| "Stopping out" is a distinct attendance pattern of many students attending public, urban universities. That is, students enroll and attend for one or more semesters, fail to enroll for one or more semesters, and then re-enroll. As a result, it may take these students as much as fourteen years to complete an undergraduate degree. While educators on urban campuses know this pattern of attendance exists, not much is known about who is stopping out, when stopping out and re-entry occurs, and what academic factors are associated with this behavior. This study attempts to answer these questions.;Student data on the cohort of first time freshmen who enrolled at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in the Fall, 1975 was analyzed. Academic and demographic data was collected on every student for each semester from the Fall of 1975 to the Summer of 1994.;A student's academic career was divided into "spells": "in-school" spells, during which a student was enrolled, and "out-of-school" spells, during which a student failed to re-enroll. Logistic regression was used to estimate the probabilities of stopping out and to analyze the effects of various academic and demographic predictors. It was found that 30% of all students in this cohort stopped out at least once, and that academic achievement is an important predictor of stopping out. In fact, among students who graduated (i.e. those deemed successful), the estimated odds of stopping out versus not stopping out for students with an average GPA of 2.0 were three times the estimated odds for students with an average GPA of 3.0.;The results from this study are important for two reasons. First, urban universities frequently appear to be less successful at educating students relative to their traditional, system "peer" institutions based on common student outcomes such as graduation and dropout rates. Understanding stop-out behavior enables educators to develop more meaningful criteria upon which to evaluate urban institutions.;Second, educators have a responsibility to understand a pattern of enrollment that is experienced by sizable numbers of students. Review of internal institutional policies, support services, and curricular offerings are in order once urban educators have information about stop-out students. |
