Lesbian,Gay,Bisexual,and Transgender College Students: Revisiting Retention

Abstract

In 2004, Sanlo published a proposed method to examine the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students and their persistence to graduation. Transgender students were not included except with regard to their identifying as a sexual minority. To date, neither further articles nor research of a similar nature have been published. Even with heightened visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students on college campuses, the literature still does not capture the specific and unique experiences of health, scholarship, and persistence of this population. These scholar–practitioner authors share their various experiences as directors of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) centers and why retention studies of the LGBTQ population are necessary as well as why transgender or gender-nonconforming students must also be included in such studies.

Keywords

LGBTQ college student retention student affairs

Exploring Invisible Scholarship: Examining LGBT College Student Retention

While a large number of colleges and universities acknowledge the presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students on their campuses, few institutions gather and maintain data on the number or needs of LGBT students. As a result, many LGBT students in higher education tend to be invisible, with their presence and experiences known only anecdotally. Meanwhile, there is evidence that LGBT students are increasing in numbers (Florida Department of Health, 2017; GLAAD, 2017). To explore this phenomenon, the authors bring together decades of experience working with LGBT student populations to reflect on the last 15 years since Sanlo’s landmark 2004 article on LGB student retention.

All three scholar–practitioners are or have been directors of LGBT Centers: Kaitlin Legg is a nonbinary femme and queer identified person who directed an LGBT Resource Center at a public university in the Southeast from 2013 to 2019; Andy Cofino, a man of transgender experience, served as the program coordinator of an LGBT Center at a private, nonprofit university and is the current director of an LGBT Campus Resource Center at a public university on the West Coast; Ronni Sanlo, now retired, is a lesbian woman and was the director of two LGBT Resource Centers and founding director and professor of the MEd in Student Affairs program at the Graduate School of Education for a public university on the West Coast.

The coauthors write from the perspectives of LGBT student affairs professionals working within a diverse range of public and private institutions, located within different regions of the United States. These contexts range from mid-size regional institutions to large research-oriented institutions, with experiences within regions ranging from the Southeast to the Midwest to the West Coast. Despite the different joys and challenges experienced within these contexts, there is a common thread of invisibility regarding scholarship about LGBT student retention. To address this concern, the authors believe deeply in the voices of scholar–practitioners as a critical lens for the development and implementation of accessible theory and practice, as they relate to the lived experiences of college students and the professionals who work alongside them daily.

In 2004, The Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice (October 2004, vol. 6, no. 1, 97–110) published Sanlo’s proposed method to examine the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual college students. The study would provide an understanding of students’ language, behaviors, and stressors, and how those areas affected students’ academic achievement and success in college. (Transgender students were not included in the proposal except with regard to their identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.) Sanlo noticed that retention studies were being published to describe the experiences of students within various populations: students of color, students with disabilities, nontraditional age students, but no articles were emerging regarding retention of sexual minority students. Sanlo devised a nation-wide study to examine such retention. She wanted to know what affected sexual minority students’ health and scholarship and persistence to graduation. To not bias such a project by examining students at only one institution, Sanlo described a potential 5-year study that explored such issues at institutions around the country: in the south, the northeast, the mid-west, and the west, and at historically Black colleges and universities, religiously affiliated institutions, and small and large campuses. Such an undertaking would have been very expensive. The search for funding proved fruitless. To date, neither further articles nor research of a similar nature have been published, yet the number of LGBT college students has likely increased. Even with heightened visibility, the literature still does not capture the specific and unique experiences of this population.

LGBT college students still suffer the consequences of intolerance and harassment which has actually increased in this current political climate. We know from the past literature (Hunter & Schaecher, 1990; Lucozzi, 1998; Rankin, 2003; Sherrill & Hardesty, 1994) that lesbian and gay students left school for a semester or longer or dropped out altogether due to harassment, exclusion, and isolation. Is this still true, and how are bisexual and transgender students affected?

Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is not unusual throughout the United States. To date, 29 states still do not prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (Human Rights Campaign, 2019). Of the nation’s 7,151 degree-granting colleges and universities (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018), 1,055 have sexual orientation and gender identity/expression in their nondiscrimination policies (Campus Pride, 2019), and only about 350 institutions have professionally staffed centers that provide services to, for, and about sexual and genderqueer students, faculty, and staff (Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals, 2019).

The 2004 Sanlo article examined Chickering and Reisser’s (1993) seven vectors: competence, managing emotions, moving through autonomy toward interdependence, developing mature interpersonal relationships, establishing identity, developing purpose, and developing integrity. Students generally experience developmental crises related to these tasks at some point during their college years. They tend to become preoccupied with an issue, resolve it, and move to another issue. For LGBT students, however, dilemmas related to sexual orientation and gender identity may take precedence to the exclusion of all other developmental tasks.

Older literature indicates that lesbian and gay college students (bisexual and transgender students were not included in early work) face unique challenges such as maintaining self-esteem and coping with being different; establishing romantic relationships; deciding whether to come out to family and friends; and facing harassment, violence, and discrimination (Baker, 1991; D’Augelli, 1991, 1993; D’Augelli & Dark, 1995; Dworkin, 2000; Healthy People 2010, 2003; Rankin, 2003; Savin-Williams, 1994). Unfortunately, beyond the 2004 Sanlo article, there are few more current references regarding LGBT student retention. Are the challenges still difficult for lesbians and gay men as well as for bisexual and transgender students, especially when they decide to come out on campus?

While LGBT students are likely to be on most college and university campuses in the United States, only scant anecdotal information documents their existence, their experiences, their health issues, and their persistence to graduation. As documented in Sanlo’s (2004) article, retention is one of the most frequently considered and researched questions regarding college students. And retention studies of diverse populations continue to proliferate in the literature to learn of the issues that either encourage students to persist to graduation and have a successful academic career or to leave college before they have completed their course of study. However, there still appears to be no similar studies that focus on LGBT college students despite the growing body of literature acknowledging that this population is at greatest risk for suicide and other health issues. Although Caitlin Ryan’s words (keynote speech, June 23, 2001, National Lesbian Health Conference, San Francisco) were spoken nearly 20 years ago, they still ring true: “This generation of LGBT youth is evolving differently from past generations and their issues are new and unresearched.” Despite the younger and more visible generation of LGBT people, negative attitudes toward sexual minorities have changed only slightly over the past 20 years.

There is still little information about the persistence to graduation of LGBT college students. Indeed, their invisibility remains both on campus and in the literature. There are many unexamined questions regarding LGBT college students. There is still no work found in the literature that explores resilience, positive survival skills, and academic success of LGBT college students.

This section of the article examined the history of LGBT college student retention. The next section explores why we have not moved forward. The final section presents one university’s courageous move into this very topic.

The History of LGBT College Student Data Collection and Implications for Retention

Since the 2004 publication of Sanlo’s article, the question of gathering demographic data on LGBT college applicants to track retention has been debated among administrators, resulting both in delays in implementation and a lack of consistent, standardized language for gathering such critical information. Furthermore, any current or future research faces the unique challenge of capturing student identities amidst the constantly evolving landscape of LGBT terminology. Thus, despite being one of the most vulnerable populations on college campuses (Cobian & Stolzenberg, 2018; McLennan & Jacobo, 2018; Rutgers Tyler Clementi Center, 2018), little progress has been made to study LGBT college student retention, resulting in significant gaps of knowledge for colleges and universities to provide adequate support.

During the 8 years between the publication of Sanlo’s (2004) article and the first college or university to ask applicants about their sexual orientation and gender identity, multiple organizations lobbied to include questions about LGBT identity in admissions applications. For example, in 2014, a coalition of 25 civil rights organizations, led by LGBT nonprofit Campus Pride (2015), sent a letter to the CEO and Chairpersons of the Common Application, a standardized application form for undergraduate admissions used at more than 600 colleges (McPhate, 2016). The organizations requested that Common Application add optional questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity to their standardized form. Requests prior to 2011 were met with repeated denials, suggesting they may review the decision again “later this decade” (Campus Pride, 2016). The Common Application decision in 2011 stated that:

many admission officers and secondary school counselors expressed concern regarding how this question might be perceived by students, even though it would be optional. One common worry was that any potential benefits to adding the question would be outweighed by the anxiety and uncertainty students may experience when deciding if and how they should answer it. (Jaschik, 2015)

Given their concerns of how such questions would be perceived by students, it would take the Common Application 5 more years to add expansive demographic questions to capture applicants’ gender identity and sex assigned at birth on the form.

Despite the growing number of self-identified LGBT young adults, there is still no comprehensive retention data on LGBT students. In the 2012 to 2013 academic year, the first institution began offering admission applicants the option to disclose if they consider themselves a “member of the LGBT community” at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, IL (Hoover, 2011). Other institutions followed including Dartmouth College, Duke University, Elon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Ohio State University, and Purdue University (Campus Pride, 2015). After adding these additional admissions questions, 5% of applicants at Elmhurst College (Smith, 2012) and 2% at the University of Iowa (Stainburn, 2013) identified as LGBT. Although institutions allow optional questions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, there remains no consistent standard language for doing so. Furthermore, no significant research studies have been conducted to demonstrate the subsequent retention of these students. As an aside, Eyermann and Sanlo (2002) found that if questions of sexual orientation were asked based on behaviors (e.g., are you sexually active with men, women, or both?) as opposed to identities (e.g., do you identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual), the responses are more plentiful and accurate.

While the Common Application eventually changed course and began including optional questions about gender identity in 2016, the majority of college and university campuses do not include such questions on their general admissions application. Furthermore, where the information has been collected, no analysis of the data sets has been published or it may be still too early in the student life cycle to draw conclusions in order to illustrate the state of LGBT student retention rates.

LGBT college student retention data are also challenged by the fact that questions of sexual and gender identity often reflect language that is quickly deemed irrelevant for an evolving community of students. Given the constantly evolving language of LGBT youth, intaking consistent data can be difficult, if not impossible, to capture, and is impacted by both social and political environments. For example, beginning in the fall of 2015, all undergraduate applicants to the University of California (UC) were given the option to self-disclose if they identify as “male, female, trans male, trans female, gender queer/gender non-conforming and different identity.” This came as a result of the recommendations of the UC President’s Advisory Council on LGBT Students, Faculty & Staff, a 15-member system-wide council to advise UC President Janet Napolitano on LGBT issues formed in 2014 (University of California Office of the President, 2014). Four years later, the California Gender Recognition Act (SB179) was enacted into state law, creating a legal third gender option for California identification documents (Gender Recognition Act, 2017). This poses a new and unique research challenge for UC Admissions staff, which now must determine how to include this new gender category in future admissions applications. Future reports on admissions applications in the UC system will need to consider including this new legal gender category, despite it being inconsistent with existing data set.

Given that collection around LGBT student identities is a relatively new data set for campuses that do collect it, in the next few years, there will be rich opportunities to explore how this demographic information impacts LGBT student retention. An early example of this kind of important analysis, published in the journal of Science Advances, could be an indication of how LGBT students, particularly within the science, technology, engineering, and math sciences (STEM) experience retention. In 2018, drawing from the national data set from the 2015 Higher Education Research Institute, researchers found that students who identified as a “sexual minority” were 7% less likely to be retained in a STEM program versus switching into a non-STEM program (Hughes, 2018). While this study lumps together all students who identify as a “sexual minority” and does not specifically account for transgender students (aside from those who also identify as sexual minorities), it does demonstrate critical findings about how LGB students experience the STEM fields across 78 institutions. Some factors that indicated higher LGB student retention include undergraduate research participation, student identification with the STEM fields, and recruitment and mentorship from faculty. This research is significant in that it demonstrates how LGB student retention is specifically impacted by sexual minority identity, resulting in a 7% less retention rate for sexual minority students within STEM. This type of analysis demonstrates the possibilities we have to learn from researchers and practitioners who can begin accessing data sets and sharing findings. As such, we are still at an early but critical moment in the assessment of LGBT student retention.

While information about LGBT college student retention is critical for understanding the experiences of students and building adequate academic and cocurricular support, barriers to collect and report such data persist. These barriers include delays in data collection, inconsistences in standardized language, and the challenge of ever-changing language and terminology, making it difficult to report with a consistent data set. Such challenges create difficulties in tracking the experiences of LGBT college students in longitudinal and cross-cultural ways. Thus, we still lack basic data and comprehensive analysis to understand whether or not LGBT students are graduating at the same rate as their cisgender and heterosexual peers or have successful academic terms of study. Further research methods and tools must be developed to account for LGBT college students so that trends are captured and students receive the needed support for a successful college experience and such data should be thoughtful to include an analysis of students at the intersections of their identities, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and additional and important social identity data such as race, which may also impact retention.

Future Possibilities for Understanding LGBT College Student Retention

The policy, practice, and inclusion imperatives for measuring population size, retention, persistence, and academic success of LGBT students are already compelling, but additional factors are creating more urgency in the 2020s and beyond. The current assessment culture within higher education creates an opportunity for higher education professionals, retention specialists, researchers, and LGBT student services staff to show how their work is creating successful outcomes for student retention even while lacking the institutional framework to do so (Baas, Rhoads, & Thomas, 2016; Ewell, 2002; Fuller, 2013).

One example can be found in the Florida State University System (SUS) where the Board of Governors approved a performance-based funding model in 2014. The model features measures that evaluate the SUS schools and determine the amount of additional funding the institutions may receive. Of the 10 Florida SUS metrics, 2 explicitly deal with retention, persistence, and student success: academic progress rate (second-year retention with grade point average above 2.0) and 4-year graduation rate for full-time students (Board of Governors, 2018). While performance-based models are seen as controversial by some faculty and staff, they do provide higher education professionals with an opportunity to leverage departmental mission, goals, and vision in service of assessing impact on retention. Identity-specific student support services such as diversity and inclusion offices, multicultural centers, and LGBT resource centers can play an important role in research on LGBT student retention due to their expertise and positionality on the college campus. Strategies for LGBT student retention are an important area of research for larger retention efforts and may teach important lessons about the motivations, challenges, resiliency, and creativity of a growing campus population.

Meanwhile, students with identities outside of the gay-straight binary, students with nonnormative gender presentations, and LGBT students of color are the most at risk for discrimination, harassment, negative campus experiences, and a lack of resources or supports (Poynter & Washington, 2005; Rankin, Weber, Blumenfeld, & Frazer, 2010). When LGBT students, particularly those living at the intersections of multiple marginalized identities, hold negative perceptions and experiences of the campus climate, they are more likely to distance themselves from campus life, have unsatisfactory classroom experiences, or even leave an institution (Hong, Woodford, Long, & Renn, 2015).

Knowing what we do about the barren landscape for LGBT retention scholarship, where do we go from here? Instead of waiting for colleges and universities to respond to the evolving student body with more accurate mechanisms for collecting demographics, scholars and practitioners across the United States are creating cross-discipline institutional partnerships for insights. These creative solutions take many forms, including partnerships between institutional research professionals, student affairs and success staff, community stakeholders, and national organizations. Researchers and scholar–practitioners may pull information from incoming and graduating student surveys, national surveys like the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE), internal reviews and Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) standards assessments, annual reports and program assessments, and informal interviews and interactions with students through LGBT Resource Centers, Dean of Students offices, and other areas that work closely with some LGBT students. Unfortunately, many of these efforts rely on students who are already somewhat engaged with the campus, leaving out a vast number of students whose relationships with the institution may be more precarious.

Case Study: Leveraging Relationships and Funding to Gather Retention Data

To illustrate the current realities for LGBT retention scholarship, the authors will share a case study at one public university grappling with this challenge. University of North Florida (UNF) faces the same frustrating problem of demographics collection that most schools across the country are still dealing with. Students do not have the opportunity to self-identify their sexual orientation or gender identity at point of application, and any inclusive data collection is spotty at best. Some departments collect information that could glean insights on the LGBT student population, while others do not. Implementation of inclusive questions is not uniform due to the same divisional silos and lack of awareness that many institutions face, despite best efforts and intentions.

Challenges aside, the UNF LGBT Resource Center is leveraging this cultural and political moment in higher education to create opportunities for measuring retention and impact outside of the current data structures and efforts within the larger institution. In a unique funding partnership with the LGBTQ Fund for Northeast Florida, the UNF LGBT Resource Center secured a grant to fund assessment of its campus impact (The Community Foundation, 2019). As state funding decreases, public institutions like UNF are turning toward other forms of support while critically examining the efficacy of campus services (Walton, Gasman, Huehls, Wells, & Drezner, 2008). At the same time, the increasing diversity of populations accessing and graduating from higher education are influencing the agenda and motivations for foundation and individual giving (Garvey & Drezner, 2013). By recognizing and capitalizing on these shifts in stakeholder support and financial giving, the UNF LGBT Resource Center is identifying creative ways to address the gaps in retention research outside of traditional university structures.

Why anchor retention research within an LGBT Resource Center? Specifically, at UNF, the LGBT Resource Center was founded in response to student and employee complaints and a campus climate survey that illustrated the very real impact of campus climate on student experience and retention (UNF Committee on Equity and Civility, 2006). With its relationships across campus and status as a campus subject matter expert, the LGBT Resource Center is poised to have the most positive influence on retention study design efforts. For the purpose of this project, the Center’s research includes a comprehensive program review and assessment to quantify and better communicate impact on campus beyond event evaluations, program inventories, and policy updates: an internal and external CAS review, interviews and surveys on factors such as student recruitment, retention, and success, staff and faculty experiences, alumni perspectives, relationships with community partners, and campus climate.

Impact areas being studied in the ongoing assessment include:

Current student experiences and perceptions

Alumni experiences and perceptions

Perceptions of Student Affairs/Student Success, Enrollment Services and Admissions, Alumni Affairs and Development, Faculty, and other campus stakeholders connected to retention efforts

Synthesizing focus groups and interviews with BSSE and NSSE data, various campus-wide studies and surveys, campus climate surveys, LGBT Resource Center annual reports, and the Campus Pride Index to get a better understanding of the current campus environment

The LGBT Resource Center will use the project as an opportunity and call to action for campus partners leading assessment and retention initiatives to enlist all stakeholders in the urgent need for documenting, researching, and making visible the experiences of LGBT students. While the former LGBT retention narrative at UNF and other institutions has focused on responding to campus climate and discrimination, there is already a shift happening toward resource center-based models of student retention and success to frame future work. An LGBT Resource Center based model for LGBT student retention research may have short comings in terms of who and how student experiences are represented, it provides a replicable model for telling the retention story as LGBT data collection races to catch up with the current campus population.

Conclusion

Involvement with LGBT Resource Centers may impact students’ campus-wide experiences (Oliveira, 2017). Policies, perceptions, and awareness about support on campus influence how LGBT students experience the campus environment (Hong et al., 2015). Different stakeholders experience and perceive the campus climate in different ways, with LGBT students having the greatest perceptions of anti-LGBT bias and a more negative view of the campus climate as a whole (Brown, Clarke, Gortmaker, & Robinson-Keilig, 2004). Professionals endeavoring to measure LGBT student success must be able to envision and understand these different vantage points to respond to campus needs and create a culture of inclusive success. And while higher education professionals may draw some generalizations about the LGBT community, there are also nuanced experiences at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity that require social justice and inclusion competencies to translate and address. Therefore, new research on LGBT student retention is imperative.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Kaitlin Legg

Author Biographies

Kaitlin Legg, MEd, is a student affairs scholar-practitioner, administrator, and educator with a focus on LGBTQ inclusion, community and culture building, restorative practices, and college student experiences with trauma. They currently serve as associate director for the CARE Network within the Center for Student Conflict Management at University of Rochester. Previously, they served as director of the LGBT Resource Center at the University of North Florida. Kaitlin has spent the majority of their career in higher education and community advocacy, consulting and facilitating gender and sexuality-oriented work, leading with joy and a heart towards liberation for all.

Andy Cofino, MA, (he/they pronouns) is the director of the UCLA LGBT Campus Resource Center. His work includes consulting students, staff, and faculty on policies related to sexual and romantic orientation, and gender identity. He leads advocacy efforts to improve campus systems, policies, and climate for LGBTQIA+ students in addition to overseeing the Center's long-term strategic planning, programming, support, and services. Andy holds a B.A. in English and Women’s and Gender Studies with a minor in Italian from Pace University and a M.A. degree in LGBTQ Studies, Social Justice, and Creative Writing from New York University.

Ronni Sanlo, EdD, LGBT historian, is the director emeritus of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center (LGBT) Center and a frequent keynote speaker and consultant on LGBT issues in Higher Education. Now retired, Dr. Sanlo was also the director/professor of the UCLA Masters of Education in Student Affairs, a Faculty in Residence, and a senior associate dean of students.

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