Factors that Influence Undergraduate University Desertion According to Students Perspective

Abstract

University desertion is defined as a withdrawal from the academic system that has a negative impact on the economic and social environment.Desertion is influenced by internal and external factors that affect students, institutions, and governments.A literature review shows empirical evidence concerning research conducted to solve the desertion problem.However, most of the studies we analyzed do not consider students' perceptions, which are a key factor in college dropout rates.For this reason, we propose some new factors that influence university desertion.These factors are supported by a study of 65 organizational and educational theories.To examine the influence of these factors, a case study was conducted with 3773 students at a public university in Ecuador.Logistic regression was used to determine the causal relationship between the identified factors and the students' university desertion.As a result, we established that when all the identified factors are present at the same time, the probability of a student deciding to drop out of college is 95% your paper to be published in the conference proceedings, you must use this document as both an instruction set and as a template into which you can type your own text.If your paper does not conform to the required format, you will be asked to fix it.Keyword-Educational data mining, logistic regression, university desertion, desertion factors I. INTRODUCTION University desertion is a problem that affects most higher education institutions around the world.This topic generates controversy among administrators, professors, and students [1].Today, high dropout rates are considered a possible deficiency of the undergraduate education system [2].This can be seen from the academic and administrative indicators presented by management personnel at universities and higher education control agencies.In 2016, the dropout rate in India was 15.9% [3], while in Belgium, it was 26.9%; in the UnitedStates, the desertion rate for first and second year students was 44.8% [4], and in Costa Rica, it reached up to 49%.According to the United Nations (UN), the 2016 university desertion rate was 40% in several Latin-American countries, such as Colombia and Ecuador, and was approximately 54% in Brazil.University desertion is influenced by a set of interacting factors that have a negative impact on students' decisions to drop out of college [5].A literature review allows us to identify several studies related to factors that influence desertion.Nevertheless, these studies do not consider students' perspectives, which play a key role in university desertion.Consequently, the following study is based on organizational and educational theories and proposes 11 new factors that affect university desertion while taking students' perspectives into consideration.To examine the influence of these factors, an empirical study is performed with 3773 students.This article is organized into six sections.In section two, the literature review is presented.The methodology applied in this research is described in section three.Sections four and five detail the experimental process and discuss the results, respectively.Finally, in section six, we state our conclusions. II. LITERATURE REVIEWUniversity desertion can be defined as the cessation of an academic process and the non-completion of a formative process in higher education [6].It is a problem that worries governments and has become a weakness in university education due to its high rates, which have negative effects on students and on the economic growth of societies [7].Specifically, a university deserter is a student who has not exhibited academic activity for two consecutive semesters [6].According to Stratton et al. [8], most studies related to university desertion indicate that once a student drops out of college, he/she will never resume his/her studies.Hence, university desertion is considered a permanent condition.

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