Introduction

The Office of the Provost tasked Hanover Research to administer a Dropped Student Survey to assess why students chose to leave UH and to determine perceived strengths and areas for improvement. They survey was sent to 8,511 undergraduate and graduate students in the Spring of 2020. Students invited to participate consisted of students who were enrolled at UH during the 2017-18 or the 2018-19 academic years, had not graduated, and did not enrolled in the Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 semesters. Of the students invited to participate, 496 participated for a response rate of 5.8%. The survey consisted of a mix of selected response and open-ended questions.

Executive Summary and Recommendations

From the analysis of the full data set by Hanover Research Group and members of the Provost’s office, several recommendations are outlined:

UH should further increase efforts to connect undergraduate students to appropriate financial aid resources.

1. UH should evaluate financial aid office services.
2. Provide additional training for financial aid officers.
3. Proactively offer guidance and advice to students.
4. Revamp financial resource websites to help connect students with existing or new financial resources to reduce debt burden.

UH should focus more academic support for students.

1. Promote positive interactions between faculty members and students.
2. Offer professional development (e.g., mentorship programs) to help faculty members engage more effectively with their students at the department level.
3. Focus on improving academic support services (e.g., time management, tutoring, writing, study skills) for students.
4. Academic probation policy revisions - make it clearer and possible to repair poor academic standing and continue education to avoid suspensions.

UH should facilitate and organize programs to promote student-to-student interactions.

1. More involvement with extracurricular activities, especially geared towards commuter students.
2. Encouraging larger friendship networks among students to help them feel more connected.
3. Introduce a “Bring a Friend” enrollment incentive. For example, bringing four or more friends receive a discount on tuition/housing while all are enrolled, thereby fostering increase connectedness.
4. UH could expand programs such as learning communities, peer mentoring programs, and orientation events.

For future communications/marketing purposes, UH should reach out to students for official communications via email while promoting UH events and activities on Instagram.

Key Findings

Original motivation to enroll

Students were asked what motivated them to enroll at UH. Of the 496 respondents, students identified location, reputation, and program offerings as the top three reasons for choosing UH:

Students were also given a chance to provide open ended responses to this question. We analyzed the open ended responses by tabulating the words they used11 We excluded common English stop words like articles of speech (e.g., and, the, of) and stemmed words so that we count words like “finances”, “financial”, “financially” into their root word financi. to a get a sense of what themes emerged from their responses:

Primary reason for stopping

Students cited financial, academic performance, and personal reasons for stopping their enrollment. White respondents cited personal reasons (24%), African-American students cited financial reasons, and Asian respondents cited academic performance as their primary reasons for stopping (25%).

Twenty-four percent of respondents selected “Other” as their reason for stopping their enrollment at UH right after financial reasons. There were many reasons listed in the open-ended responses. Some common reasons include class offerings, other schools that accept transfer credits, specific programs offered at other schools (BSN), advisor availability, and personal reasons including mental health, death, relocation, commute, and other medical reasons. The following show the most commonly cited reasons and examples of those reasons:

Satisfaction with UH

Generally, respondents had mixed feeling with their overall experience at UH. Overall, 48% indicated they were satisfied and 39% were dissatisfied with their experience at UH. More respondents were detractors (less likely to recommend UH to others) than promoters (likely to recommend UH to others). Out-of-state respondents (50%) were statistically more likely to recommend/promote UH to other people than in-state (23%) or international respondents (14%).

Respondents were most satisfied with UH’s respect for diversity (73% somewhat/completely satisfied), quality of technology (67%), and quality of instruction (61%).22 Survey question asked students to rate their satisfaction level with aspects of UH with choices for completely dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat satisfied, and completely satisfied. Academic support services, academic advising, financial aid, and career coaching are potential areas for improvement as respondents reported being least satisfied with these aspects of their UH experience.

Improving UH Experience

More than half of respondents reported that a lower cost of attendance (62%) would improve their experience. Other ways in which UH might improve respondents’ experience include improving academic support services (36%), improving faculty interaction with students (35%), providing greater scheduling flexibility (34%), and improving student support services (34%). Overall, this finding is consistent with previous findings on respondents’ reasons for stopping enrollment and satisfaction with UH offices.

Open ended responses to this question identified parking, program requirements, advising, and smaller classes as additional areas to improve student experience.