Trent University has taken steps to ensure that this email and any attachments are virus-free, but we do advise that the recipient should check that the email and its attachments are actually virus free. 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