A very detailed study of attrition in a “national research university in the southeastern United States” has been published in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. You can find the study in full here.

The study has found, not surprisingly, that online or distance education students have a higher rate of attrition than on-campus students.  That certainly is aligned with findings here but the study takes this basic premise much further and introduces various demographic characteristics into the equation.

Three research questions form the main body of the study

1. To what extent do dropout rates vary by program delivery mode, online vs. campus face-to-face, for master’s degree programs?
2. What demographic and academic characteristics are significantly associated with dropout in master’s degree programs?
3. How do the demographic and academic variables significantly associated with student dropout differ between the two delivery modes, online vs. campus face-to-face?

As recognised by the authors (Belinda Patterson and Cheryl McFadden of East Carolina University) the study is limited to one institution and one degree program, furthermore the students self-selected rather than being selected at random but there are still some interesting conclusions such as “High dropout rates have been viewed as an indicator of program quality; however, the findings of this study suggest that dropout rates may be explained by other factors as well”.

Updated: March 7th 2009

Since my previous post on this subject last week I’ve been digging a little more and received some great information both from you at other institutions and from our friends at DEEWR Higher Education Data Collection to whom I am most grateful.

Since there is so much detail I’ll just tackle Attrition in this post.  The offical explanation from DEEWR is what follows:

DEEW calculate the attrition rate by processing an annual baseline enrolment dataset, a completion dataset and then an enrolment dataset for the subsequent year.  I think they must also consider a completions dataset for the subsequent year too but they don’t specifically say this.  Sof looking at retention in 2008 for 2007 enrolments, the approach is something like this:

If a student from the baseline file is not on the subsequent enrolment file or completions file they are classified as ‘attrited’.  Some further filtering of the baseline dataset is performed by DEEWR for their own calculations so that it only includes:

• Bachelor-level students
• Commencing students
• Sole/Major course

DEEWR aren’t concerned about matching students in particular courses or awards, they just look for the same student with the same provider.  They acknowledge the limitations of this but due to so many students graduating in an entirely different course from that which they were enrolled in they have no other option.

As UNE has a lot of distance education students who study part-time, this definition of attrition doesn’t make us look too good as many of our students elect to have a year out or complete their Bachelor-level study over more than the typical 3 years.  DEEWR clearly recognise this when they say:

When we calculate attrition rates, we do just compare the year immediately subsequent to the baseline year. Although we are aware that a limitation of this is that students on program leave will be included as attrited students, we do not have any way of identifying them.

So there you have it, ATTRIT101 in all its glory.  Next up is Progress and then Retention.

Related Posts:

War of Attrition (Part 1)