Abstract
Many state legislatures have adopted performance based funding models for higher education institutions, or are in transition towards it. Policymakers believe that by holding institutions accountable for student outcomes, higher education officials will increase retention and graduation rates. The Florida legislature implemented the Performance Based Funding Model for the State University System (SUS) with funding under the 2013 General Appropriations Act. The state legislature and the Florida Board of Governors (FBOG) are pressuring public university officials to improve low performance in areas, such as student retention and graduation rates, that were common across SUS institutions in Florida. The purpose of this study is to investigate what research-based strategies officials at the three top performing SUS universities have implemented to improve student retention and graduation rates from AY 2012-AY 2017. The first phase of the research was a descriptive statistical analysis of the growth among all 12 SUS institutions in Florida in student retention and graduation rates for the purpose of identifying the three top performing institutions (FAU, FIU, & USF). The second phase was a content analysis of the accountability reports and institutional work plans from the top three performing institutions to determine what strategies are attributed to the improved performance of these two indicators. The findings will inform officials at other universities about what strategies have produced demonstrable improvement in student retention and graduate rates in top performing Florida SUS institutions. With a greater understanding of what strategies are successful in increasing retention and graduation rates, officials can implement these strategies to improve annual metric scores, thus earning more bonus funding through the PBF model. Keywords: performance based funding, student retention, graduation rates, Florida universities
