Attrition rates

Attempts were made to gather statistics of enrolment and withdrawal from college literacy classes. Only five Administrators answered the question about availability of statistics on dropout/retention. Three answers indicated that there were little or no data. One person said the data were not pulled together, but could be and another administrator said it would be possible with two weeks notice. This whole area is fraught with difficulties.

Instructors did provide some statistics for their own classes. As these classes represent different kinds of delivery, levels and approaches, they are not really comparable across the province. However, rates seemed to vary from 0 attrition to about 37 percent. The mode and the median appeared to be 17 percent and the mean 18 percent for the classes reported. (Most of these were for the September to December 1989 period.) In an overall college study of program attrition/retention Camosun College found a 60 percent retention rate in ABE and college prep programs for the period September 1987 to April 1988 (Beatty-Guenter, 1988).

There were reasons given for 20 withdrawals: 11 were job-related; 2 were because of sickness; 3 transferred to other classes within the college; 2 had moved away; one was "terminated because of poor attendance"; one did not see the need for upgrading at his particular age.

In chapter two, mention was made of the difficulty of getting in touch with withdrawals from a one-to-one tutoring program. However, one tutoring outreach program provided some information on its seven withdrawals during the most recent year. One person had family problems and a new tutor as the former one had moved away, thus it was easier to drop out. One was killed in a car accident. One woman had emotional problems due to separation from her husband. Another woman had alcohol-related problems. The remaining three were not motivated enough, so there was a lack of commitment to the learning process.