2.7 STUDENT SUPPORT
2.7.5 M ITIGATION STRATEGIES OF STUDENT DROPOUT CAUSES
Within the parameters of social support, Sirin et al (2013, p. 202) developed a Support Networks Measure to examine the levels of perceptions of the immigrant youths on academic and emotional support from the social network in 15 specific areas.
and American universities, showed that European universities have exerted little effort to mitigate student dropout in relative to their American counterparts. Mitigations vary according to dropout causes. In the view of Vignoles and Pawdthavee (2009, p. 2), different policy solutions are put into place to address various causes of dropout in higher education institutions. There are many negative effects that individual dropout students, higher education institutions, and society can experience and are copious in the plethora of literature. For instance, Seidman (2005, p. 8) asserts that dropout results in forfeiture of resources by the student, society and the institution of higher learning in which the student was enrolled. In recognition of its negative effect on students and the society at large, Hovdhaugen et al (2013, p. 165) propose that higher education institutions have to come up with innovative and effective plans to predict student dropout and to classify influences leading to it (Dekker, Pechenizkiy and Vleeshouwers, 2009, p. 41). Hovdhaugen, Frolich and Aamodt’s (2013) assertion serves as an epitome of possible mitigation strategy. Even though there are claims in the plethora of literature which argue that the existing student support frameworks have been ineffective (for instance, Department of Higher Education and Training , 2013, p.17), others were found effective. For example, the Italian university system reduced student dropout by changing the content, timeframe and the structure of the degree into a more flexible programme, which resulted in a change in student behaviour and, subsequently, a decrease in dropout risk level (Di Pietro and Cutillo, 2008, p. 546 and 554). Closely parallel to the Di Pietro and Cutillo’s (2008) proposed type of student support to reduce an attrition problem, Mills (2015) recommends some potential mitigation strategies for students who are enrolled in online courses, and those are as follows (p. 41 and 42):
Firstly, that institutional pedagogies over which higher education institutions teach online courses through learning management systems (LMS) must be redesigned,
Secondly, that the lecturers’ role ought not to be mere presentations of educational contents from study materials, but to execute a development and mentoring role,
Thirdly, learning management systems should be designed with the purpose of curbing student dropout in mind,
Fourthly, academic institutions should measure the student’s extent of emotional intelligence (Vergara, Smith and Keele, 2010, p. 1503);
Ghararetepeh, Safari, Pashaei, Razaei, and Bagher Kajbaf, 2015), pliancy and presentation of learning materials - what Moore (1993) refers to as ‘instructional programme structures’ in his theory of transactional distance (p. 42).
Further to the proposed solutions to curb student dropout, Murray (2014) asserts that the ‘competing risk methodology’ which is aimed at modelling the decision-making process, and in which there is a set of socio-demographic variables that make students to either drop out or remain studying until they complete their studies can serve as a mitigation strategy. This can enable higher education institutions to marshal their academic and other types of support interventions to better address the attrition problem and keep students enrolled (University of Washington, 2016, p. 5).
To deal with the attrition concern at the first-year level, Di Pietro and Cutillo (2008, p.
546-547) contend that by incorporating internship programmes into the university curricular and grounding the institutions’ admission requirements on high academic performances of students, including those who are coming from poor low-income families, can ensure positive dropout mitigation strategy. Di Pietro and Cutillo (2008, p. 546) and Sittichai (2012) further found complementary findings that indicated that the lower the student-lecturer ratio and the smaller the class size in higher education institutions the higher the chance to mitigate student dropout. It has been revealed that determining students’ satisfaction level on the programme is imperative in inhibiting or dropping the student attrition level. The comparison made by Levy (2007, p. 185) on perseverance in e-learning courses and dropouts of students established that the degree to which students are satisfied with e-learning can help predict the degree to which they drop out of courses offered online. Levy (2007, p.185) found that students who had low satisfaction level on e-learning courses dropped out as a result, while those with higher satisfaction level persisted until they complete their studies.
Students’ ability to integrate into the academic and social aspects of the university is fundamental in precluding dropout and the rejuvenation to persist with the studies. In the assertion presented by Murray (2014, p. 1), the degree to which students are able to interact with both the faculty and lecturers (academic variable) as well as with extracurricular activities and their peers (social variable) can help the university to determine students’ probability to drop out or to persevere with their studies. Dropout,
in the understanding of Ferreira (2006), can also be the result of negative relationship between students and their supervisors, and can be mitigated in terms of Pearson’s (2012, p. 187) assertion that it is necessary to build a more positive student-lecturer relationship to circumvent attrition and to encourage student retention and degree completion rates. Numerous other mitigation strategies on student dropout have been suggested in order to lower the rate at which student drop out from university studies.
In this study, the following examples were identified:
2.7.5.1 Political unrest as a cause of student dropout
Very little has been documented on how to mitigate dropouts relating to political unrests in the higher education terrain. An instance that was found in the literature was that the political instability as a cause for student dropout has been mitigated through the financial support for strengthening security. For example, the government supported the Prince of Songkla University with security facilities, such as CCTV, fiber optics systems, and network. Within the South African university parameters, the national students’ “FeesMustFall” protest that occurred in 2015 and 2016 was dealt with by financing qualifying students, particularly first-year students, who were economically deprived. NSFAS was allocated more funds to support financial needy students. Commenting on the South African popular “FeesMustFall” protest, Mgwebi et al (2017) suggest that the problem of student dropout can be successfully be dealt with by involving researchers and experienced policy makers who have considerable level of expertise and judgement.
2.7.5.2 Unpreparedness and lack of academic support as causes to dropout
Being underprepared for higher education studies has been pointed out as one of the prime attributions leading to student dropout for, largely, first-year students. Much of the literature has dealt with dropout at undergraduate level than the postgraduate level. The current body of literature on dropout have presented copious corresponding postulations and research findings, which have blamed a high school level for producing less qualified and unready students to study at higher education institutions.
Although not all, as posited by Wingate (2007, p. 393), many first-year students experience serious challenges during their transitions from high schools to the university system because they lack autonomy and self-learning skills. As an
exemplary case, the University of Washington’s (2016) research that wanted to predict dropout based on students’ attributions of dropout have found that many first-year students drop out from their studies as a result of, inter alia, being underprepared. To uproot the problem in the South African post-school system, Naude and Bezuidenhout (2015, p. 222) pointed out that South African universities have been using a continuum of support intervention strategies which subsume, inter alia, offering students with foundation and bridging courses as well as academic support. A far-reaching review of literature for creating the foundation of this study has sufficiently divulged that bridging courses to prepare students to cope with the academic demands, to retain them, to improve their academic achievements and to prevent them from becoming victims of attrition have, for the past few decades, been a commonly used form of support for unprepared undergraduate students. For instance, at Prince of Songkla University, foundation subjects, English as well as a range of other options of modules to choose from, are also offered as bridging courses to help students meet their academic expectations and to curtail the dropout (Sittichai, 2012, p. 287) problem. A more contemporary preventive support strategy, as mentioned by Naude and Bezuidenhout (2015, p. 222), represents a shift in focus, moving from classifying students’ learning deficiencies and curbing them through the provision of bridging modules into developing staff and the institution. As exemplary cases to this shift in focus, the University of South Africa has introduced and continue to implement a mentoring programme to develop academics, particularly those who fall under the college of human sciences and who are mostly involved in first-year courses, and the young academic programme for academics who are less than 35 years old drawn yearly from the entire staff community. These programmes have been established to equip young academics with competency to enable them deal with a variety of problems while their executing instructional role. Another conventional type of mitigation strategies to combat student dropout for underprepared learners is through the expansion of scope of programme offerings. An analysis of related literature revealed that having a broader repertoire of educational programmes within the university is further confirmed to be one of the effective dropout mitigation strategies.
As an epitome, Di Pietro and Cutillo (2007, p. 547) reported that the Italian university system’s 2001 reform recommended, as part of the dropout prevention, that a wider range of qualifications must be offered in Italy’s universities to encourage students to remain studying and improve completion rates. Dekker, Pechenizkiy, and
Vleeshouwers (2009, p. 41) posit that universities should identify the so called ‘risk group’ as early as possible to minimize or probably curtail student dropout. ‘Risk group’, as described by Dekkert et al (2009, p. 41), refers to the student cohort which may be successful, but need specific intervention to help them succeed.
Vignoles and Pawdthavee (2009, p. 1) assert that if it is true that the disadvantaged students enrolling for higher education degrees are more likely to drop out, then the focus must shift from just widening access to higher education into facilitating the accomplishment of the registered degrees. A complementing finding on the notion of putting more attention to the facilitation of degree completion, Golde (2005, p. 686) suggests that the dropout of doctoral students can be mitigated by ensuring a positive advisor-student relationship which is characterised by regular intellectual support, interaction and trust. Although mitigation strategies, such as the use of bridging courses are important to reduce the dropout attributed to student unpreparedness, other universities were reported not have no mitigation strategy put in place for the doctoral students’ unpreparedness. For instance, the Midwestern University had no form of support for the unprepared doctoral students coming from poor educational background (Golde, 2005, p. 685) to reduce the gap.
In the forthcoming section, the discussion focuses on documented mitigation strategies for dropouts that are influenced by lack of counselling support as well as lack of career guidance for students.
2.7.5.3 Lack of counselling/career guidance as a cause of student dropout
While the preceding discussion dealt with academic support interventions for dropouts of students who are underprepared for higher education, this section is limited to how counselling as a form of student support can be used to address the dropout challenge.
In addition to offering bridging courses as has already been discussed, mitigation strategies such as counselling advices with more information on the variety of available programmes (Di Pietro and Cutillo, 2007, p. 547), best learning pedagogies, decision-making and a skill to manage time are all essential to address student dropout in higher education institutions (Lockhart, 2004). Manik’s (2014) study to determine reasons for dropout at UKZN reported that certain considerable student
cohort dropped out of the university mainly because they were not fully aware of myriad choices of educational programmes and had limited knowledge about those programmes and, compounding that problem even further, they were not provided counselling. Engrained from this finding, it is clear that career guidance is fundamental if universities want to achieve a decreased attrition fraction. In the view of Pearson (2012, p. 187), the duties and the responsibilities of the counsellor for students conducting research for higher degrees and their supervisors includes all components of organisational, social and mentoring support. As claimed by Pearson (2012, p. 187), this ensures an increased students’ satisfaction level on the degree pursuit.
Subsequently, when students’ satisfaction level escalates, the possibility to retain (evade dropout incidence) students in their studies also heightens (Levy (2007, p.
185). Studies into reasons for student dropout phenomenon have cited students’
negative perceptions on the future job opportunities as a factor causing attrition (Golde, 2005). To circumvent the attrition for students who hold negative perceptions about the job market available in the fields they are studying, Golde (2005, p. 696) advises that university departments must be in position to offer comprehensive information in advance to students with discerning questions. A similar dropout mitigation strategy was suggested to the Italian university system to enable students to take informed decisions that all universities in Italy must organise, conduct orientation sessions, and organise tutorial classes (Di Pietro, 2007, p. 547).
In order to mitigate dropout for which students attribute to reasons that are beyond the control of the university, such as learning while studying and wanting to pursue programmes which are not offered in the university, a closer contact between students and their lecturers is needed (Hovdhaugen and Aamodt, 2009).
The study done by Murray (2014) on factors that affect student dropout and graduation rates at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa revealed that helping students with accommodation and finance expedite their programme completion and prevent the possible dropout for certain group of students. Another strategy to preclude student dropout is through improving student involvement by means of enhancing commitment to peers, teachers and the school (Cabus, 2015, p. 599). It has been recognised in the plethora of related studies dealing with dropout facet that some students experience hitches during the transition period from a particular lower
level of education to the next higher one and, consequently drop out from their