A serious difficulty in determining the importance of credit constraints in education arises because standard data sources do not provide a direct way of identifying which students are credit constrained. This has forced researchers to adopt a variety of indirect approaches. This paper differentiates itself from previous work by taking a direct…

The research reported here is part of a larger study investigating differences between successful and unsuccessful (withdrawing) undergraduates at the University of Texas. It focuses on a 36-item list of problems which were rated by 647 withdrawing students during Fall 1969. Responses were subjected to a principal axis factor analysis and rotated…

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)

Study made at Brooklyn, City, Hunter and Queens Colleges of the City University of New York compared the number of students in 1955 and 1960 freshman classes who graduated, and documented findings relative to reasons for withdrawal. (AD)

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 paper reports the results of a major research effort by the Northern California Cooperative Research Group (Nor Cal) and the Coordinating Council for Higher Education (CCHE) in California to study junior college attrition. This study differs from the original Nor Cal attrition study in that it was designed to follow up those students who…

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)

This study attempts to define dropouts, focus on the reasons for dropping out, and suggest some ways to overcome perceived barriers to participation in adult literacy programs. (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…

This paper proposes a longitudinal study of Eastern Massachusetts secondary students from two culturally diverse locations beginning in the fall of 1986 and ending with their high school graduations in 1991 and 1992. After discussing dropout prevention strategies, the paper offers the following justification for the study: By following these…

This study was conducted by Macomb County Community College to determine the reasons that their students withdrew from classes. Questionnaires were sent to 3,568 students who had dropped a total of 6,081 courses. The 1,434 responding students (40.19%) answered questions about the 2,190 courses they had dropped, and gave their reasons for doing so.…

An overview of issues and problems in identifying and predicting dropouts is presented in this Digest. The topics discussed are as follows: factors associated with dropping out; defining and calculating dropouts; problems in prediction; the usefulness of current prediction models; and suggestions for improving prediction. The recommendation is…