Yara Khalil

9 December 2007

Extra Credit

Qualitative Analysis Paper

I have lived on campus for three years. Being involved in the dorm life and having more campus involvement I have accustomed myself to the rumbling of student’s dissatisfaction. I did assume that the retention rate of Rutgers to keep students was high because it is such a known school. However, evaluating the cause of why students leave Rutgers and identifying possible alternative to prevent students from leaving and would lower the dissatisfaction rate for students in the years to come. One reoccurring pattern seen through the interviews were students who worked or had family obligations that did not allow them to be as flexible when choosing classes and because of their limited availability in addition to Rutgers not offering more variety of class time or classes in general they felt that leaving was the only possible option.

 Interviewee number Four, is one example of a student who left because of outside family commitments. Her father was sick and she stated that this was the main reason for her leaving. However, she did start attending classes with the University of Phoenix because they were more flexible with class schedules and allowed her to have a fulltime job while attending. I feel that one thing Rutgers could do is offer Online courses since RU-C is a smaller campus this would allow for the flexibility that Interviewee and other like her would need.

Interviewee number eleven left RU-C because the major that he wanted was not offered. But the reason I found his response to be interesting is because currently he has been taking classes at Camden Community College which offers his major. As a Rutgers student I think it is embarrassing that a community college offers more of a variety of classes that we do. This cause does not help the Rutgers image and since we are a commuter school we must be able to successfully compete against community colleges in the area for students. Offering more Majors or being more flexible in the Core requirements would give us an extra edge against other low costing schools.

The last Interviewee I want to mention is number 33. She left because RU-C did not offer pharmacy which she wanted so she transferred up to New Brunswick to complete her college years. Once again the main reason for her leaving was the limited selection of Majors. One difference with this situation was that she started attending courses at a different Rutgers campus. Maybe if Rutgers made transferring from one Rutgers campus to another it would increase the retention rate of the students who feel that Rutgers is not offering enough Majors.

In all of these examples, alternative solutions could have prevented students from leaving. Being a smaller campus, having limited staffing and competing with other commuter schools in the area are not satisfactory excuses for loosing student to in flexibility and limited course selection. I think that if RU-C started offering a few online courses, increased the number of Majors and made Rutgers campus transfers easier to Rutgers students from other campuses than it would give us a competitive edge against the other schools in the area. All three campuses have a huge amount of resources and if one campus is lacking an aspect that is important to a student than they could probably find it at another Rutgers Campus location. We just need to work more together!