Cause Analysis of Students’ Dropout Rate in Higher Education Study Program

The main problem of higher education modernization is the balance between inputs and relevant outputs, specifically, the right balance of enrolled and graduated students. The strategic policy of higher education institutions may cause the number growth but not necessarily the education quality increase of the graduated students. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is, to analyse the causes of the first year students’ dropout rates in higher education institutions using the real data of engineering study program in Latvia University of Agriculture. The following factors were evaluated using the Proportional hazard model of Survival analysis, i.e., students’ gender; secondary school grades the priority of the program to study (first, second, or third) and the finance source (government-financed or self-finance). The results of this study show that the main reasons for dropping out are students’ low secondary school knowledge and low motivation to study engineering.