Retention and Attrition in Chile’s Higher Education. Why Studying them?

Abstract

This research reviews relevant Chilean Higher Education’s facts and figures about attrition and retention during 1970-2011, to show the importance of studying these topics within the present educational context. Regardless the difficulties encountered to find statistics about these phenomena – which is already a sign of the necessity of more research in this area, the attrition and retention rates found were alarming. The attrition rates during the 80s for Chilean universities reached about 50% and even higher. In 2004 the retention rate for universities was 81%. In 2007 the attrition rate registered during the first year at the university was 30%. Although these figures, the student enrollment in Chilean Higher Education is growing (there are 1 million 68 thousand students enrolled nowadays), to then fail due to the high rates of attrition reported previously, leaving these students and their families in debt and with scarce possibilities to find good paid jobs that could help them to discharge these debts, which worsens the inequity in Chile. Evidently more and better education public (and private) policies are needed to surmount this problem, but to achieve that is needed also more research about attrition and retention in Chile’s Higher Education.

Keywords: retention, attrition, Higher Education, Chile