Despite near universal acceptance in the value of higher education for individuals and society, college persistence rates in 4-year and community colleges are low. Only 57% of students who began college at a 4-year institution in 2001 had completed a bachelor's degree by 2007, and only 28% of community college students who started school in 2005 had completed a degree 4 years later (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). To address this problem, this paper identified 3 goals. The first was to review the extant literature on persistence in higher education. The second was to develop a working model of persistence informed by our literature review. This resulted in a model centered on 3 basic categories of variables: those that "put you on track" towards persistence, those that "push you off track," and those that "keep you on track." The final goal was to outline a research agenda to develop student-centered assessments informed by our model, and we conclude with a discussion of this agenda.