Undergraduates abandoning study is a long-standing problem for universities, especially when spun by politicians and press claiming HE institutions have let students down. Problem is factors that drive dropping-out are often anecdotally assumed. So Tomasz Zając (Uni Queensland) and colleagues dove into a huge data source to identify the role of one assumed explanation for course withdrawal – mental health. *
This paper holds need-to-know information for universities, which must address drop-out rates lest they be blamed for them. A 2018 study of attrition for the Higher Education Standards Panel found universities could not duck responsibility by blaming student circumstances (Campus Morning Mail June 8 20128).
Rather than survey students, Zając and colleagues partnered with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to examine de-identified records from the Commonwealth’s Higher Education Information Management System, Medicare and pharmaceutical benefits data and personal Income tax records. The set was 652 000 domestic undergraduate starters, 2012-16.
They found the drop-rate for students treated for mental health was 4.3 per cent higher than for other students. That translates to 3700 additional students, or 925 annually giving it away on study.. And they report that the effects of mental health status are “largely uniform” across groups of students. Women, students from English-speaking backgrounds, who were delayed-entry, or with a physical disability “were overrepresented among students receiving mental health treatment.”
