Research Summary

Today, we often think of our students as being ready for the freedom of leaving home for college.  Yet research assembled by Fuller Seminary, Youth Transition Network (YTN) and Ohio State University (OSU) have concluded that even the seemingly most mature student often encounters unexpected challenges in the transition.  While this is part of the growing process, we can guide them to grow even more in the transition to freedom and responsibility by coming alongside our students before they even leave home.  In this process we can help them see (through fellow students) the challenges they will face, offering ideas and helping them set goals that can guide them through what the USA Today (May 2006) calls “the most dangerous year of a teenager's life”...the year following high school graduation.

In this year, 26% of all freshmen nationally drop out of school, according to OSU and 70% of students involved in a youth ministry will walk away from the church, according to a study conducted by LifeWay Research in August 2007.

The OSU study concluded that students receive virtually no preparation for the top three issues their research has identified as causing the 26% dropout rate of college freshmen. These issues were:

#1 Changes in the social environment; including things like loneliness, the living environment and roommates...leading to social activities that often compromise their college career.

#2 Changes in the academic protocol; going from a structured high school day to a college schedule of only couple of classes a day with a lack of accountability...leading to time management and academic failure.

#3 Changes in financial responsibility; needing to manage money in the light of the long-term goal of college graduation, instead of the enjoyment available in the moment...leading to financial strain and often credit card debt and a resulting inability to continue in college.

Often, we believe the students who have been kept from parties and sinful encounters growing up will do better when leaving home because they are better able to make sound decisions.  Fuller Seminary’s transition project has found that the students who were most protected from and experienced less of “the world” growing up were far more likely to experience a much higher degree of drinking and moral compromise when they went off to college.

This pendulum swing, when combined with the research conducted by Jeff Schadt, founder of YTN and GradSuccess, has identified that the stress of the change and the new surroundings are sending many of our graduates into culture shock.  This opens them to bonding to a foreign culture in a short period of time causing many of our students to fall away from their faith in the first two days on campus.

All of the change, stress and freedom cause 70% of our students to take a break from the church for a minimum of a year, with only 35% of those returning by age 30, many of them expressing deep regrets and scars.

This is why preparation, awareness and internal goals are so important for our students prior to graduation; no matter where they are headed: career, community college or a university (even Christian ones).  By helping our graduates understand what is ahead, through current college student interviews and impassioned training that addresses each of these areas of challenge, research shows that the dropout rate decreases both academically and spiritually.