The aim of this work is to provide data-driven insights regarding the factors behind dropouts in Higher Education and their impact over time. To this end, we analyzed students' data collected by a Higher Education Institute over the last 11 years and we explored how socio-economic and academic changes may have impacted student dropouts and how…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) program only reports state-level subgroup results if it samples at least 62 students identifying with the subgroup. Since some subgroups constitute small proportions of many states' general student populations, these minority subgroups are seldom sufficiently sampled to meet this sample size…

This study aims to reveal the main trends and findings of the studies examining the use of learning analytics in distance education. For this purpose, journal articles indexed in the SSCI index in the Web of Science database were reviewed, and a total of 400 journal articles were analysed within the scope of this study. The systematic review…

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…

The present study investigated individual differences in the effects of academic motivation based on self-determination theory (SDT), particularly intrinsic motivation, as well as identified, introjected, and external regulation on higher education students' intention to drop out. Based on previous research, we challenged the assumption of a…

Social support from the supervisor and the researcher community has been identified as one of the determinants for successful completion of doctoral studies. Still surprisingly little is known about the function of social support for early career Post-PhD researchers. Even less is known about the individual variation in experienced social support…

Research in the area of family structure and educational outcomes has often failed to account for instability in family structure. Furthermore, prior research in this area has been dominated by North American studies with a smaller body emerging from Europe. This study draws upon 10,783 young people and their parents from the Longitudinal Study of…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are being used across the world to provide millions of learners with access to education. Many who begin these courses complete them successfully, or to their own satisfaction, but the high numbers who do not finish remain a subject of concern. In 2013, a team from Stanford University analyzed engagement…

Postsecondary education plays a critical role in building a strong workforce in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The U.S. postsecondary education system, however, frequently loses many potential STEM graduates through attrition. An increasing portion of STEM leavers are top performers who might have made valuable…

A large body of work has examined factors that push and pull youth to drop out. However, a relatively minimal amount of work has examined whether and how these factors cluster in individuals' lives preceding or concurrent to leaving school. This study used Latent Class Analysis with a national sample (N = 1,942) to examine how push, pull, and…

Online learning has continued to grow in recent years. However, retaining students in online courses and programs has posed a challenge. Whether the university is public, private, offers both face-to-face and online programs, or is 100% online, retaining students in online programs can be an issue. This study reflects the widespread desire at a…

The purpose of this study was to assess the relative influence of career, financial, personal, and legal factors on African American male engagement in postsecondary career and technical education and to determine whether the influence of these factors was moderated by the participants having graduated or not graduated high school and by their…

Completion rates for massive open online classes (MOOCs) are notoriously low, but learner intent is an important factor. By studying students who drop out despite their intent to complete the MOOC, it may be possible to develop interventions to improve retention and learning outcomes. Previous research into predicting MOOC completion has focused…

Medical trainees are at risk of psychological distress due to training workload demands. Dropping out of medicine has hidden and real costs to both the public and the individual. Using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this study assessed differences in stress and coping strategies between those serious and not serious about dropping out…

Spain has one of the highest levels of early school leaving and educational failure of the European Union. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the anatomy of early school leaving in Spain and its characteristics. In order to do so, in the first part we discuss the measurement problems related with this concept and the evolution of drop-out…