The Impact of New Major Offerings on Student Retention

A strategy used by industry to retain customers and remain competitive is the design and launch of new products. One might then question whether the launch of new courses and new majors by colleges and universities has the potential of reducing student attrition. Combining survey data from matriculating freshmen with administrative data taken from student records, this study examines this potential. A logistic regression analysis with student attrition as the dependent variable reveals that undergraduate students enrolling in a newly launched major are less likely to drop out of college before graduation.