Psychology

There are many problems that college students, particularly the freshmen and transfer students, have to face as they try to adjust themselves to the new college environment. Some of these problems may become so severe that they may affect the academic performance of a student, so that heshe may even consider the option of dropping out of school. Such cases have prompted researchers to examine whether the use of college couselling can be important in improving the students academic performance and retention. This study is aimed at meeting the same goals. The research prospectus begins with the introduction section that has the problem statement and the rationale of conducting the research. It indicates that conducting such a study will be very important as it will equip the counselors, the students and the college administrators with the information that may be helpful in setting up strong couselling centers in the college that will benefit both the students and eventually the college at large. It also contains the research questions that are aimed at being answered at the end of research. This section also contains the literature review that contains what other authors and researchers have said or found out regarding the topic and the methodologies that were utilized to arrive at the conclusion. From the literature review, it is clear that studies that have been conducted have conclusions that relate couselling with college students retention and academic performance. However, the degree of relationship differs. The prospectus also contains the research methodology that includes the population, the sample, the data collection procedure, the instruments to be utilized, and the data analysis method.

Introduction
Several researches have been conducted to determine whether there is a relationship between college counseling services on one hand and the students retention and academic performance on the other. From these researches, different results have been gotten. When the parents and guardians invest their financial and time resources in taking their children to school, their main aim is to see them prosper both academically and in character so that they can have successful lives. However, there have been great concerns on the number of college students who perform poorly in their academics with some even end up dropping from college before they complete their academics.

With the college administrators being aware of the problem of the students retention, they have set up college counseling centers to assist students manage and solve their problems with the aim of improving their academic performance in addition to assisting them complete their studies amicably. However, there are different hypotheses on whether college counseling services on students assist them perform better academically in addition to enabling them to complete their studies or not. This is the reason why this study is very significant as it will reveal which of these claims is the correct one and which one is not. If the research reveals that counseling services at the college are important to the academic performance and the students retention, then this would urge the college administrators to invest more in college counseling departments.
Research Questions
For the study to be termed as complete the following questions must be answered.
Does college counseling have any effect on the students retention
Does college counseling have any effect on the students performance
Does the number of counseling sessions enhance the students retention and academic performance

Literature Review
There are various problems that are common to the majority of the college students. These are worse to the freshmen and transfer students. One of the main challenges that they have to deal with is the increase of credits (units) that they have to study compared to the number they took while in high school. The other major problem has to do with financial difficulties as the college tuition costs continue to increase. Due to the high cost of education, many students are forced to look for part time or even full time jobs, a task that they may not be able to handle at the same time.  Homesickness is another major problem that affects freshmen and particularly those that have always resided at their homes (Smith, 1994).

There is also the problem of depression that often increases the students stress levels. Coming to unfamiliar environments and increased lack of sleep may make a student become vulnerable to sicknesses. Another major problem that is experienced by college students is their unfriendly and disturbing roommates. Other problems experienced include broken relationships, decision making in choosing a major and consequences of partying (Smith 1994). With all these problems facing a college student, it is likely that his or her academic performance will deteriorate and may even contemplate of dropping out of college. This is why there has been increased desire to undertake researches to examine whether college couselling services have effects on students retention and academic performance.

Brunt (n.d) has stated that students who have psychological issues and personal problems will always struggle academically and may often get themselves dropping out of school. He continues to state that counseling in college address such issues and have positive effects on students retention.  He also says that students who have gotten counseling services will stay in school for a longer period than those who have not received. Brunt makes a conclusion that students with emotional and social problems have the highest risk of dropping out of college (Brunt, n.d). The assessment that was conducted by Turner and Berry (2000) concludes that two out ten students that sought counseling services had considered dropping out of as one of the options. They also reported that seventy percent of those students who were offered counseling services admitted that somehow the problems were negatively affecting their academic performance. The same research showed that students that had been counseled were likely to remain in college longer than those that had not been counseled. Eighty five percent of the students that had been counseled had remained in school as compared to seventy four percent of the entire student population (Brunt, n.d).

The third conclusion that Brunt has made is that counseling assists the students in addressing the difficulties and the result is that they remain in school. A research by Bishop and Brenneman (1986) studied college students who had considered leaving school permanently because of poor grades but from whom eighty six percent were able to stay for one more semester after counseling services. Brunt mentions Mason (1999) who reported that college students participating in couselling were seen to have positive changes in their lives. On the other hand, Campbell (1965) got a direct correlation between counseling participation and academic success. Brunt (n.d) states that Retention for retention sakes cannot be a couselling center prime directive. He states that students who have an agenda of being destructive in school or were not for the choice of going to college should be allowed to leave school. He adds that sometimes when a particular student leaves school, this serves as a positive step for the general retention objectives of the college. He suggests that every university or college should come up with retention goals which will take into account students who are at high risk and who needs additional services as well as students who will bring a positive impact on the community by being removed from school. He states that a hundred percent retention goal is undesirable and unachievable (Brunt, n.d).

The students negative behavior often has a great impact on the university. Rummel, Acton, Costello and Gillan (1999), stated that A University does not want to retain students who are not academically suited for their environment. Though the evidence gotten from research does support the positive role that counseling plays in retention, the data gotten ought not to be utilized in measuring the effectiveness of couselling services. Instead, retention should be seen as an affirmative outcome of the counseling services. Numerous couselling centers have often addressed this area. For example, the director of UNLV couselling and psychological services, Dr Jamie Davidson placed these questions on the intake form. Are you considering dropping out of school and If yes, to what degree are the issues that brought you to counseling contributing to your thoughts of dropping out (Brunt, n.d).

Bishop (1990) as stated in the Journal of College Counseling has stated that though couselling as means of increasing retention of students is very important, the research on the relationship has been very limited. Studies that have been conducted earlier have shown that there is a strong connection between academic success and counseling as well as between higher graduation rate and counseling. However it has been noted that researches that were done earlier could not differentiate between vocational or academic counseling from psychological couselling (Cengage Learning, 2008).

In his study, Illovsky (1997) as indicated by Cengage Learning (2008) examined the impact of counseling (for emotional psychological concerns) on student retention. The researcher compared the rate of retention for students who had received counseling with those in the general population. The results were that seventy percent of those that had counseling offered to them returned to school. On the other hand, it is only sixty eight percent of those in the population who went back to school. Though many of the cases in this study were based on psychological counseling, career and academic cases were involved in the analyses (Illovsky, 1997).

Wilson et all (1997) also conducted a research that studied the relationship between retention and counseling based on quantity of counseling that was received. The results indicated that students who were offered counseling had a higher rate of retention when compared to those who had booked an appointment for counseling but ended up not being counseled. Of those who were offered counseling sessions between one to seven times, seventy nine percent remained in college for two more years when compared with sixty five percent of those who had not received counseling at all. It was noted that an addition session after the sixth did not have any (or much) impact on academic persistence (Cengage Learning, 2008).

Lee et all (2009) in their research work entitled Effects of college counseling services on academic performance and retention as published in the Journals of College Student Development, studied the connection between counseling service and academic performance and retention of the student in a college. They studied a sample constituting ten thousand and nine college freshmen as well as transfer students. The research results indicate that students who receive counseling services while in the college have a higher likelihood of staying in school when compared to those who do not receive counseling. This according to the study would mean that there is a significant relationship between counseling experience and student retention. However, the research did not show any connection between counseling experience and academic performance when pre-college academic performance was used as control (Lee ET all 2009). This study also showed that those students who had sought both group and individual counseling achieved better academically that those that were offered other types of services.

The study was aimed at a sample of transfer students and freshmen. To find out the relationship between the variables, two levels of analysis were performed with the first analysis exploring the connection between academic performance and retention rate and counseling experience in the entire sample. The second analysis was aimed at examining the exceptional effect of counseling on academic performance and retention rate in two groups, non counseling group. The academic performance of the students before college was statistically controlled (Lee ET all 2009).

The study was conducted on a sample of college transfer students and freshmen who had been admitted between 0405 and 0506 academic years at a public university in the United States. The total number of the students who fell in these two categories was 10,009 and was drawn from different ethnic backgrounds. The variables that were utilized include the counseling experience that was divided into the non counseling and counseling groups. The second variable was the pre-college academic performance drawn from high school GPA, Math SAT score and verbal SAT score. Other samples includes the service types, service sessions number, college academic performance and students retention (Lee ET all 2009).

The researchers used the data collection methodology by obtaining data from the counseling centers and registrar of the university. However, this method may be described as biased reason being it did not allow the participation of the students. In addition, the method may easily be described as unethical because the researchers were allowed the access of the students records without them being notified (Lee ET all, 2009). It would have been better if addition questionnaires were administered to them. To get the results, the correlations between standard deviations and variables were created.
This study is limited by the fact that the conclusion gotten may only be applicable to the university where this study was conducted. This is however important since future researchers may see the need of extending the research scope to many colleges in a single research. The other limitation is that the counseling centers of other universities might be different when compared to that in this research in terms of how they offer their counseling services, a fact that may have different impact on the connection between retention and counseling. In addition, the characteristics of the sample students may be dissimilar from those of students from other colleges. Finally there is no clear manner of identifying how counseling services reduce the attrition rate of the students (Lee ET all 2009).
 
Methodology
The research will include college freshmen as well as transfer students, newly admitted from three small universities in different parts of the United States of America. The population will be about 118,705 students of three small different universities with two being public and one being public. The sample will be derived from 12, 516 transfer students and freshmen from three universities. The sample must represent students from different nationalities, backgrounds, gender, religious background, sexual orientation, race among other important differences. The three universities have been chosen because in addition to being small, their enrolment requirements are almost similar and thus the pre-college grades of the students will not differ much.

Variables
The study is aimed at examining whether there is any relationship between college counseling on one side and students academic performance and retention on the other hand. The following will be the variables.

Student Retention The student will seek to establish whether the students who received counseling stayed for a longer period in college to complete the first year than those who had not received any counseling.

Counseling experience the student will be divided in two major categories those who would have gotten the counseling in their first semester and those who would not have gotten counseling services, counseling group and non counseling group respectively.

Number of Counseling sessions attended The counseling groups will further be divided into sub groups based on the number of sessions that each has received from the time they joined college.

College academic performance Two indicators will be utilized in measuring academic performance, difference between the grade achieved at the end of the semester and the grade of enrollment as well as the GPA. The credit discrepancy and the GPA will be measured two semesters after enrollment. The cumulative score calculated when the second semester is ending is referred to as the GPA. On the other hand, credit discrepancy will be obtained by subtracting the grade achieved at the end of the semester and grade that had been gotten in the commencement of the second semester.

Student retention The study will aim to determine whether students that had undergone counseling would stay in college for a longer period than those that had not received any.

Type of the counseling service received the study will seek to establish the type of counseling is offered to the students

Data collection Procedure
The first important part of the procedure was to seek the approval from the Institute of Review Board. Two data collection methods will be utilized in this research. The first one will be data collection methodology where the researcher will get the data from the register and counseling offices at the university. The information that will be sought from the registrar office include the students age, ID, gender, race, high school GPA, admission type, verbal SAT and math score. Other information that would be important will include registration status, cumulative GPA and, credits completed etc. The other set of data will be collected from the counseling center and will include information such as the number of the freshmen and transfer students who will have received counseling services, the type of services that they will have received as well as the number of services that they will have received.

The next methodology that will be utilized is the survey method and specifically the issuing of the questionnaires to the freshmen and transfer students who will have received counseling services. This would mean that their particulars that must be gotten from the registrars office include their telephone numbers, the room numbers or their emails. The data that will be gotten from them include the nature of the problems that took them to counseling, whether the problem had made them contemplate on dropping out of school and whether the problems were affecting their academic performance. It will also be important for them to state whether they decided to stay in school after the counseling session and whether their academic performance improved after the counseling. The data that is to be collected will be both qualitative and quantitative. This is significant as it will allow reliable information (statistically) to be gotten from numerical measurement that is supported by information about the explanations gotten from the participants (Smith, 2010).

Limitations
The study may have some limitations that ought to be considered in future studies. First it may not be easy to control for variables that may have an impact on students academic performance and retention apart from pre-college academic performance. There are several psychological elements that have mentioned by Bean and Eaton (2002) and that include coping strategies, personality, and motivation as well as environmental factors such as social interactions, academic interactions and bureaucratic interactions all of these have a significant role in students retention rate. The second limitation is that it will not be possible to include the quality of the counseling services offered. Also it may not be possible to get all the students that have undergone couselling to fill in the questionnaires. Data analysis will be conducted by creating correlations between standard deviations and variable means.

Conclusion
Conducting this research will be very significant, especially, for the education sector. If the hypothesis that college counseling has a positive impact on both students academic performance and retention, then this study will be of very great importance to the students, counselors, and college administrators. The colleges will set up couselling services centers in the universities and colleges and encourage all students to seek couselling services in their first days in the university. College administrators will have overcome the problem of losing so many students who drop out of school because of many reasons such as poor academic performance among others. This will also be of great assistance to parents and guardians who invest so much in educating their children.