Collegiate Recreation Participation and Retention

Abstract

Colleges and universities have been focusing on the rising costs to attend college and their impact on current and future students. Recruitment and retention of students is critical in justifying programmatic and academic offerings. In addition, recruitment and retention have an impact on the institution's bottom line. This article attempts to prove a correlation between a collegiate recreation program and retention. Specifically, first year retention rates were examined on students who participate in club sports, use the student recreation center, and are employed by the campus recreation department. The results of this study can be useful to the collegiate recreation practitioner to answer the question of “does your program have an impact on retention?” It is the hope that this study is duplicated to further emphasize the relationship of collegiate recreation programs and their positive relationship on retention.