A new multi-institution study finds that when families receive timely access to students’ academic and administrative progress information, retention improves. The report describes a 2026 study across more than 20,000 first-time, first-year students showing retained rates that were 6.9 percentage points higher for students whose families had access to progress indicators. The retention lift was stronger for Black and Hispanic students (+9.6 points) and first-generation students (+7.2 points). The mechanism is visibility into actionable issues such as financial holds, unpaid balances, and incomplete requirements, allowing families to help with earlier intervention before enrollment disruptions escalate. The story also challenges assumptions about FERPA barriers: in a dataset of more than 150,000 students across 50 institutions, only 5% of parent access requests were rejected, suggesting students are often open to sharing access.