Student Mortality and Related Factors

Abstract

THE EMPHASIS on science education since the launching of Sputnick I has tended to obscure other important problems in American education. One of these is the problem of student mortality ? or Why Students Leave School. This problem exists at the secondary and the collegiate levels. We are con cerned here with the latter. It has been estimated that approximately 50% of the students who enter col lege leave before they receive a degree, and most of these leave in the first year. This situation presents serious problems to the student in terms of blighted hopes and frustrated ambitions;to the colleges in terms of useful services not rendered; and to the na tion in terms of wasted human resources. The psychology department of Temple Univer sity recently undertook a study of this problem. The study was designed to find in what respects students leaving college differed from those who remained to complete their work. Previous investigations had not concentrated upon this aspect of the problem. An analysis of the literature on the subject revealed several weaknesses in previous approaches. In the first place most of the studies concentrated upon factors related to the achievement of those who re mained in school, rather than upon those factors as sociated with withdrawal. Secondly, when they had examined factors which contributed to withdrawal they concentrated on one or two causes, rather than in vestigating several causes. Finally, when describ ing the withdrawal groups they have listed its char acteristics without comparison to those who remain in school. Such description without comparison does not shed light on the real factors contributing to stu dent mortality. For example, if one hundred students have financial difficulties and fifty leave school while the others remain, then factors other than financial played the decisive role. This study has emphasized a comparison of withdrawing students with those who remain in school. A recent entering class at Temple University was chosen as the to be studied. This class consisted of 816 freshmen registered in the Liberal Arts College, the Teachers College, and the School of Business and Public Administration, Of this 262 or 32% did not register the following September. One-half year later an additional 8% dropped out. This represents a 40% loss in one and a half years with 2/3 of the loss coming in the first year. This emphasizes the crucial nature of the first year. In conducting this study complete data were collected on all of the students. This included en trance test information, application blank informa tion and information obtained in a personal inter view. This report concerns itself primarily with an analysis of the information obtained from the inter view. To point out the characteristics inwhichwith drawing students differ from remaining students a control group was used. Employing sampling techniques, students were selected from the remain ing college population and were used as a standard against which the withdrawal was compared. It proved impossible to interview all of the students. Therefore, systematically selected samples w e r e obtained from each group, and these people were in terviewed. The following chart presents the nature of the groups under consideration and those actually interviewed. It is to be noted that this report deals with comparisons between those who left the Univer sity after the first semester, and those who regis tered for the second semester.

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• Temple University US

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