Identifying facilitating factors and barriers to improving student retention rates in tertiary teaching courses: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Factors which impact student retention in tertiary level teaching courses are complex. This study examined facilitating factors and barriers to student retention for students studying education. Due to a limited number of studies, the search was extended to factors impacting students undertaking tertiary education. A systematic review was undertaken using databases such as, ‘Ebscohost’, ‘PsycARTICLES’, ‘Academic One File’, in addition to the University of Melbourne’s ‘Discovery Search’, which resulted in 34 studies meeting the eligibility criteria. The identified factors were first allocated to one of three categories that was identified in previous research as influential on student retention: situational, dispositional, and institutional factors. These three factors were then extended to include sub-factors to more fully define the model of facilitating factors and barriers identified through the systematic review.

KEYWORDS:

• Tertiary education
• tertiary completion
• student retention
• meta-analysis
• retention factors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Collier charitable fund [grant number 191214].