Withdrawal from doctoral education has been recognized as a problem with negative consequences for different actors, leading researchers worldwide to explore its underlying factors and processes. However, even if many PhD candidates who withdrew intend to re-enrol, there is a gap in the literature regarding the factors and processes related to…

Intrinsic motivation is considered the dominant factor in the motivation of adult students in continuing postgraduate education. However, the strength of an intrinsic motivation to learn does not explain the phenomenon of dropout where the student withdraws and does not return or where the student withdraws and then recommences their postgraduate…

Previous studies have examined patterns of withdrawal from initial teacher education (ITE) programs and have found that pre-service teachers are more likely to withdraw if they are male or older than the typical pre-service teacher. This study presents case studies based on semi-structured interviews with older male pre-service teachers who…

Institutional withdrawal policies allow students with academic and personal difficulties to avert or minimize damage to the GPA by dropping a course in which they may risk a grade of "D" or "F," or to reduce credit hours to better manage those that remain. Offsetting costs involve lost tuition, delay of progress, and perhaps…

The goal of this study was to illustrate survival analysis with higher education data and gain insight into a limited set of factors that predict when students passed their first-year examination at a Dutch university. Study participants consisted of 565 first-year students in four departments. Data were collected on when students pass their…

Academic dismissal resulting from poor scholastic achievement is an unfortunate reality at American universities, and one that involves students, faculty, and academic advisers. This chapter analyzes learning outcomes of the academic dismissal process for first-generation college students (FGS) resulting from a year-long study conducted at a…

A 2006 study of apprentices commencing with a Group Training Organisation in an Australian regional centre identified factors that appear to support apprentices in their first year. The research demonstrates that school subject selection and access to work-related experiences while still at school make an important difference to completion of the…

Institutional researchers have undertaken many studies of student attrition in the past but mainly focusing on the quantitative dimensions. No doubt it is important for institutions to be aware of their attrition rates and how this may vary by demographic and other variables in order to develop strategies to minimise drop-out rates and thereby…

Responses from more than 400 British adults who withdrew from part-time vocational and nonvocational further education courses revealed that withdrawal was due to a combination of reasons, more than 60% unrelated to the course or college. College-based reasons included the tutor or teaching methods. Students insisted that they not be labeled…

Of the 173 postgraduate adult students who abandoned their studies at Hellenic Open University, 108 were interviewed. Primary reasons for dropping out included difficulty balancing academic workload with employment and family obligations (mainly for female students), miscalculation of time available for studying, and underestimation of the effort…

Examined how the fulfillment of college expectations affects students' social integration. Path analysis showed that the fulfillment of social expectations for college positively affects both social integration and subsequent institutional commitment; the greater the degree of these, the more likely students will re-enroll in the university. (EV)

This survey of Australian college students provides support for an alternative explanation of attrition for a specific group of university students: students who planned to withdraw from their original program of study after facilitating entry to another undergraduate degree. (EV)

Dropout classification systems must be standardized, updated, and simplified to accurately reflect conditions of student departures from school; current, nonstandardized systems allow gathered data to be biased and of poor quality. Improvements will inform administrators of the specific causes behind students' early withdrawals--whether students…

This study of a random sample of 125 nongraduates and withdrawals from a Canadian community college found that the most frequently given reasons for noncompletion were school related, e.g., lack of interest, test failure, boredom, and dislike of teachers or courses. (SK)

A problem-based methodology was used to explore why three students withdrew from a transition to postsecondary education program. The method treats dropout as students' solution to a problem and investigates their problem-solving processes, beliefs, motivations, and contextual conditions. For two students, withdrawal was a habitual response to…