College student retention constitutes a long-standing and critical problem for many colleges and universities. Although the average national rate of first-to-second year persistence stands at 68.5%, rates for types of colleges and universities vary from a low of 56.4% for 2-year public colleges to a high of 81.5% for private PhD-granting universities (American College Testing Program [ACT], 2016). Put differently, the percentage of first-year students that do not return to their institution of initial enrollment ranges from 43.6% in 2-year public colleges to 18.5% in private PhD-granting universities. Such a loss of students negatively affects the stability of institutional enrollments, budgets, and the public perception of the quality of colleges and universities. For these reasons, institutional retention rates occupy the attention of institutional leaders in colleges and universities. This article focuses on organizational factors that indirectly influence first-year student persistence in both commuter and residential colleges and universities. The authors posit that these organizational factors constitute critical dimensions for institutional assessment of the college student experience and the environment as well as their inclusion in theory-based institutional studies of student persistence. The results of such institutional assessment of these two organizational factors can provide institutional practitioners with an empirically grounded basis for the development and implementation of institutional efforts to increase student persistence at their college or university.