An estimated 1,400 colleges and universities nationwide have invested in predictive analytics technology to identify which students are at risk of failing courses or dropping out, with spending estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. How accurate and stable are those predictions? The authors put six predictive models to the test to gain…

It is a common perception among US employers, educators, and policymakers that there is a shortage of skilled workers who meet vacant manufacturing jobs requirements in the current workforce. Although opinions vary on who or what is responsible for this shortage, a bigger question remains: How do we fix the problem? The current study presented an…

Online education is a relatively new manifestation in academia and as such, there are still many gaps in the knowledge of how to transfer face-to-face components of a classroom to the online platform. One of these gaps is how to encourage instructor-student relationships when the online platform is by nature anonymous. It can be difficult to…

This study explored the experiences of former first-year students who had been institutionally dismissed from an undergraduate health program in a large Canadian university. Using a qualitative narrative inquiry, 20 individual interviews were conducted with 10 former students. Challenges connecting with faculty, large classes, and academic…

Over the past twenty years, graduate studies have seen significant growth, with student numbers more than doubling worldwide. Unfortunately, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development continues to report dropout rates averaging 50% for PhD and 40% for master's programs, in all disciplines combined. Among the reasons quoted for…

This study examines the early departure pathways of first-time freshmen university students to better understand the intersection of financial and time-related constraints that affect first-generation and low-income Black and Latinx students. Data from 50 interviews with students who experienced an early departure from a four-year university…

Theories explaining why students drop out of college have evolved to emphasize interactions between students and their college environments. While the interactionist model underscores the influence of social integration on student retention, few have examined the role of students' social networks in the decision-making process. Drawing on a survey…

Reducing school dropout rates has been a challenging policy problem in an effort to improve educational participation and attainment in developing countries. This paper examines the differences in school dropout rates among the 5-20-year olds across three major caste/ethnic groups in Nepal using nationally representative survey data. Findings…

From fall 2021 to summer 2022, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted virtual focus groups with administrators at 47 colleges: a nationally representative sample of 36 2-year and broad-access 4-year colleges and a purposive sample of 11 colleges selected for their track record with advising. The study identified four key findings…

The purpose of this study was to explore factors affecting attrition of undergraduates with a strong STEM content background into the field of Education, particularly within high-need school districts. This research was conducted as part of the NSF-sponsored Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship project collaboration between a four-year private…

School dropout and retention are a primary concern for society, educators, and policymakers. This study focuses on the factors affecting gender disparity in education captured in terms of enrolment, never enrolled, and dropout among Indian children. We use the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO)-75th (July 2017-June 2018) round of survey data on…

Dropout remains a persistent challenge within high school education. In this paper, we present a case study on automatically detecting whether a student is at-risk of dropout within a diverse school district in Texas. We predict whether a student will drop out in a future school year from data on students' discipline, attendance, course-taking,…

Early School Leaving (ESL) is a complex phenomenon caused by multidimensional factors spanning personal, social and economic problems. We carried out two online surveys with 796 teachers and 900 students from Bulgaria, Italy, Malta, Romania and Turkey completed standard electronic surveys. The teachers' survey consisted of secondary school…

Purpose: This study aims to advance the understanding on individual variations in PhD candidates' personal interest in their doctorate and supervisory and research community support, and several individual and structural attributes potentially having an impact on the profiles. Design/methodology/approach: The authors explored the interrelationship…

Universities have a wealth of new digital tools and methodologies at their disposal for educational processes. It is difficult to know which of the many options to use, but it makes sense to combine methodologies to increase student satisfaction and, above all, to reduce drop-out rates. The study used a questionnaire survey in a mass course to see…