This quantitative study evaluated and investigated the theoretical underpinnings of the Kember's (1995) student progress model that examines the direct or indirect effects of student persistence in online education by identifying the relationships between variables. The primary method of data collection in this study was a survey by exploring the relationships among variables. The sample population of this study was 169 students at a public community college in Maryland, USA. The logistic regression and multiple regression analysis were utilized to analyze the survey data. The findings of this study consistently indicated that negative external attribution was a significant factor for student persistence. GPA and academic integration were highly correlated to student persistence. Decreasing external attribution and encouraging higher GPA by increasing the academic integration help students continue to pursue their educational goals. The findings of this study deliver valuable implications in the current phenomena of the online environment regarding student persistence. Social media can be interpreted as the combination of external attribution and social integration of the Kember model. Social media may cause a distractor for academic focus, thus there is a need to increase academic input by increasing academic integration to mediate the interference. The findings of this study reflected student insights for student persistence, which may be a guideline and a reference for the leadership of online education institutes.