A record number of University of Iowa students are staying enrolled and graduating on time, thanks to strategic investments and campuswide partnerships to improve teaching, student support, and hands-on learning opportunities. In fall 2024, 90.4% of first-year students returned for their second year — a new high that reflects a 5-percentage-point increase in retention over the past five years.
Even small retention gains have a significant effect on overall enrollment over time. With an average of about 5,000 new first-year students annually, just a 1% increase in retention means 50 more students continuing their education at Iowa.
“We are proud of the collaborative, data-driven efforts we’ve put into place over the past few years to support student success,” says Tanya Uden-Holman, associate provost for undergraduate education and dean of University College. “By embedding student success as a priority across all areas of the strategic plan, we have been able to better coordinate and align resources across campus, ensuring more students have access to the support they need to achieve their goals.”
Alongside record retention rates, the university is also seeing historically high graduation rates. Graduation rates measure the percentage of students who started and finished their education at Iowa and do not include students who began at Iowa but completed their degrees at another institution. The six-year graduation rate for students who started in fall 2018 is 74.6%, a new high. The four-year graduation rate for the fall 2020 cohort climbed to 63.6%, surpassing the previous record. Over the past five years, Iowa’s four-year graduation rate has increased by 8 percentage points.
These improvements have come as the university continues to prioritize and dedicate significant resources to student success. Over the past four years, the university has invested in more than a dozen teaching and learning initiatives, including course stipends to create hands-on learning opportunities for students, mentorship programs for graduate student teaching assistants, and professional development opportunities for faculty, such as attending national teaching conferences.
Additional investments are providing students with personalized career development, improving communication through a new mobile app, and assessing how the university can be most effective with its need-based financial aid.
Ongoing efforts by units within the Division of Student Life and the Office of the Provost, including Iowa GROW and Supplemental Instruction, have also contributed to improvement in student retention and graduation rates.
Iowa GROW (Guided Reflection on Work) is a nationally recognized model that uses structured conversations between student employees and their supervisors to help students connect the skills and knowledge they are gaining in the classroom to the work they are doing, and vice versa. GROWparticipants are retained at a rate of 7 to 15 percentage points higher than nonparticipants.
Supplemental Instruction (SI) — an academic program that uses peer learning to help students succeed in historically challenging courses — experienced record participation during the fall 2024 semester, with students visiting 12,479 times. The program, which has been offered at Iowa since 2011, is supporting students in 32 courses this semester.
“One of the biggest successes of the SI program has been the cultural shift in how students view academic support,” says Stephanie Huntington, associate director in Academic Support and Retention. “More students are proactively engaging with SI study sessions, and as a result are seeing significant improvements in their final grades.”
Data from the 2023-24 academic year shows that students who attended at least 25 SI study sessions for a course saw a nearly 10-percentage-point increase in their final grades compared with those who did not participate.
For students like Chris Ceplecha, a fourth-year microbiology major from Ankeny, Iowa, the effect of SI extended beyond the classroom.
After participating in SI for his organic chemistry courses, Ceplecha realized the benefits the additional support could bring to students in his general microbiology course. He reached out to the SI program to advocate for its inclusion, and, after further exploration, the university added it to the list of SI-supported courses.
Today, Ceplecha leads SI sessions for the class he once requested.
“Honestly, I was nervous to attend SI — I had to put myself in a vulnerable position, internalizing that I needed help in classes,” says Ceplecha. “But the welcoming and collaborative environment helped me become a better learner and take charge of my education. Now, as an SI leader, I can empower other students to do the same.”
