Author Description

It is obvious that retention of loyal students as customers of educational institutions is desirable and profitable in business of these institutions. While not everyone will be comfortable using concepts from business to an issue in education, applying the loyal customer retention model to student retention in this book gives a unique perspective to the issue of student retention and provides an economic justification for implementing retention programs. This book develops a model that can be used to determine the key influencers of student retention by integrating both relationship marketing and educational concepts. English as Foreign Language (EFL) schools in Iran have been selected as the focus of the study. A comprehensive conceptual framework is developed which includes variables such as students' integration with peers, perceived quality of teacher-student interaction, and students' trust in staff, students' institutional commitment, and student retention. It was found that student's integration with peers, trust in staff, and students' institutional commitment have positive effect on student retention.