Characteristics of Australian higher education providers and their relation to first-year student attrition

Over the last 20 years, there has been significant interest in factors leading to student drop out (attrition) from first-year higher education studies. The factors identified include a range of personal attributes of the students themselves as well as academic and administrative aspects of higher education institutions’ operations. Concern over attrition is primarily centred on financial and reputational issues, for governments and for the institutions. But the issue is of considerable significance for the students themselves, in terms of wasted time and personal debt.

While many new approaches to improving student attrition outcomes have been tried and there has been some improvement in retention in Australia and other countries, the improvement is not universal across the institutions, and there remains a persistent level of attrition in the sector.

In Australia, the Commonwealth Government has been monitoring and publishing university attrition rates regularly and has a significant historical time series of data on attrition from 1992 to the present time (Department of Education, Science and Training, 2004; Department of Education, 2015; and Department of Education and Training, 2016). The published data show that overall, until 2010 average attrition rates were slowly decreasing in universities but not universally, and since then have slightly increased, but currently are at similar levels to those observed early in the decade.

TEQSA categorises providers in Australia’s diverse higher education sector into various ‘market’ groupings. The two major groups are universities and non-university higher education providers (NUHEPS). The latter is divided into a number of subcategories (TAFE, faith-based not-for-profit, other not-for-profit, for-profit and pathway organisations) which exhibit different student profiles, institutional characteristics and attrition rates. Therefore it is important to look at student attrition across the whole-sector, and not just in the universities.

Student attrition is identified by TEQSA as a major risk factor for higher education providers. Indeed, it is the most common indicator of high risk to students across the sector.

A copy of the report is available above in PDF format.