2008 Occasional Papers - AUK

academically unprepared…you must be prepared to workhard to compensate. Failure to do so should mean failureto stay the course.” He goes on to say, “Our job is notto retain, but to retrain. And if our basic trainees areunwilling or unable to accept the training, then we can’tlet them go any further.”When And How Do They Drop Out?Research consistently indicates that college students whodrop out usually do so by the time they finish their firstyear (Noel, Levitz, and Saluri, 1985). (Note: Drop-outsusually denote, in the literature, students who permanentlyleft the institution because they were academically underprepared.However, many drop-outs are academicallyprepared and successful, but the institution failed to meettheir needs and expectations.) According to AmericanCollege Testing (ACT), one in every four students leavescollege before completing the sophomore year. What’smore, nearly half of all freshmen will either drop outbefore getting their degree, or complete their collegeeducation elsewhere (Whitbourne, 2002).According to “Learning Slope” (1991), published in PolicyPerspectives, the most critical stage of vulnerability forstudent attrition continues to be the first year of college atall types of higher education institutions, including thosethat are highly selective. More than half of all studentswho withdraw from college do so during their first year(Consortium of Student Retention Data Exchange, 1999),resulting in a first year attrition rate of more than 25% at4-year institutions (ACT, 2001).According to nationally recognized retention scholarVincent Tinto, the majority of new students enteringhigher education leave their initial college of choicewithout completing a degree (Tinto, 1993). Tinto (1987)found that a full 57% of college students leave their firstcollege choice without receiving a degree, and 47% dropout all together, never completing a degree. As Tintoexplains:“Though the intentions and commitment with whichindividuals enter college matter, what goes on after entrymatters more. It is the daily interaction of the personwith other members of the college in both formal andinformal academic and social domains of the college andthe person’s perception or evaluation of the character ofthose interactions that in large measure determines thedecisions as to staying or leaving. It is in this sense thatmost departures are voluntary. Student retention is at leastas much a function of institutional behavior as it is ofstudent behavior (Tinto, 1987, p. 127, 177).It can be argued, that AUK students are not currentlysatisfied with how the university is “behaving.” Accordingto Carl Parker (1997), in his article “Making RetentionWork,” if we are truly to assist students in their questfor academic success, then the university must becomebarrier free, reducing the risk of failure. As Parkersuggests, institutions must respond to issues surroundingacademic preparation and conduct on-going audits of theinstitutional environment. As he suggests, the goal is createa campus atmosphere where, “students are presented witha mandate to succeed rather than the right to fail” (Parker,1997, para. 3). Arguably, AUK is an environment that hasachieved, in its youth, only the latter thus far.Why They Drop Out?According to Vincent Tinto, chair of the HigherEducation Program at Syracuse University in New York,a large number of students are ill-equipped for thechallenges of college. In his (1987) book “IncreasingStudent Retention,” he identifies a number of factors thatcontribute to drop-outs and stop-outs, to include academicdifficulty, uncertainty, incongruity, isolation, adjustmentproblems, lack or clear academic goals, lack of clear careergoals, lack of commitment, and poor integration into thecollege environment.Rickinson and Rutherford (1995) found that students whowithdrew in the first term identified three main reasons forwithdrawal: (1) feelings of being unprepared academically,(2) feelings of being unprepared emotionally, and (3)welfare problems (e.g., financial, family responsibilities).In addition, they found that ‘low risk’ students were ableto use both departmental and central support systemsappropriately, whereas ‘at risk’ students did not seek helpfrom any source. According to the authors, “this supportsthe theory that lack of commitment and coping resourcesare linked. The ability to identify difficulties, and seek anduse appropriate help, signifies the possession of copingresources” (para.18).Whitbourne (2002) lists six common reasons why studentsare not retained, to include (1) too much fun, (2)not joining in, (3) academic unpreparedness, (4) lackof funds, (5) choosing the wrong major, and (6) firstgeneration student challenges. On the latter, he explainsthat first generation students, who are often minorities, aremore likely to drop out before educational completion.11