Survival Analysis on Undergraduate Students� Persistence- Case study

Abstract

A longitudinal study on 1,998 undergraduate students in the four-year program was conducted in one of the universities in Kenya. These were students who had been admitted in the years 2012, 2013 and 2014. Data collected was for 64 months, from January 1, 2012 to May 27, 2017.Survival analysis was used to model and analyze the persistence of these students at the university. It was found that majority of the students who withdrew from the university did so in the first 12 months of study. There was a significant difference in the persistence of the male and female students, with the female students having a higher survival rate than the male students. It was also found that the persistence of the Kenyan and Non-Kenyan students was significantly different, with the Kenyan students having a higher survival rate than the Non-Kenyan students. Gender had a significant effect on the survival of these students with the risk of a male student withdrawing being 2 times higher than that of a female student.