First-term students reasons and circumstances for early withdrawal from the University of Tennessee

At a time when the pool of potential college-bound students is shrinking, yet many higher education institutions are raising their academic standards, reasons students voluntarily drop out of college seems a worthy area of research. The present study examines why students at The University of Tennessee withdrew very early in their first semester, before academic variables could have contributed. Literature on student attrition suggests students are at risk of voluntarily leaving if they do not become integrated into some part of college life-either academic or social--quite early in their academic career. However, little research has been done specifically on drop outs during the first few weeks of a term. In addition to determining the reasons students withdrew during the first three weeks of Fall terms 1987-1989, this study looked at two variables related to students' high schools that may have interacted with those reasons: location/distance from the University and the graduation class size. Results indicated students frequently withdrew for personal reasons, especially students from high schools farther than 120 miles away. Students from smallest- or middle-sized schools withdrew proportionally more often than from largest-sized when compared with students who stayed. Suggestions for future research using these variables and others are given.