Toward the validation of Tinto's model of college student attrition: A review of recent studies

This paper describes the salient findings of six studies undertaken to assess the construct validity of Tinto's model of college student attrition. The studies are based on three independent data collections over a three-year period and indicate that students' informal contacts with faculty members are consistently related to subsequent persistence/withdrawal decisions. Background characteristics appear not to be reliably related to attrition by themselves, but they are significantly involved in the ways they interact with the college experience. The findings suggest that Tinto's model is a conceptually useful framework for thinking about student attrition—whether by researchers for purposes of future study, or by administrators for practical action.Paper presented at the Nineteenth Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, San Diego, May 1979. An earlier version was presented at the annual conference of the North East Association for Institutional Research, University Park, PA, October 1978.