This paper seeks to advance our understanding of the drop-out behavior of students in higher education. Our results are based on longitudinal data for 7000 students who embarked on short and long programs from one university in Spain and who were observed over an eight-year period ending in 2004. The statistical analysis is carried out in a competing-risks framework. We find that academic preparedness is one of the major influences on student completion. Additionally, older students and students who delay entry into higher education are more likely to drop out before graduating. Our analysis provides guidance about the role that financial support plays in reducing drop-out rates; we also find that family characteristics are significant factors in explaining student drop out in long programs.higher education, student drop-out, discrete-time hazard,

The impact of specific actions designed to streamline and tighten the workflow processes of key actors in Madagascar's primary education sector are evaluated. To inform the strategy for scaling up, a randomized experiment was carried out over two school years. The results show that interventions at the school level, reinforced by interventions at the subdistrict and district levels, succeeded in changing the behavior of the actors toward better management of key pedagogical functions. In terms of education outcomes, the interventions improved school attendance, reduced grade repetition, and raised test scores (particularly in Malagasy and mathematics), although the gains in learning at the end of the evaluation period were not always statistically significant. Interventions limited to the subdistrict and district levels proved largely ineffective. JEL codes: I21, I28, J24

Policymakers in most developing countries are concerned about high dropout rates and poor student learning in primary education. The government of the Philippines initiated the Dropout Intervention Program in 1990-92 as part of its effort to address these issues. Under this program, four experimental interventions were randomly assigned to 20 schools in selected low-income areas. Pre-and post-intervention data were collected from these schools, as well as from 10 control schools, in order to evaluate the program's impact on dropout behavior and student learning. The economic justification for replication appears to be strongest for the interventions that provided teachers with learning materials, which helped them to pace lessons according to students' differing abilities, and that initiated parent-teacher partnerships, which involved parents in the schooling of their children. The justification was weakest for the school feeding intervention. In addition to the results specific to the Philippines, this research demonstrates the feasibility of monitoring and evaluating interventions in the education sector in other developing countries, including the use of randomized control designs. 1. See Harbison and Hanushck (1992) for a summary of results from 96 studies on the relationship between school inputs and learning based on data from developing countries. Quantitative studies on the relationship between school inputs and dropout behavior and between school inputs and grade repetition are much more rare. Recent examples include Hanushek and Law (1994), Gomes-Ncto and Hanushek (1994), and Chuard and Mingat (1996).

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This review examines student progress in higher education based on 28 articles examining 25 large-scale samples of first-year entrants in higher education programs in nine countries. These articles were obtained from a search of published and publicly available research on student departure. Although the results of the studies reviewed are heterogeneous, generalized trends emerge from the synthesis of this body of research on dropout behavior, completion, and time-to-degree. The vast majority of the empirical works reviewed indicate that personal characteristics, family background, prior attainment, and financial aid are important factors influencing students' progress. Although almost every empirical work estimates the impact of these variables, little attention has been directed toward understanding how university characteristics affect student departure; more research and more data clearly are needed to analyze these issues.

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From individual longitudinal data for a full cohort of first-entering students who embarked on short programs in Spain and were observed over a 7-year period ending in 2003, we analyze the probability that an individual will drop out, transfer, or graduate from a university school program. The statistical analysis is carried out in a competingrisks framework. We find that the system's internal efficiency is low, with dropout and completion rates averaging 50 and 36%, respectively. However, we find considerable variability in the probabilities of withdrawal, transfer, and graduation among students. In this regard, our results show that preenrollment academic ability, age at enrollment, family characteristics, and secondary educational experience are major influences on student progress.