They have gone, and now what? Understanding re-enrolment patterns in the Catalan public higher education system

Abstract

Studies of student re-enrolment patterns in higher education constitute, along with traditional studies of persistence and dropout, a key element for improving the quality of higher education institutions. However, these studies tend to be limited as they are centred on a single institution, due to the lack of national-scale data sets for monitoring students between different institutions. Using a longitudinal population-based data set provided by the Catalan University Assurance Agency (AQU), which includes information records on 21,473 undergraduate students, this paper aims to develop and test an exploratory model of student re-enrolment, specifically in the Catalan public university system. We are not only interested in student reenrolment, but also in whether they do so during the first year after dropout or in the same area of knowledge. Results from logistic regression analysis revealed that although most students return to the university system in the first year after dropout, many of these change to a different area of knowledge, which is clear evidence of dysfunctional and inefficient guidance systems and university entrance. Findings provide a more accurate and complete picture of student re-enrolment behaviour and suggest the need to develop targeted policies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our university systems.

Curricular Analytics to Characterize Educational Trajectories in High-Failure Rate Courses That Lead to Late Dropout

“…We have also showed the relevance of contrasting the obtained results using theoretical models of the educational domain [31,33]. We believe that this approach is relevant for an international audience, because it helps to understand the complex nature of enrollment patterns [36] from a longitudinal perspective, and this knowledge can lead to improvements in the curriculum and follow-up mechanisms used to increase student retention. Researchers and practitioners could use this approach to analyze educational trajectories in different contexts.…”

“…F1, F2, and F3 are relevant because the relationship between high-failure rate courses that students must retake and stopout has not been previously investigated, and we believe that these findings might not be specific just to this case study, but more general. Moreover, although the factors that explain dropout have been widely covered by the literature, there have been less research to understand the return of students to the university after a stopout [36]. However, several previous studies could help to explain the observed behavior in this work.…”

“…Although the Chilean context might have its own distinctive characteristics, we believe this analysis is of interest to a wider international audience. Understanding the educational trajectories that include a stopout [36] and lead to late dropout [37,38], as well as the differences across educational fields [39] are shared concerns in higher education research.…”

Students’ trajectories through higher education: a review of quantitative research

“…In contrast, the latter, survey-based approaches are limited to a set of predefined variables to reconstruct students' HE trajectories but are more flexible in linking these to students' prior educational biographies, motives and social origin. In the same vein, we also see great potential for understanding the circumstances and motivation that lead students to follow specific trajectories in theory-led mixed methods or qualitative studies-a claim that has already been raised elsewhere (Harper 2007;Rodríguez-Gómez et al 2016): B[A]s long as student behaviour remains a proverbial black box, institutional adjustments and interventions will be more a product of guesswork than of sound and empirically based reasoning^ (Bahr 2013, 144).…”

The Academic Dropout Wheel Analyzing the Antecedents of Higher Education Dropout in Education Studies

“…Another main factor is the disappointment with the quality of orientation, and the ineffective guidance when choosing the field of study at the university level (Ortiz & Dehon, 2013). Any deficiency through this stage lead to drop out or transfer out as the students who are considered as "experimenters" will be facing unprecise study decisions (Rodríguez-Gómez, Meneses, Gairín, Feixas, & Muñoz-Moreno, 2016). Students who do not enroll in their first choice due to failing the university program entrance exam or to the limited number of places will have less commitment to their studies and are at risk of dropout (Vries et al, 2011;Porto & Soares, 2017).…”