Keeping the Best & Brightest:

Graduate Schools and the High Cost of Student Attrition

Universities make a tremendous investment when they recruit or enroll graduate students, especially doctoral students. Student attrition, a term used to describe when students resign from a university, “drop out,” transfer to another college, or simply do not complete their degree programs, can mean high costs for a university. Notre Dame made a potent statement in one report, indicating that the university could save $1 million a year if their attrition rate would decrease by just ten percent. In addition to the financial costs attrition has on a university, leaving a doctoral program without completing it also can have tremendous adverse affects on the life and career of the student.

These are only a few of the reasons why it is important to determine ways universities can increase their rates of retention and completion.  College of Education Assistant Professor Susan Gardner, LSU alumnus and University of Texas Clinical Assistant Professor, Joe Lott, and LSU graduate research assistant, Tam Le, are examining ways to do just that. The group released preliminary findings from the first phase of their study, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which examined quantitative data from the LSU Office of Budget and Planning. The data included 218 separate variables for 10,088 students enrolled in any LSU doctoral program from 1984 to 2006.

“Very few universities have these kinds of data.  LSU is unique in that it has not only maintained data on every single degree program in the university, but has done so for several decades.  Literally every doctoral student who has entered this university has been accounted for and not many universities can say that,” says Gardner.

In addition to keeping track of this data, LSU scored high overall.  LSU experienced an average completion rate of 52.3 percent—higher than the Council of Graduate Schools national average of 50 percent. Several doctoral programs at LSU experienced an unusually high completion rate.  For example, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Pathobiological Sciences experienced a 78.4 percent retention rate, the Department of Communication Studies had a 76.5 percent retention rate, and the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences had a 72.7 percent retention rate.

The researchers agree that some attrition is simply unavoidable. However, the longer students are in the program, the more funding and time the university invests in them.  If attrition must occur, it would be less costly for it to occur within the first two to three years of doctoral study, a type of attrition usually associated with student uncertainty about the level of intensity or scope of doctoral programs of study. While this is the preference, it is definitely not the trend.  The LSU researchers cited that one-third of attrition occurs during the dissertation phase, typically at the very end of the doctoral program.

Thus, timing of attrition was a major focus of the study; however, there also were some interesting findings among the many variables analyzed. For instance, the study found that the racial make up of students that complete the program is representative of the racial make up of the total doctoral student population. This is also true of the non-completing students. Most of the non-completing students (70.35 percent) were enrolled continuously in the degree program but never earned a doctorate. This means they attended for more than one semester and did not take any semesters off. They had a retention time of 2.54 years, or approximately five semesters.

The time to degree averaged 5.4 years across all of LSU’s doctoral degree programs and there was an inverse relationship between time to degree and completion rates. Males took less time to graduate, as did the Hispanic population and non-U.S. citizens. Approximately 73 percent of the completers were single. The study also illustrated that married students took less time to complete the program than single students. This is notable because the longer time students spend in the program, the longer it takes to get their degree, the more costly it is for both the institution and the student and the more likely the student is to drop from the program. Time to degree rates can be influenced by research mode, program structure, types of dissertations, and departmental advising.

The findings of this study also discard a common myth that some students simply can’t cut it.  The undergraduate grade point average of non-completers averaged only .08 less than completers; the graduate grade point average of non-completers was only .25 lower…not to mention they averaged a higher GRE score by about 32 points.

Like many universities, there are several departments at LSU that suffer from low completion rates. The research team hopes that findings from this and other studies will assist departments in determining ways to increase their graduate student completion rates. The researchers will investigate a qualitative portion of this two-part study, including a series of interviews with faculty, administrators, and students, as well as observation and document analysis in the spring of 2007. And, while determining causes of student attrition is critical, it is also complex.  The researchers warn that retention is not the exact opposite of attrition and that eliminating causes of attrition may not result in higher rates of retention. More studies need to be focused on these important challenges facing higher education.