Reflections on my conversation with Dr. Kenneth Johnson
When people talk about higher education strategy, the conversation often turns quickly to enrollment.
How many students are coming in?
What is the size of the incoming class?
Where are we recruiting from?
Those questions matter. They always will.
But there is another question that deserves equal attention, especially now:
How many students who start with us actually finish? And an important follow-up…. Where did they go with that degree/credential?
Those questions sit (particularly the first one) at the center of my recent conversation on The Bulldog Mindset with Dr. Kenneth Johnson, Gardner-Webb University’s Executive Director of Student Success. It also sits at the center of a larger challenge facing higher education.
The demographic cliff is no longer theoretical (and it hasn’t been for quite some time). The number of traditional college-age students is declining in many regions. Institutions will compete harder for fewer students. Putting aside at the moment the students with some college and no credential as well as those that would do well to return to school to upskill or reskill, in that environment, retention becomes — no, IS the new enrollment strategy.
If a university enrolls students but fails to help them persist and graduate, the institution is not just losing tuition revenue. It is losing the opportunity to deliver on the promise of higher education. In many cases, depending on just how low those retention and graduation rates get, as Gary Stocker notes, the institution is just a tuition processing facility.
That promise matters.
Nationally, the numbers should make all of us pause. First-year retention rates at many institutions hover somewhere in the 60–70 percent range. Four-year graduation rates often land in the 40–50 percent range, and six-year graduation rates commonly sit in the 60 percent range.
Think about what those numbers mean in human terms.
Students enroll with hope, effort, and often financial sacrifice. Yet a significant percentage never reach the finish line.
If higher education wants to demonstrate its value, the degree must not only be meaningful. It must also be attainable. This does not mean we throw rigor out the window…… This means we do the hard work to both ensure academic quality and cultivate student success.
That is why the work of student success leaders like Dr. Johnson is increasingly strategic.
The Architecture Beneath Student Success
One of the most important insights from our conversation is that student success does not happen accidentally. It requires structure. It requires coordination. It requires intentionality.
And it requires institutions to understand how students actually experience college.
Dr. Johnson described this work through a framework he developed during his doctoral research: the DIIP model. The acronym captures four stages students often move through as they navigate higher education:
- Disconnection
- Intentional Connection
- Internal Belonging
- Purposeful Engagement
The model begins with a simple truth that institutions sometimes forget. When students arrive on campus, many feel disconnected. It doesn’t mean all feel disconnected, but in a world where one should be careful with assumptions, it would be a safe bet to assume that most students come disconnected at some level. They are entering an unfamiliar environment with new expectations, new people, and often new pressures.
The institutional response to that moment matters.
If a university leaves students to navigate that transition alone, disconnection can persist. If the institution creates intentional connections through advising, coaching, first-year seminars, and meaningful relationships with faculty and staff, something begins to shift.
Students start to see themselves as part of the community. That is where internal belonging begins to form.
And when belonging takes root, engagement follows. Students begin to participate more deeply in the life of the institution. They invest in their academic work, their campus communities, and their own future.
This final stage, purposeful engagement, is where persistence becomes more likely.
The path from entry to completion becomes clearer.
Belonging Is Not a Buzzword
The concept of belonging often appears in higher education conversations, but Dr. Johnson’s research reminds us that it carries real weight.
His doctoral work explored how African American men at predominantly white institutions develop a sense of belonging and how that belonging influences academic persistence and success.
The findings highlight something that extends well beyond one demographic group. Students who develop a strong sense of belonging demonstrate greater resilience, stronger academic engagement, and greater persistence toward graduation.
Belonging is rooted in connection. Comfort may follow, but connection comes first.
It is about students feeling seen, supported, and capable of navigating the challenges that inevitably arise during their academic journey.
As Dr. Johnson noted during our conversation, belonging is not limited to culture or identity. It is universal.
Every student can feel disconnected. Every student benefits from intentional connection.
Meeting Students Where They Are
Another important theme in our conversation was the need for institutions to meet students where they are without lowering academic standards. That distinction matters, yet often, people associate this phrase and this concept with reducing expectations or not holding students accountable. That is NOT the case…….
That also deserves a clarification. Helping more students reach graduation cannot become a numbers exercise. Completion matters because of what the degree represents. Students come to college to do meaningful academic work. They invest time, effort, and often significant financial resources. Our responsibility is to help them complete the work they came to do. A degree should signal more than accumulated credits. It should reflect knowledge gained, critical thinking developed, and the habits of lifelong learning that prepare graduates to contribute to their communities, their professions, and the broader society around them.
Supporting students does not mean removing rigor. It means removing unnecessary friction.
Students should still be challenged academically. They should still be expected to do serious intellectual work. And there needs to be accountability. But institutions can make the path clearer by ensuring students understand the resources available to them and by coordinating the systems designed to help them succeed.
Dr. Johnson described this work as creating pathways.
Those pathways include advising systems, coaching models, early-alert technologies, career readiness programming, and coordinated communication across campus units. At Weber State University, for example, he helped integrate data and engagement tools to strengthen retention initiatives and student support strategies.
This kind of coordination is often invisible to students, but it shapes their experience in powerful ways.
When systems work well, students feel supported rather than lost. The more barriers (unintentional or not), the easier it is to feel lost….
The Financial Reality of Persistence
There is another reason retention deserves attention. College is expensive.
Even at institutions committed to access and affordability, students often leave with financial obligations. If a student borrows money to attend college but never completes a degree, the financial return becomes much harder to achieve.
That reality should concern every institution.
Higher education cannot simply focus on getting students in the door. It must also focus on helping them walk across the stage at graduation.
Completion changes the equation. A completed degree improves career prospects, earning potential, and long-term financial stability.
If we want to strengthen the public’s confidence in higher education, persistence and completion must be central to the conversation.
Why This Hire Matters
When Gardner-Webb named Dr. Kenneth Johnson as Executive Director of Student Success last Fall, the decision reflected an institutional commitment to strengthening the systems that help students persist and graduate.
Dr. Johnson brings more than a decade of experience designing student-centered success initiatives, integrating advising and career readiness systems, and using data to improve retention strategies.
But equally important is the philosophy behind his work.
Student success depends on coordinated work across the entire campus.
Faculty, advisors, coaches, RA/CA’s, student life administrators, and peers all contribute to the environment students experience every day. When those efforts align, the impact multiplies.
A Final Reflection
Toward the end of our conversation, Dr. Johnson shared what he hopes students will say about their time at Gardner-Webb after they graduate.
He hopes they say they belonged here. That they felt supported. That people cared about their success.
Those words capture something essential about higher education at its best.
Universities exist to challenge students intellectually, yes. But they also exist to help students discover direction, develop resilience, and build lives of purpose.
Retention statistics and graduation rates may appear in institutional reports and accreditation documents. Behind every percentage point, however, are individual stories.
Students who arrived uncertain.
Students who found their footing.
Students who finished what they started.
Helping those stories reach completion sits at the heart of higher education’s work….