Quality of Student–Faculty Interactions, Persistence, and the Mediating Role of Student Satisfaction

Rising student attrition, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in increased calls for higher education officials to better understand factors associated with increasing persistence rates, especially from the first- to second year of college. Though many studies have documented the influence of the frequency of student–faculty interactions on student persistence, less research has focused on the quality of those interactions, including potential mediating influences. To address these issues, this study used longitudinal data from 8,475 students among 44 four-year institutions to explore whether the quality of student–faculty interactions influences student persistence and whether student satisfaction mediates this relationship. Guided by theoretical models of persistence, we found that even in the presence of a range of potential confounders, students’ perceived quality of student–faculty interactions increased the odds of persistence to the second year of college. Furthermore, results from a Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) decomposition analysis suggest this relationship occurred indirectly through students’ satisfaction with the overall college experience.