A new multi-institution study reports that when families have access to academic and administrative progress information, students are retained at higher rates than peers without that access. The results were summarized as a 6.9 percentage-point retention increase overall, with larger gains for Black and Hispanic students and for first-generation students. The provided materials describe a 2026 study analyzing more than 20,000 first-time, first-year students and emphasize “visibility” as the mechanism—helping families spot issues like financial holds, unpaid balances, or incomplete requirements early enough for intervention. The piece also raises a governance and compliance implication: rather than treating FERPA as an absolute barrier to family engagement, the materials cite data indicating that only a small portion of parent access requests were rejected in a dataset across 50 institutions. For higher education leaders, the immediate operational implication is that family information pathways can be structured to support persistence—potentially requiring changes to how data is presented, timing of notifications, and consent workflows.