Reference books provide background information on a topic, such as definitions of terms, key figures and events, and well written overviews. They can be a useful starting point for any research project, because they fill in missing knowledge about the topic or provide you with the language of the discipline.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Higher Education
Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research
Encyclopedia of Education and Human Development
As a start, try searching for "student success". The results will list numerous entries from a variety of reference works covering different disciplines of study. From there you can refine your search terms to better reflect your specific topic.
Search selected dictionaries and encyclopedias from Oxford University Press:
