“Progressive universities are capitalizing on these platforms by creating focused, intentional online purpose networks to facilitate their institutional goals. In a college student purpose network, universities seek to instill and provide platforms to support institutional learning outcomes. College student purpose networks, unlike the social networks (such as MySpace and Facebook), intentionally create the academic and social communities essential for university life. They are bidirectional communicative platforms going far above and beyond email as a means of communication.”〔Troy, Jones, Lynch, Tomassi (2009). ''(University Purpose Networks: Online Communities for Student Retention and Success )''〕

“Preliminary results from a study conducted by (EducationDynamics ) across 20 schools indicate that students involved in purpose networks were retained to their sophomore year at a 9% higher rate than students not involved in the network. Additionally, over 13% of students surveyed across 26 universities reported that the purpose network was “very important” or “extremely important” in their decision to remain enrolled at the university.”〔Troy, Jones, Lynch, Tomassi (2009). ''(University Purpose Networks: Online Communities for Student Retention and Success )''〕