Course withdrawal: a comparison of business and engineering students in a private university

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the course withdrawal behavior of business and engineering students in a private university. While previous research has studied such behavior, the literature remains sparse and dated. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a negative binomial model in order to model the total number of course withdrawals for 760 students. The data set includes all courses taken by the students, with a total of 25,160 course outcomes. Findings Among the findings of the study are that males withdraw from courses more than females, engineering courses have the highest withdrawal rates, and male engineering students withdraw more than any other group. Originality/value While dropping out of college has received cross-national interest, the same cannot be said of course withdrawal. Most research to date has been conducted in a community college setting or has used a subset of the courses taken by students at universities in the USA. Thus, this is one of the first studies to investigate course withdrawal in another country.

Gender, education, and career in the Arab world: A literature review

“…One finding is that out of the 24 male students, seven left the question with no response, while only two of the 20 female students did not respond. This finding that female students are more engaged is supported by findings from other studies in the region that have found that female students are more active on online learning management systems (Mozahem, 2020b) and that they are less likely to give up and withdraw from a course (Mozahem, 2019). Another finding from the study was that the female students who did provide a solution "rarely provided any details or articulation of a relationship," while the male students "provided more details, such as using language to describe the rule" (Ahmad and Greenhalgh-Spencer, 2017: 337).…”

Exploring the Reasons Behind Iranian TEFL Graduate Students’ Academic Failure

“…However, our results indicated no statistically significant relation between gender and academic failure. Similarly, Mozahem (2019) also argued that course withdrawal rates among engineering courses and among male students in bachelor level are higher. In the same way, D'Uggento et al ( 2020) also reported that Italian female students were more likely to successfully complete their academic courses.…”