2. Pathways to completion—an estimate of the final completion rate
Figure 1 assists to conceptualise student progress. Many of the new to higher education students enter university and complete. Others will enrol and not complete but re-enrol at a later stage and again some will complete. In some cases students will return to higher education a number of times before completing a degree. These completions need to be included in the final completion rate for the cohort in question.
All pathways to an award cannot be captured directly but the 1992 student cohort can be used to provide information on the proportions of students falling into various categories. Figure 1 presents the cohort split into new to higher education, those entering on the basis of a prior award and those entering on the basis of an incomplete prior award. The information is then used to describe different pathways to completion, assuming that those entering on the basis of an incomplete prior award are representative of those students in the 1992 cohort who drop out and subsequently return to university for another attempt.
Figure 1 Undergraduate flows and completions
Factors that should be taken into account in estimating the final completion rate are:
- the rate at which the students who are still studying gain an award. It is assumed that these students will complete in the same proportion as students who have either already completed or dropped out;
- this assumption is applied separately to those who are new to higher education and those who enter with an incomplete award;
- expected completions by students who may be taking a break in 1997 and have resumed study in 1998. Here it is assumed that the proportion of people taking a break in 1997 and returning in 1998 will be similar to that taking a break in 1996; and
- the rate at which students who do not complete return for another attempt.
Specifically we define the relevant terms as follows:
as the probability of completion in the first period of attending university;
as the probability of completing in subsequent periods of attending university;
as the probability of returning after leaving university without completing an award;
as the size of the cohort; and
as the number of returning students.
The number of returning students is therefore:
 |
=  |
=  |
Rearranging terms gives:
 =  |
(I) |
After simplifying we obtain
=  /[ ] |
(II) |
Therefore the final probability of completion for the cohort
=  |
||
 |
||
=  |
(III) |
From Figure 1 we have
= [(1.1)+(1.2.1)+(1.3.1)]/(1) = 0.661
=
[(3.1)+(3.2.1)+(3.3.1)]/(3) = 0.645
= (1) = 86,482
= (3) = 20,834
From equation (II) = .567
Therefore, it is estimated that 81.6 per cent of students without a prior award in the 1992 cohort will complete an award at some time.
2.1 Discussion
The completion rate for Australia quoted by the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is 65 per cent. This completion rate relates
to a ‘cross-section cohort’ which measures undergraduate completions as a
proportion of those who commenced an undergraduate degree three years earlier. This is a
fairly crude measure of completions since the ‘cohort’ includes new students as
well as students with previous higher education experience and does not allow for those
who take a longer or a shorter time to complete an award. Nevertheless, the analysis here
tends to confirm the OECD estimate of the commencers (new and those with previous higher
education experience) who complete during that period of study. In the analysis above the
closest approximation to the OECD estimate is a weighted average of
and 
which is 65.8 per cent. In terms of the
final completion rate, however, the rate quoted by the OECD does not take into account the
students who do not complete during that period of study but who some time later return to
study and gain an award. In this respect the OECD under estimates completions from
Australian universities.