Evaluating the Graduation Gap: Interventions Designed to Enhance Upper-level Student Success and Commitment

Over the past several decades, there has been a wealth of research identifying factors and conditions of persistence toward graduation for first-year students and more recently transfer students. While previous research recognizes these critical periods, some recent literature suggests that students may face a similar transitional period later in their academic careers as they advance into their major areas of study. To date, there has been a dearth of information exploring upper-level students' success and commitment to graduation. Exploring this later transition might provide a critical link to understanding the graduation gap between those students who persist to graduation and those who drop out. The purpose of this research was to review the intervention programs proscribed by the literature, design an intervention program, and examine the impact of the program on criminal justice students during this advanced transitional phase of their college careers. It examined the direct and indirect effects of the intervention program on both retention and the antecedents of successful retention while controlling for other relevant influences identified in the literature. The results indicated that the intervention had small, but significant positive direct and indirect effects on academic integration, commitment to the university, and graduating in a timely fashion. Policy implications are discussed.