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Why students leave
18 October 2008
Universities keep a close watch on the number of students who withdraw from study. All institutions hope to maximise the educational experience for students and as you’d expect, there’s a relationship between factors such as good teaching and the proportion of students who decide to leave university. Because universities have fixed student load targets, they also need to monitor the attrition rate and balance this against the new enrolments target for each semester or year. There are financial penalties for under-enrolment, and until recently, penalties for over-enrolling as well.
By surveying students who have left, we are able to obtain qualitative information on why the decision has been made. The most common reason given by students for leaving our university is work commitments or lack of income to support further study. These two factors account for a third of students choosing to withdraw from study. Another 16 percent of withdrawing students found that university wasn’t what they expected and they had decided to rethink their careers. The next most common reason was to attend another university.
At USC, the pattern of students withdrawing has changed markedly over time. Up until recently, the major source of attrition has been students leaving after year one to pursue a degree not offered here. In the past, up to 25 percent of new students have indicated they’ll be moving on, but with the expansion in degree offerings, especially in professional areas such as education, nursing and allied health, psychology, planning, engineering and property management, there has been a dramatic decline in this reason for leaving. From the latest survey, only about 12 percent of the students withdrawing indicated they were going to another university. And even here, some were changing because the family or partner had moved rather than wanting a change in institution.
As indicated by the Good Universities Guide and other independent assessments of university performance, USC is consistently ranked in the top bracket of Australian universities on indicators such as teaching quality, staff qualifications and graduate satisfaction. Our internal surveys and the data presented above confirm that very few students leave because they are dissatisfied with the educational experience they receive at USC.
In addition to analysing why people leave, from whole of university enrolment data, we are also able to describe the profile of people leaving the university. Information on factors such as age, gender, entry score and degree program help identify particular student cohorts that may be at risk. As could be expected, part-timers are more likely to discontinue than full-timers, younger students are more likely to discontinue than more mature ones and students with lower entry scores are more likely to withdraw than those with higher scores. Interestingly, our first in family students are no more likely to withdraw than their peers from families with a history of university attendance, international students are less likely to withdraw than their domestic counterparts and males are more likely to withdraw than females.
Staff of the University have always directed a lot of attention to maintaining and improving the quality of the educational experience available at USC. By tracking student attrition and identifying the factors responsible, that we can influence, we are looking to minimise the number and proportion of students who withdraw from study. Recent reductions in attrition rates are a pleasing indication of success.
Professor Paul Thomas AM is Vice-Chancellor at the University of the Sunshine Coast.