Course withdrawal: a comparison of business and engineering students in a private university

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the course withdrawal behavior of business and engineering students in a private university. While previous research has studied such behavior, the literature remains sparse and dated. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a negative binomial model in order to model the total number of course withdrawals for 760 students. The data set includes all courses taken by the students, with a total of 25,160 course outcomes. Findings: Among the findings of the study are that males withdraw from courses more than females, engineering courses have the highest withdrawal rates, and male engineering students withdraw more than any other group. Originality/value: While dropping out of college has received cross-national interest, the same cannot be said of course withdrawal. Most research to date has been conducted in a community college setting or has used a subset of the courses taken by students at universities in the USA. Thus, this is one of the first studies to investigate course withdrawal in another country.