Increasing student persistence in Indonesian post‐secondary distance education

The primary intent of this study was to test the effectiveness of some transition stage interventions (e.g. five increasingly detailed sets of written contacts containing information, reminders, encouragement, a brochure about independent learning strategies, and a list of peers’ names and addresses) in increasing student persistence at the Indonesian Open Learning University (Universitas Terbuka – UT). The results show that the interventions did not significantly increase student persistence. Placing these results within the context, it seems that the interventions may have only been tinkering at the margin of an already problematic distance education system in Indonesia. Lack of persistence at UT may be related to aspects of the distance education model that were not adequately ‘adopted’.