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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
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21 September 2021

environmental context (Anishka and Thushara, 2016). Within the Sri Lankan context, the national
government is making a substantial investment on free education and, therefore, student dropout is a

serious issue which affects both the country’s education system and its economy. Dropout of

undergraduates from government universities raise several concerns within the universities; the
efficiency of the universities is being questioned, the quality of the academic programs is being

questioned, the management system of the universities is being questioned and may damage the
reputation of the university (Bedregal-Alpaca et al., 2020). On one hand, a high percentage of student

dropout exacerbates the lack of highly qualified individuals in the labour market that is predicted for
the next few decades (Vogler-Ludwig et al., 2016). On the other hand, only a limited number of

students are being selected for the government universities. From a societal point of view, dropout is

argued to be a waste of tax resources due to the individual blocking a university place that could have
been taken by another student (Sosu and Pheunpha, 2019). Considering this issue at the personal level,

it appears that dropout is often associated with personal failure, and both waste of time and monetary

investments (Behr et al., 2019).

In the United States, the overall dropout rate of undergraduate college students is estimated at 40%. In
Germany, the dropout rate is nearly 29% (Behr et al., 2019). According to the data from the Higher

Education Statistics Agency of the United Kingdom, 6% of first-degree entrants aged under 21 who
enrolled in 2013-2014 years did not continue their studies beyond their first year. In countries that

belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 12% of students who enter a
full-time bachelor’s program, on average, leave the tertiary system before beginning their second year

of study. This percentage increases to 20% by the end of the program’s theoretical duration and to 24%

three years later. In all countries with available data, women have higher completion rates than men in
BA programs (Sandoval-Palis et al., 2020). But the empirical evidence on undergraduate dropout in Sri

Lanka is very limited. In the Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa, the number of students
who have dropped out or not completed as a fraction of the total number of students in a batch are

alarmingly high; above 2/5 of the batch in 2006 intake and over and above 1/5 in other intakes

(Anishka and Thushara, 2016). The seriousness of the dropout problem can be evidenced through
many studies which have been carried out to analyze the dropout issue, to detect the main variables

involved, to determine the scope of those variables, to model the dropout process so to organize it into
many of its subproblems, to get a better understanding of its dynamic and of the sub-processes it

involves, always aiming at a better understanding of the whole problem in an attempt to

prevent/minimize it. The term “dropout” is commonly used to describe the situation of students who
enroll at a certain institution of education and leave without obtaining a diploma or passing their final

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