The study is set in Australia, where students may be excluded from university due to poor progress within one’s academic program. The phenomenon is called involuntary attrition, defined by the authors as ’a student being discontinued from study by their university against their wishes’. Though one may argue about what the analogous situation in the Swedish context would be, the focus of this study is not to examine the attrition procedure per se, but to investigate why students who did well during the early stages of university education, later begin to fail courses (and thereby become at risk of involuntary attrition). Clearly, no matter the formal rules of progression, studies that are interrupted because of academic failure, not a change of mind, are a great loss for both the individual student, the university and society.
The authors build their analysis on self-reports from 90 business students who were prompted by a university Academic Progress Committee to argue for why they should not be excluded, despite academic underachievement. Many students gave several reasons for their poor results, and the most common were 1) a ’need to work’, 2) health issues most commonly described as depression/anxiety, 3) financial problems, 4) family challenges, 5) relationship difficulties, 6) financial disadvantage. Responses were diverse, though, and lack of motivation was also quite regularly reported. When follow-up free-text answers were clustered together into categories, the authors found that course and time related issues (such as time management and inability to meet course requirements) dominated, followed by concerns of personal character, such as bad health and relationships.
The article also refers to more general investigations of students’ wellbeing, showing that mental distress is overrepresented among university students in Australia and other countries, and tends to be related to financial difficulties or psychosocial factors (e.g., lack of confidence). In the paper, university managers are prompted to consider things that can be done to minimize unnecessary stress factors and increase student support — both at the purely course/educational level and psychosocially. Evidently, some of the issues mentioned by these students (say, ’breaking up with boyfriend’) are impossible for the university to prevent, but the overall structural support and environment that the students meet at their departments are still under our control.
Comment: Since the self-reports came in direct response to a warning of potential exclusion, they were written as requests for mercy and should be considered with that in mind. The authors, too, acknowledge that it perhaps is not too surprising that few of these students reported reasons like social activities or computer games (’too much fun’) — though some actually did! On the other hand, most of the students who reported mental health problems also attached medical certificates, so it probably would not be fair to disqualify the testimonies altogether either. It would be interesting to do a similar investigation, but one where the students’ future education is not dependent on their responses.
Text: Emma Wikberg, Department of Physics
