Why students leave engineering and built environment programmes when they are academically eligible to continue

Abstract

The retention of students to graduation is a concern for most higher education institutions. This article seeks to understand why engineering and built environment students fail to continue their degree programmes despite being academically eligible to do so. The sample comprised 275 students registered between 2006 and 2011 in a faculty of engineering and the built environment, who were academically eligible to continue, but failed to register for their studies the following academic year. The sociological notions of structure and agency were used to make sense of the data. The findings suggest that some students had control over their decision to leave and some students’ decisions were dominated by various structural factors. The outcome of the study is helpful in terms of suggesting what actions can be taken in order reduce the number of students leaving in good academic standing.

Keywords:

• student withdrawal
• student retention
• drop out
• engineering education

About the authors

Nazeema Ahmed is a Clinical Psychologist in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town and is a member of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education. She is very involved in academic development in the Faculty and is particularly interested in the psychological well-being of students studying towards their higher education degrees.

Bruce Kloot is an Academic Development Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. He has a technical background in Chemical Engineering and has recently become interested in the sociology of education in order to understand the challenges facing higher education in South Africa after the democratic transition.

Brandon I. Collier-Reed is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Deputy Dean, Undergraduate Education in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of Cape Town. His research looks to understand the student learning experience through the use of the methodological approach called phenomenography. A further research area of interest is the technological literacy of adolescents and the use of ICTs in engineering education.

Notes

1. The term ‘black’ in this study refers to those categorised as ‘non-white’ by the apartheid government. It includes those classified as black African, ‘coloured’ and Indian. While it is recognised that categorisations of ‘race’ were used to legitimate apartheid, it is impossible to avoid the use of these terms in this study.

2. The reason why the term ‘agentic’ reflexivity is used here is because reflexivity is equally important to Bourdieu's work as one his most useful books, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), indicates. However, this speaks to the importance of reflexive sociology as the social scientist endeavours to give a properly scientific account of the social world of which he or she is inevitably a part.

3. In South Africa such institutions were called ‘technikons’ and were re-named ‘universities of technology’ in 2001.

4. Archer further distinguishes culture from structure and agency in her morphogenetic approach.