New research from Wake Forest University shows that boosting a student’s sense of belonging in college can significantly increase their likelihood of earning a degree.
The findings draw on nationally representative survey data from more than 21,000 undergraduates enrolled in two- and four-year colleges across the country.
The survey measured belonging by asking students to rate their agreement with the statement “I feel that I am a part of [school]” on a five-point scale, where 1 means strongly disagree and 5 means strongly agree.
Students who rated their sense of belonging in their second year one step higher on the five-point scale than they did in their first year—such as moving from neutral to agree—were 3.4 percentage points more likely to graduate within four years.
That pattern held over time: Each one-step increase in a student’s reported sense of belonging was linked to a 2.7-percentage-point higher likelihood of earning a degree within six years.
“What stood out to me was just how consistent the findings were,” said Shannon Brady, a Wake Forest University psychology professor and the study’s author. “We’re seeing this relationship hold across different kinds of students and institutions.”
Students in the study began college during the 2011–12 academic year, and their graduation outcomes were measured four and six years later. That’s the most recent nationally representative data available, Brady explained.
She said the findings send a clear message that fostering a sense of belonging is vital on campus, and that its impact on persistence and graduation rivals the effect of thousands of dollars in additional financial aid.
“One of the things that’s nice about belonging is that it doesn’t have to cost a lot,” Brady said, adding that intentional support—such as structuring first-year seminars or addressing hurdles in registering for classes—can make a meaningful difference in creating a sense of belonging with relatively few resources.
“It takes attention, and it takes people doing the work to make it happen,” she said.
The findings: The study identified two statistically significant differences in how belonging related to graduation outcomes for specific student groups.
The link between belonging and four-year graduation rates was stronger for students whose parents had attended college than for first-generation students. The report suggests this gap may be due to first-generation students being more likely to “face structural and psychological challenges that may, at times, weaken the benefits of belonging.”
“These challenges can take many forms,” the report said, including limited guidance in navigating college systems, financial pressures that compete with academic engagement and systemic cultural mismatches between institutional and home environments.
Belonging also had a weaker connection to six-year graduation rates for Asian students compared to non-Asian students. The report attributes this, in part, to the fact that Asian students are more likely to have “alternative supports that promote academic persistence.”
Those supports can include family expectations that emphasize educational achievement, peer networks with strong academic norms and cultural orientations that prioritize sustained effort over socio-emotional connection to an institution.
The authors caution that the broad “Asian” category includes considerable diversity across countries and regions of origin, generation status, and socioeconomic background; such diversity shapes both students’ access to support and their experiences of belonging and credential attainment.
The implications: Brady pointed to the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs as a “fantastic” model for fostering student belonging.
The ASAP program works to remove everyday barriers, such as transportation costs, complicated scheduling and limited advising, and has been shown to improve graduation rates while also helping students feel connected to their campus.
“If you can’t get the classes you need, it’s hard to feel connected to school,” Brady said. “And if transportation is complicated—if you’re dependent on buses or rides from friends because you can’t afford a bus pass—it’s hard to build the relationships you want.”
Beyond individual programs, Brady recommended institutions adopt a standardized measure of student belonging across campuses.
“Almost no cross-institution conversation happens on this because the measures that schools are using are different,” she said. “You can’t aggregate knowledge as well as we might if we had a more standardized measure.”
Ultimately, Brady said, colleges have a responsibility to create environments where students feel they belong.
“I don’t want to suggest that belonging is always inherently a good thing, but we want to create institutions where it is reasonable and positive to build a connection to them,” she said.
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