The most recent report on student enrolment at UBC indicates that retention rates for the university have been consistently high in recent years.
According to the report, “retention rate” refers to the “percentage of first time, first year, full-time, degree-seeking students who register in the following year." Essentially, it means those who continue their education.
David Farrar, UBC’s former Vice President Academic and Provost, was the author of the report. Farrar was unavailable to comment on the report.
According to the report, over the five-year span retention rates for the different data sets ranged from 72 per cent at the lowest point and 100 percent at the highest. In comparison to the average of post-secondary institutions in North America, retention rates at UBC are considerably high, said Kate Ross, UBC’s associate vice president of enrolment services and registrar.
“In the United States, we know nationally it’s in the 60 to 65 per cent range, and I would think Canada would be a little better than that … but UBC’s is very strong, very, very high,” said Ross.
Ross was unable to provide a concrete national average retention rate for Canadian institutions, as no organization exists in Canada to keep track of such information.
In terms of the overall retention rates for individual faculties, the Faculty of Kinesiology had the highest while the Faculty of Forestry had the lowest.
Despite variations in the different data sets, retention rates at UBC averaged in the 90 per range for domestic students and in the 80 per cent range for international students. Between 2009 and 2013, the disparity between the retention rates of these two groups of students did narrow.
The main reason for students who did not retain at the university was poor academic performance.
Farrar’s report attributes the increasing retention rates of international students to “enhancements to orientation, transition and student support programs, as well as guaranteed housing for first-year students.”
According to Ross, such university initiatives assist students in overcoming issues such as finding accommodations, which allows them to better focus on academics.
“It is a very significant transition, so we’ve invested in those things in order to improve retention for all students,” said Ross.
Another initiative that currently in progress that Ross believes will also improve retention rates is flexible learning, which was introduced in 2013 to develop the instructional skills of faculty staff at the university.
“The university is really putting a lot of focus in terms of how things are taught. It makes a difference in terms of how students perform,” said Ross.
Enrollment data for the previous academic year will be available in November.