Predictors of Student Retention in Private English as Foreign Language (EFL) Schools in Iran
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Date
2010
Authors
Soleimani, Jeila
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Abstract
It is obvious that retention of loyal students as customers of educational institutions
is desirable and profitable in business of these institutions. While not everyone will
be comfortable using concepts from business to an issue in education, applying the
loyal customer retention model to student retention in this paper, gives a unique
perspective to the issue of student retention and provides an economic justification
for implementing retention programs. This paper develops a model that can be used
to determine the key influencers of student retention by integrating both relationship
marketing and educational concepts. The student retention and relationships
marketing literatures are reviewed in parallels. The core of the relationship marketing
approach is that resources are encouraged to strengthen ties with current customers
on the proven principle that maintaining existing customers is less costly than isĀ·
acquiring the new ones. In order to contextualize the study, English as Foreign
Language (EFL) schools of Iran has been selected as the focus of the model. A
comprehensive conceptual framework is developed which includes variables such as
students' integration with peers, perceived quality of teacher-student interaction, and
students' trust in staff, students' institutional commitment, and student retention. All
of these are considered to be important antecedents of loyalty, especially in terms of
relationship. The findings of the study show that student's integration with peers,
trust in staff, and students' institutional commitment have direct positive effect on
student retention. On the other hand students' integration with peers, and students'
trust in staff show positive direct impact on student's institutional commitment as
well. In addition, these variables were mediated by institutional commitment
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Keywords
Student Retention