Abstract
<p>Student retention rate has been a major concern for tertiary institutions around the world since the establishment of formal education. Generally speaking, not every student completes his or her study program. Although students fail to graduate for different reasons, some of them choose to voluntarily withdraw from their study programs. This might affect the image of the tertiary institutions in many different ways including their academic reputation and financial plans. To deal with such critical issue, there is a need for strategies and plans that are based on the findings of scientific research. The literature of student retention in higher education is rich of the theoretical models and empirical studies that gained consideration among researchers and educators over the last four decades. Therefore, some of these studies and theoretical models were comprehensively reviewed and discussed. The purpose of this is to provide researchers, educators and policy makers with a background to this issue and the latest strategies and techniques that help them deal with it as well as to find the common patterns and themes of the mostly reported student attrition factors.</p>
Highlights
Student attrition has been one of the most a critical issues in higher education for long time
It is essential for the educators and policy makes who seek solutions for such a problem to have an understanding of the background of the student retention phenomenon and the most frequent factors that lead students to leave their study programs
The main conclusion of the study was that the results of the statistical analysis supported the merging of the two theoretical models, as this gave a comprehensive understanding of the student attrition process
Summary
Student attrition has been one of the most a critical issues in higher education for long time. It is important to deal with such critical issue through strategies and plans that are based on the findings of scientific research. It is essential for the educators and policy makes who seek solutions for such a problem to have an understanding of the background of the student retention phenomenon and the most frequent factors that lead students to leave their study programs. The literature of student retention in higher education is rich of the theoretical models and empirical studies that gained consideration among researchers and educators over the last four decades. This paper gives a comprehensive review of the highly cited and adopted studies and theoretical models of student retention in higher education. It does so by giving a historical background of student retention studies and models, trace their development over the past four decades, presents, review the major conceptual and theoretical models in the literature of student retention in higher education, and discuss their limitations
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