Many hundreds of quantitative studies have been conducted and generated vast amounts of data regarding freshman/sophomore college student retention. But only two published, and widely known, studies exist that specifically address upper division student retention. Few qualitative studies exist. This qualitative case study generates insight through students' own voices into why upper division students, more specifically seniors, leave without completing the baccalaureate degree when they are in good academic standing, and, further, why they returned to complete the degree when contacted by the Graduation Project at the University of New Mexico.

This study is unique in that it both reports the history and development of the Graduation Project at the University of New Mexico which was the pioneering project in the United States to recruit, and reenroll to graduate, upper division students who had left the University in good academic standing. This project, reported in National Crosstalk (Jones, 2004), is now the model being used at several large public universities and university systems.

While this study benefits from access to two large sample student surveys that were conducted in 1995 and 1996, and used as the basis for development of the Graduation Project, the focus of this research is on the interviews of 13 Graduation Project students who completed the baccalaureate degree. Also interviewed for this study were seven senior, high-level administrators, several of whom also hold faculty appointments, and who are involved at the policy generating and implementing level. One of the individuals was also the creator of the Graduation Project. The questions of upper division leaving were viewed through Bourdieu's Social Reproduction lens (Bourdieu, 1973) which asked what role the academic culture of UNM played in student graduation success.

This study documents the reasons upperclassmen say they left UNM. These differ in significant ways from reasons why freshmen are not retained to the third semester. In addition, Bourdieu's socio-cultural lens offers insights with tremendous implications for the national conversation about graduation rates in large public universities where tensions between undergraduate academic needs and growing research enterprises collide.