Loneliness leads to failure. Lonely students do not persist. Being alone makes a person far less likely to get good grades, stay in school, find a good job, and more. And just as we know that not every measure works for every person, success can be better predicted through non-cognitive measures than academic ones for many students.
If I told you to care about something, would you?
Savvy administrators now realize that placing all of the responsibility and accountability around retention on the academic offices was unfair. For too long we told students what to connect to (academics, programs, instructors, etc), instead of allowing them choices by which to connect to things that mattered to them.