Our new study Everyone In, based on a survey carried out by YouthSight, uncovers the importance of taking notice of student drop-out rates.
With over 6,500 students surveyed on topics from preparedness for work to mental health, the importance of student retention at university started to emerge as a key factor in helping to set up our future generations for better working opportunities.
A multitude of factors were shown to affect student life satisfaction, and these areas were even more pronounced for students who self declared as belonging to multiple minority groups, such as LGB+, coming from working class families, belonging to an ethnic minority and having a mental health condition. The students were asked how financial matters, social integration and even Brexit affected their life satisfaction, as well as whether they had ever considered dropping out of university.
The answers to these questions start to draw out some of the reasons these multiple minority group students may be finding their studies less satisfactory than the general student population. We found that 10% of students had strongly considered dropping out of their course. Compare that to 21% of students with mental health conditions strongly considering leaving, as well as 21% of disabled students and 15% of LGB+ students. For those belonging to three or more groups, 22% had strongly considered dropping out and 37% had sometimes considered it. In fact only 40% of students belonging to three or more groups had never considered dropping out compared with an overall average of 62%.
A strong support network and good social integration showed as important in keeping students on track. Without these, students appeared more prone to consider dropping out, and this is exactly what some lesbian, gay, and bisexual students as well as ethnic minority, disabled and working class students felt was missing.
But, why are we worried about retention?
Besides the obvious reason that students are more likely to achieve a degree if they stay on their course, our studies show a large difference in students' feelings of soft skill progression between a student's 1st and 3rd year. In more detail, students feel their social, communication and team working skills, as well as understanding of different cultures and confidence growth rises by an average of 9.6% from their first year to third.
This could mean that students who miss out on finishing their degrees also miss out on becoming competent in vital work skills. These are skills that are more difficult to learn than hard skills because they are more abstract and rely on social interaction, where as hard skills can usually be learnt and practiced alone with the correct resources.
A study in May, 2017 by Deloitte Access Economics has forecast that by 2030, soft skill intensive occupations will make up two-thirds of all jobs, with a growth rate of 2.5 times the rate of other jobs. This is mostly down to more job automation, advances in technology, and globalisation. As offices become more culturally integrated, and automation replaces manual tasks, a fine tuned social touch will be ever more important to be able to get by in the working world. The World Economic Forum even stated that 10 of the 16 'crucial proficiencies in the 21st century', are non-technical.
Companies are already altering how they operate and how much they invest in soft skills as the link between human capital and economic growth grows stronger. This means that soft skills could be essential tick boxes for hiring employers in the future, so missing out on these skills could make future job prospects for students more uncertain than at present.
And uncertainty about job prospects is already quite high due to the current political climate. Our study found that 48% of students feel that Brexit will negatively affect their job prospects, and only 61% 'feel prepared' in getting their first job.
Unfortunately, the students who fall into our study groups seem to fare worse than our general student sample. Where 62% of students with no mental health condition said they feel prepared to get their first job, only 55% of students with a mental health condition agreed.
In fact, 45% of students without a mental health condition feel getting a job will, "need some effort and luck but is achievable", but only 37% of students with a declared mental health condition had the same confidence, and 13% said it would be, "almost impossible, but I'll have a go". These students are also more worried (by 12%) about not getting a similar level of support from a future employer as they get from their university.
Linking back to soft skills, confidence levels differ between students with a disability and those without. 76% of students with no disability feel they have grown in confidence whilst at university, but only 66% of disabled students feel this way. Alarmingly, students with a disability rate themselves lower by an average of 7% in all the listed soft skills, including social, teamworking and communication skills as well as cultural understanding.
If a student feels that finding work is going to be a serious challenge, these fears are more than likely compounded by a lack of confidence and integration. This combination of feelings is much more likely to feed any doubts a student may have about continuing with their current course, making a student much more likely to seriously consider dropping out.
Of course there is much more to university than simply getting a job at the end of it, though this is understandably front of mind for students who may be investing significant resources of time and money into their degree. Our report sheds light on how, for some students, the return on this investment might be more difficult to realise. It also shows the human cost borne by some groups of students who are at greater risk of dropping out, with all the stress and unhappiness this can entail.
Higher education is a place of opportunity, and of course no part of the educational system can cure all the inequality seen in wider society. But it does feel as though there are still improvements to be made in the quest for a more just society, and a sector that genuinely offers the best possible opportunity to everyone. By drilling down into specific areas of disadvantage, I hope this report can prompt some of the answers as well as simply raising the issues.