This instrumental qualitative case study sought to explore the experiences of four Ontario elementary French immersion teachers with the factors that influence elementary student attrition, where French is the minority language. The study used the social constructivist approach to learning and development (Vygotsky, 1978), as well as the principles of interaction and continuity in experience (Dewey, 1971), to show that experience shapes learning within a social context. The three research questions that guided this study were: 1) According to a group of Ontario elementary French immersion teachers, what academic and social factors influence student attrition from French immersion?; 2) How are this group of teachers’ current teaching practices affected by their previous experiences with the academic and social factors that influence student attrition in French immersion, by their personal and professional learning experiences, as well as by their social context?; and 3) How might these teachers encourage students to stay in or leave French immersion? Two semi-structured individual interviews with each of the four participants were conducted. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim for coding and analysis. Results suggest that academic and social factors influence student attrition, that the teachers regularly change their teaching approaches and strategies to address student attrition and to help their students learn French, and that the teachers have experience encouraging students to stay in and leave French immersion. The findings of the present study contribute to the literature on French immersion teachers’ experiences with the factors that influence student attrition.

Magister Artium - MA / Postgraduate research throughput and problems associated with appropriate supervision are a key focus area for many higher education institutions around the world (Lessing & Schulze, 2012; Amehoe, 2014; Botha, 2016). Central to this challenge is the supervisory relationship, which by its very nature, is not one-sided. A productive and rewarding supervisory process requires that both student and supervisor(s) are committed to fulfilling clearly-articulated responsibilities relevant to the research project at hand (Eley & Jennings, 2005). Both student-centric and institutional factors have been found to contribute to low student throughput and to the time taken to complete postgraduate studies (Amehoe, 2014; Luescher-Mamashela, 2015). In South Africa, the higher education landscape is increasingly fraught with varied challenges, including issues of attrition and completion rates as they relate to postgraduate students. Some of the implications of the premature termination of postgraduate research are that various academic fields are deprived of potentially valuable research contributions, and there is a significant cost incurred by the affected students and supervisors (Lovitts, 2001; Lessing & Lessing, 2004), as well as the relevant faculties and institutions, and society at large. Additionally, a number of South African universities are still grappling with inequities resulting from the Apartheid era (Pillay & Karlsson, 2013). It is against this backdrop that this research, through a narrative research lens involving semi-structured interviews, explores and chronicles the stories of six Master’s students who have encountered supervision-related challenges. According to Pearson and Kayrooz (2004), a limited narrative research spotlight has been trained on the issue of postgraduate supervision from the student perspective. The primary objective of this study, therefore, is to facilitate a platform through which the six respondents are able to share the stories of their Master’s supervision experience. On a secondary level, the sharing of these student stories has the potential to enhance the postgraduate research experience, as Lovitts (2001) and Lessing and Lessing (2004) point out.

The problems with which this dissertation is concerned are undergraduate student attrition and ways to reduce it. This study describes the problem of undergraduate student attrition by presenting an overview of the extent of such attrition. As a result of this study, the following conclusions, among others, are advanced: 1) Approximately 50 per cent of those who undertake a baccalaureate degree program complete their programs within four years. 2) Attrition data provide a measure of efficiency of higher education. 3) Undergraduates who do not complete course or degree requirements in either attendance or academic performance contribute to and constitute a measure of waste in the economic sense of (a) the labor of teachers, (b) the use of classrooms, laboratories, and equipment, (c) the failure of colleges and universities to achieve educational objectives, and (d) the competent individuals who never enter college. 4) Attrition is a distinct, interactive process. 5) Institutions of higher learning are responsible for changing their characteristics and environments when such variables adversely affect congruence of otherwise qualified and competent students. 6) Texas' senior college presidents who were surveyed believe that an extremely important variable in reducing attrition is the establishment of a relationship between the student and the institution through a competent, concerned faculty or staff member or peer.

The purpose of this exploratory, retrospective study was to determine if student demographics and academic variables predicted student persistence and success in an associate degree nursing program in Florida and to investigate the variables in Tinto's Longitudinal Model of Dropout (1975).The sample population (N=304) for this study was students enrolled in one of the initial courses of the associate degree nursing program at Daytona Beach Community College (DBCC) in Daytona Beach, FL from August 2002 through August 2003. Students were assigned to one of three groups (a) passing group, (b) failing group, or (c) withdrawing group. The convenience sample of (N=304) included: 242 students who successfully completed the nursing program, 32 students who failed a nursing course, and 38 students who withdrew from a course prior to successful completion. Demographic variables, admission and college science course grade point averages, and Nurse Entrance Test (NET) scores were collected on the sample population. Descriptive statistics were used to identify any unique differences that may have existed between the three groups, and multinomial logistic regression was used to determine the variables that best predicted success in the associate degree nursing program. Students in the passing group were found to be slightly older than students in the failing and withdrawing groups. The passing group had a higher percentage of females; the failing and withdrawing groups had higher percentages of males. The failing and withdrawing groups also contained higher percentages of minority students and students with English as a second language. Ethnicity was considered a significant predictor for student success in this study. Grade point average (GPA) score at the time of admission to the nursing program and college mean science course GPA scores were significant predictors. Students in the passing group had higher mean admission grade point averages than the failing and withdrawing groups. Students in the passing group also had noticeably higher mean grade point averages in all college science courses. NET scores were not considered significant predictors, at least for students who met the requirements for admission, and minimal differences were noted between the three groups in the study. The results of the study supported the use of variables identified in Tinto's Longitudinal Model of Dropout (1975) for predicting program success with nursing students. Individual attributes and pre-college experiences were predictors of student success for this sample, and demographic differences were identified between successful and unsuccessful students. Based on the results, the nursing department should consider placing more emphasis on admission and college science course grade point averages during the application process. A future conceptual model should include college science course GPAs, specifically anatomy and physiology and microbiology, and admission grade point average. Remedial or support services should be emphasized for minority students and students with English as a second language. Strategies should be implemented to retain men in the nursing program.

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The problem with which this study is concerned is the methodology that is used to assess the relationship between student perceptions of the college environment and student attrition. The population of the study was 329 students from a metropolitan community college who took the Student Opinion Survey, a publication of the American College Testing Service. Data on course withdrawals and non-return in a subsequent long semester were collected for the student population. The data results were analyzed statistically using analyses of variance, Pearson product moment correlation, multiple regression analysis using step-wise procedures, and factor analysis. Data were considered statistically significant at the .05 level in relation to seven hypotheses on combinations of variables that include areas of student satisfaction with the college environment, student background data, course withdrawal, and non-return in a subsequent long semester.

Considerable research has been conducted regarding the usefulness of placement testing in community colleges. Many stuides show that using the COMPASS exam may lead to students' unsuccessful course completion. To better identify the factors that may result in reduced attrition, the relationship between attrition and placement testing was studied. Using Tinto's student retention model and employing qualitative methodology, this study explored the perceptions of students and faculty regarding whether COMPASS placement assessment predicted future student success in first year courses at a community college that reports higher rates of attrition when compared to other area community colleges. After completing interviews with the 10 students, 6 faculty, and 2 administrators, the data indicated that using the COMPASS placement scores did not contribute greatly to attrition. Rather, the findings from the data analysis revealed that work ethic, family obligations, and test stress factored greatly in first-year student attrition. As a possible solution, 3 retention programs identified at comparable institutions address the findings of this study: An Alternative Learning Program, a Summer Bridge Program, and use of peer mentoring. In other sites, use of these retention programs have resulted in a 15% reduction in first-year student attrition. Reducing first year student attrition provides implications for social change. By adopting these retention initiatives, the community college in this study may improve overall first-year student retention, increased funding for the college, and better serve the local community.

[pt] Perdendo em média mais de 20 por cento da base de alunos todo semestre, a evasão de alunos no ensino superior privado representa um desafio para a gestão dessas instituições. Diferentes abordagens são utilizadas para combater este problema. Para a gestão de marketing de retenção, a identificação dos alunos é o primeiro passo necessário para aplicar uma estratégia de interação personalizada. Nesse sentido, este trabalho apresenta uma metodologia quantitativa para classificação de risco de evasão de alunos ativos. Baseado em dados históricos de alunos que evadiram ou se formaram, modelos gerados por algoritmos de machine learning foram calculados e comparados e, na sequência, utilizados para classificar alunos ativos. Por fim, estimou-se o lifetime value desses alunos para auxiliar na definição de estratégias de retenção. / [en] Losing more than 20 percent of its students each semester, the student attrition in private graduation courses challenges its institutions management. Different approaches to address this problem have been used. To retention marketing management the identification of students is the first necessary step to apply a personalized interaction strategy. In this sense, this work uses a quantitative methodology to classify its students by risk of attrition. Based in historic data of former students of an institution, models were generated by machine learning algorithms and its results compared. Then they were used to classify active students in the educational institution. Afterwards, their lifetime value were estimated in order to help in the definition of retention strategies.

Under the George W. Bush U.S. presidential administration, the federal government pushed for greater accountability among institutions of higher education for educational outcomes. Graduation rate is a key performance indicator of institutional accountability. Previous researchers of student attrition focused primarily on the effects of student level factors on student persistence/withdrawal behavior. Recently, researchers put more focus on the effects of institutional characteristics on graduation rates, but most of these studies were exploratory and based on multiple regression models. No institutional model has existed to synthesize their results within a theoretical framework. Such an institutional model is needed to explain the process of student persistence at the institutional level. The purpose of this study was to develop a model of institutional performance in graduation rate for four-year, public and private not-for-profit, Title IV institutions in the United States. This study validated the institutional model based on the IPEDS dataset using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. Further group comparison analyses are conducted by fitting the same SEM model to several subgroup datasets based on grouping variables such as control, geographical region and state. Benchmarking analyses were conducted to demonstrate how administrators and policy-makers can use the institutional model to compare the performance of an institution with its peers and what policy changes can they pursue to improve graduation rates.

Student attrition from universities carries high costs for individuals, universities, and society. Despite these costs, there has been limited research on the problem from the students' perspectives, specifically the perceptions of university graduates about what factors may have influenced their own retention at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). African American students complete college at the lowest rate compared to other ethnic sub groups. Guided by Tinto's theory of student departure, this qualitative consensual research study focused on the perceptions of 15 bachelor of social work graduates regarding (a) the factors that helped them to persist to graduation at an HBCU, and (b) the internal and external factors that influenced college retention. Data were gathered from semi-structured interviews, a demographic survey, and a follow-up questionnaire. Data were transcribed; member checked for enhanced trustworthiness; and then analyzed inductively using a team to develop and code domains by consensus, construct core ideas, and develop categories. Findings indicated that, among these 15 graduates, internal factors such as loss of scholarships, lack of faculty support, and lack of academic preparation influenced retention. External issues such as family strain and lack of university/community partnerships were also reported as influencing retention. In addition, findings suggested that these 15 students required increased academic, financial, mental health, and social support services to persist to graduation. This study contributes to social change by affecting improvement in retention and ensuring support services equal student needs. Improvements in retention and support could help to grow an educated and skilled work force.