Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action by

Vincent Tinto (review)

William G. Tierney, Jenna R. Sablan

The Journal of Higher Education, Volume 85, Number 2, March/April

2014, pp. 280-282 (Review)

Published by The Ohio State University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2014.0008

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/538739

For content related to this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/related_content?type=article&id=538739
280   The Journal of Higher Education

academic freedom is multidimensional, and its meanings are profoundly affect-

ed by cultural and political conditions. It is a narrative that encourages us to
believe that substantial progress has been made in the century since the AAUP
first tried to codify it, but the author is at pains to make us see that the struggle
to define and protect it is decidedly ongoing.

Notes
Full disclosure: My parents were among several dozen teachers who were dismissed by
the New York City Board of Education during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Marjorie
Heins, in Priests of Our Democracy¸ tells about that NY school purge as a key episode in
the construction of the legal and social definition of academic freedom as we have come
to understand it—so I have a bias in claiming the book’s importance.

Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action.

Vincent Tinto. 2012. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
283 pp. Hardback ISBN: 978-0-226-80452-1 ($35.00).

William G. Tierney and Jenna R. Sablan, University of Southern California

Unarguably one of the classics of higher education literature over the last quar-
ter century is Vincent Tinto’s Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and
Cures of Student Attrition. Although not without its critics, Tinto’s theoretical
work and analyses have largely stood the test of time. Tinto’s initial argument,
modified over the years, was that going to college for traditionally aged stu-
dents was a separation ritual and a rite of passage from adolescence to adult-
hood. Students who were more engaged with the campus culture were more
likely to do better than those who were not. The argument was elegant, persua-
sive, and significant. From this work flowed a great many subsequent research
projects that investigated how students might be more engaged in college and,
of consequence, what those who worked in colleges needed to do to enhance
student development. Tinto’s scholarship had particularly significant implica-
tions for those of us concerned with issues of access and equity for low-income
first-generation youth and students of color. On the one hand, some suggested
that greater attention needed to be made to engage first-generation students
more fully on college campuses. On the other hand, some worried that a call
for engagement suggested that students of color needed to be assimilated into
mainstream campuses. The persuasive nature of Tinto’s argument made us con-
sider what might be done to help students adapt to what many viewed as alien
campus cultures.
In some respects, Tinto’s new book, Completing College: Rethinking Institu-
tional Action, picks up where Leaving College leaves off, and as we elaborate,
therein lies the problem. Anyone who knows Vincent Tinto’s many articles and
books has come to think of him as a careful wordsmith who is more Heming-
way than Dickens: short, clear writing with numerous examples which never
 Book Reviews   281

gives way to florid prose or extraneous detours. Completing College is a brief

228 pages, and the text itself is a mere 125 pages. One challenge of his current
work, however, is that its brevity all too frequently neither provides compelling
evidence nor looks at emergent trends.
As opposed to a theoretical argument about student retention, this book fo-
cuses more on what institutions must do so that fewer students leave college.
The text opens by repeating some well-worn findings from the research com-
munity: A college degree still pays; retention is not good enough; expectations
are not high enough; support structures are inadequate. Tinto then turns his at-
tention to what might be done to overcome such problems (e.g., create summer
bridge programs, improve freshmen advising, and develop learning communi-
ties). Although the attempt to create linkages between research findings about
student engagement and practical solutions for reform are admirable, the text
fails in multiple ways.
Our largest concern is one of timing. This is a book that describes an ac-
ademic climate from the last century. The use of social media, technology,
games, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and the like are barely men-
tioned. While one can rightfully claim that no clear-cut findings exist pertain-
ing to the efficacy of MOOCs or other such innovations, to ignore that they
exist in a world where the very students addressed in the text use them exten-
sively is a shortcoming. The result is that the book’s proposed remedies may
have been useful at the end of the 20th century, but they seem old-fashioned in
the second decade of the 21st.
Further, many of the examples that are provided seem useful, but the evi-
dence provided is lacking. The reader is told, for example, that summer bridge
programs help “facilitate the transition from high school to college” (p. 31).
A variety of research is also cited that states that summer bridge programs en-
hance rates of retention (p. 32). Although these sorts of programs unquestion-
ably show promise, they come in many different formats and with a variety of
different purposes depending upon the type of students served, the intent of the
program, and the funding available to the institution. The research that exists
with respect to such programs is by no means definitive in terms of conclusions
regarding retention or other aspects of college performance.
By way of example, the summer bridge program at the University of Cali-
fornia – San Diego is profiled (see pages 32–33). The author states that UCSD
data indicate that rates of retention were higher for participants than non-
participants. Offering this sort of data to substantiate a claim about the effec-
tiveness of a program brings up a variety of methodological concerns regarding
the internal and external validity of such research. Our point is not to invoke
a methodological quibble about each and every citation but to call attention
to the need for better substantiated claims about what is most effective in re-
taining students. Almost none of the descriptions or citations from Completing
College substantiate the utility of a summer bridge program over other sorts of
activities.
If the example of insufficient evidence pertained only to summer bridge
programs, then the book might be excused for an oversight or perhaps an op-
timistic projection about the utility of a summer program in overcoming the
obstacles that have been outlined. Unfortunately, the same observations can be
made about the discussions pertaining to first-year seminars, supplemental in-
282   The Journal of Higher Education

struction, learning communities, peer mentoring, and a host of seemingly plau-

sible programs.
For example, learning communities receive a great deal of attention in the
book as an example of a program that can help students persist. The justifi-
cation for learning communities is that students who are more engaged with
the campus are more likely to stay, a claim supported by foundational research
from the work of Astin, Kuh, and others, including Tinto himself. The issue
then is not with the importance of aspects such as academic support and student
engagement in retaining students but rather in the suggestion that the research
supports the use of learning communities as a retention tool. Rather, the pre-
sentation of learning communities is subject to the same criticisms as summer
bridge programs in that the cases profiled are meant to suggest effectiveness in
student retention but ultimately are not a convincing justification for these pro-
grams over other choices available to institutions based on the data presented.
In the absence of these justifications, the citing of various programs also falls
short of explicating the transferability of these programs to other contexts, par-
ticularly in a changing postsecondary environment. The validity of claims of
their effectiveness and generalizability beyond the campus examples is insuffi-
ciently examined. Although the author rightfully acknowledges the importance
of assessment, the text provides very little that offers useful guidance to the
administrator or professor at a college who needs to make difficult decisions.
Although expenses always have plagued academe, the problem in the 21st
century is that difficult decisions need to be made as revenue falls. All of the
very plausible solutions that the author has outlined are disconnected to costs.
Institutions cannot do everything. All things being equal, should a four-year
institution choose to spend its finite monies on a summer bridge program or
on first-year seminars? The book provides no guidance. And if texting students
before the summer of their freshmen year increases the likelihood of first-gen-
eration enrollment, should that be done in lieu of a summer bridge program?
The reader does not know because the text does not engage with emergent tech-
nologies and does not provide compelling evidence about the programs that are
mentioned.
The book is a quick read by one of academe’s most respected authorities.
Although the text misses the mark at times, the argument that undergirds the
book about how to improve student retention, especially for low-income first-
generation youth, is sound. The many examples that are provided offer scholars
a roadmap for future analyses that will provide promising answers. Of conse-
quence, future researchers will be building on the work of an intellectual giant.