Certificate call to help those who drop out

STUDENTS should be offered “interim qualifications” to make it easier for them to return to studying if they drop out of a degree course, a report has said.

Universities should carry out structured exit interviews of students who leave their course before it ends and use the information to help reduce dropouts, the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) said.

A report by the think tank calls on policymakers “to pay more regard” to students’ living costs and for universities to make “clever use of big data” to offer more personalised support to at-risk students.

It suggests that the UK’s achievement in keeping dropout rates low “masks significant variations” at individual higher education institutions and courses.

The Hepi report said: “Better resourced and more selective UK universities, such as the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College and some specialist colleges, tend to have very low non-continuation rates.

“Meanwhile, some other institutions, including those with lots of online provision and those with a high proportion of widening participation students, tend to have much higher rates.”

The paper noted that at least one in seven young students do not proceed from first year to second year in some UK universities.

The think tank has called on individual institutions to respond to information gathered through exit interviews with students who decide to drop out.

It has also suggested that a wider use of “staging qualifications” could make it easier for students who do not complete their course to obtain some academic credits.

Nick Hillman, director of Hepi and author of the report, said: “Where high dropout rates exist, they need to be tackled via better information for applicants, improved living cost support for students and better use of big data.”