Is School Leaving a Good Indicator of Evaluating University Quality?

　The reason most commonly given for why students drop out of universities is that of economic considerations and students' inability to pay for tuition. Students might compare the merits of a salary gained from an undergraduate degree and those not requiring such education and find the benefits of the former as wanting. The second set of reasons for dropping out are psychological or mental. Students struggle to adjust to the university environment and the human interactions that come with it. Thirdly, students drop out for academic reasons, such as not having the academic foundations from high school, and thus not being able to keep up with university-level learning. It can also come from lacking the motivation and goals to learn, leading to a gap in expectations of university studying and its actual reality. For those same reasons, there are students who have not built up the needed study habits. There are many students who assume they will be able to graduate even if they do not study seriously. But because these students do not have study habits, they will soon be unable to adjust to university level learning. These are some of the commonly understood reasons for dropping out.

Is a University bad if many people drop out from it?

　To state the conclusion first, it is often assumed that if the causes are dealt with quickly and firmly, university drop-out rates will be minimized. In other words, if the first-year education program and student affairs offices are fully developed and implemented appropriately, there should be a decline in dropouts. Before student maladjustment occurs, the problem can be rooted out in the bud.

　However, seen from a different standpoint, an important issue is overlooked in this assumption. It is from the assumption that a university that experiences high student dropout rates is actually a bad university. For example, in the mass-media, a university with a high dropout rate is just considered a bad university and is treated as such in the rankings. Dropout rates are considered a measure of a university's quality. But is this really an effective measure of university quality?

　Let us take a look at the dropout rate of Japanese universities. According to international comparative data, Japan's drop-out rate is about 11%. The OECD average is about 31%. Italy is 55% and the U.S. is 51%. By comparison, Japan's rate is clearly quite low, indeed, it is one of the lowest among member nations (from OECD, "Education at a Glance," 2008). In the case of Italy for example, there is even the case that university education is seen as a "pool" for those who cannot find jobs in the labor market and thus are seeking to mark time until employment. Traditionally, in Northern Europe, higher education is also free. As a result, they do not charge direct education fees on students from their own country. In essence, higher education is a part of a welfare system that serves those who are unemployed, thus allowing them to go to school.

　Thus, while it is true that Japan has a low university dropout rate in comparison to other countries, it is true that Japanese higher education is doing really well? Is it an expression of the high standards of its education quality? How should one interpret this low dropout rate? How should one compare the dropout rates between universities? Why are the dropout rates of Japanese universities low?

There are many possible hypotheses that one can give for this reason. One is that Japanese higher education is very effective, and thus there are few problems leading to dropouts. Or it could be that there is a lack of quality assurance so more or less anyone can graduate. A third possibility is that there are mechanisms in place to prevent dropping out. Fourth, is the possibility that "dropout" is such a negative word, that to be one is to be tagged with the image of a loser and a social failure. In other words, there is a social stigma attached to it, so it is seen as a tragedy.

　There are situations that a low dropout rate can be seen as reflecting a well-functioning education system, but in order for such a view to be true, there is an important point of comparison needed between universities and high schools. For example, in Japanese high schools, there is almost no repetition of grades or holding back of promotion for poorly performing students. This is very important. In Japanese high schools, when a student cannot attend school every day, they usually transfer to correspondence or night programs. As such, they are not considered to have dropped out, indeed, due to correspondence and night schools, the dropout rate is suppressed. But what is the actual rate of dropouts in correspondence schools? The data does not exist as there are no fundamental surveys kept on this issue. In other words, without knowing the dropout rate for these programs, it is impossible to really understand the true situation of the country.

　With such a murky loophole in the education system, a system has been created where it is hard to really know what the quantitative situation of dropouts really is. While the end result is a low high school dropout rate, it might actually be a system that simply prevents the manifestation of such dropouts below the surface. Despite this reality, the Ministry of Education and its Central Education Deliberative Council promote the diversifying university admissions in the face of a declining 18 year old population. Universities are encouraged to adopt non-traditional (i.e. not based on entrance tests) admissions mechanisms such as through recommendations or interviews etc. The result is that university has become quite easy to enter.

　If higher education has not sufficiently developed its quality assurance, the end result will avoid the stigma of creating dropouts; but in so doing, Japanese higher education will have failed to enforce the education standards required for advancing in grades.

Assessing First Year Education

　With regards to first year education, as we had just been discussing, it is difficult to assess whether recent First Year Education efforts in Japan have been a success. The history is still too recent, and the programs are still too new. It is essential for there to be a proper evaluation and analysis of their performance. There are many methods of measuring. One possible reference is that used by America's Clemson University. As seen on its website of Institutional Assessment (www.clemson.edu/assessment), different assessment methods are introduced and presented. With regards to education assessment, there is a general distinction between direct and indirect assessment. In Japan, however, indirect assessment is much more common, with subjective student surveys asking student feelings on their life and class satisfaction. While quantitative interviews do exist, there are also many quantitative surveys. There are also various direct assessments too. Regardless, whatever assessment combination is chosen, it is important to consider the ways that these different measures are coordinated with each other.