With student retention becoming a priority, universities are seeking out the strategies that work best to bring down drop-out rates

The UK is a world leader when it comes to student retention – it came top in the latest OECD data (from 2014), with 71% of the country’s students completing their undergraduate courses, in contrast with 49% in the US and just 31% in Australia.

There is, however, huge variation within the country – data from 2013-14 found that while the Royal College of Music didn’t have a single student drop out, almost one in five of those at London Metropolitan University did. And the picture changes with the type of student, too – over-30s and those from low-income backgrounds are far more likely to leave before finishing their courses.

Students who drop out are costly to universities in terms of lost funding. But the imminent introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework, which will use non-continuation rates as one its metrics, means universities are going to be paying more attention than ever to making sure their students stick with it.

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s What Works? initiative has been exploring ways to improve continuation rates for almost a decade now. The first report was published in 2012, detailing the work of seven projects that took place in UK universities over three years. The findings of the second round were published in April, reporting on new projects in 13 universities.



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Telling students what’s expected of them

The University of Wolverhampton was one of them. Its contribution, led by research development manager Dr Debra Cureton, focused on a remarkably straightforward intervention: making sure that students understand what they are expected to do in assignments.

The “inclusive assessment” process, piloted in three departments, was designed to stop unnecessary anxiety around tasks. Lecturers were given guidelines to ensure that briefs were clear, students had formal opportunities to discuss assignments together, and they could ask anonymous questions.

“We wanted it to be as useful and as simple as possible,” Cureton explains. “Institutional research showed that some of our students spent more time trying to understand an assignment brief than working on it – and when they didn’t understand, they would often go to their friends, passing around misunderstandings.

“[Inclusive assessment] doesn’t mean they’re sharing the intellectual property of the assignment – they’re talking about the mechanics of how they’re going to do it.”

Cureton highlights the university’s significant number of non-traditional students: 40% represent the first generation of their family to attend university, over-30s account for about 60% of intake, one in four have caring responsibilities for children, one in five have financially dependent family members.

The results were impressive. As well as reported improvements in student engagement and confidence, and a reduction in failure to submit, the attainment gap between white and black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates was virtually closed.

The percentage of students getting 50% or higher in assignments in 2012-13 was 37% for BME candidates and 53% for their white peers. By 2014-15, the figures were 74% and 70% respectively. The programme is now being rolled out across the university.

Putting tutorials on the timetable

The University of Salford’s music and performance department also took part in What Works, trialling a new approach to personal tutoring. Rather than speaking to a tutor when an issue arose, students had group tutorials as part of their timetables. Academic staff were assigned groups, given time in their schedules, and required to follow up non-attendance.

“There was resistance from students initially because they didn’t really understand what it was,” says Gill Molyneaux, the university’s executive policy officer. “They thought it was a sign of weakness, that only students who had problems went to tutors. It took time to realise that there was a benefit to having that hour every week with a member of staff.”

Continuation rates rose from 77% to 85% in music, and 81% to 89% in performance, but a wider impact was also felt in communication.

“What music and performance found was that niggles could be resolved quite quickly,” Molyneaux says. “Rather than something bubbling up and becoming a major complaint at a staff-student committee meeting – which might take place halfway through a semester – things were being nipped in the bud. So at staff-student committee meetings, the number of issues being raised were considerably fewer.”

The university has since amended its student voice policy to include more informal discussion between staff and students, in the hope of continuing this trend.

Sharing ideas that work

In the US, where retention is much bigger problem, a group of university leaders decided to address the issue together. The University Innovation Alliance comprises 11 institutions, working together to, in their words, “create a playbook of proven innovations to help students from all family backgrounds graduate”.

The project started with a conversation between the university leaders in 2013, explains Bridget Burns, executive director of the organisation. “They were fed up with seeing so much tinkering and very little progress in terms of addressing the national achievement gap, so they decided to put their heads together,” she says.

Each year the Alliance universities adopt an initiative that has been proved to work – the first was the use of predictive analytics, followed by proactive advising. Alliance member Georgia State University, for example, now tracks around 800 indicators of performance – from attendance at lectures to grades received in assignments – and each Monday an alert is raised for any student who looks to be at risk of dropping out. The university deploys 3,000 advising hours a week to work with these students.

“Most universities are playing defence, rather than offence,” says Burns. “But this is anticipatory, rather than reactionary.”

It’s a system that has been adopted by all of the Alliance members and it has had remarkable effects: Georgia State has doubled its graduation rate over seven years and is rapidly closing the attainment gap.

The next Alliance initiative is completion grants, which will be rolled out next year. Under this system, universities pay off up to $1,000 (£786) owed on the accounts of low-income students who are due to graduate but are being back by what Burns describes as “nominal” debts.

“It’s low-hanging fruit,” she continues. “We say we care about graduation, but we have all kinds of roadblocks for students like fines and late fees that build up and mean they can’t register for classes, which stops them from graduating.”

And although such interventions require investment, they can pay off quickly. At Georgia State, Burns says, they invested $1.8m in predictive analytics and proactive advising, but are seeing a $3m return for every 1% increase in retention.

“Institutions are haemorrhaging students and then going out to find more enrolments to replace them, rather than doing a good job with the ones they have,” she continues. “This is a financially smart move, as well as being the best thing for students – it’s one of those rare spaces where the ethically correct thing to do is also financially rewarding.”

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