Higher education institutions nowadays have been increasingly accountable for measurable outputs and outcomes. They have been demanded to demonstrate their productivities, effectiveness, and efficiencies, reflected for example from student enrollment trends, student retention, and graduation rates, as well as competencies and achievements of graduates, administrators and faculty. Due to scarce resources, student retention especially at the undergraduate level of science and engineering has become a significant issue in higher education administrations; a high dropout rate of students especially in the first year could result in great financial loss and lower graduation rate of the institution (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1980; Bean, 1980; Pascarella & Chapman, 1983). In the United States, only about half of students, who initially enter engineering majors, actually graduated with an engineering degree (Astin, 1993). Therefore, effective measurements have to be developed and implemented to increase the retention of potential students at high education institutions (Lau, 2003; Coll & Stewart, 2008). Studies showed that providing students with an effective academic and non-academic environment could positively encourage students to persist with their studies and at the same time could help develop their personalities.

Student retention has been studied at both institutional and student levels (Khampirat, 2007). Alkandari (2008) studied factors affecting student retention at student level; based on a survey of 22 retention factors and the responses from 570 students, it was showen that, in student perceptions, achieving personal aspiration, getting jobs, free-of-charge education, acquiring social class, developing skills, achieving academic merit in a field of study, high standard reputation of the university, and feeling one belongs to the university are important factors influencing their retention. No statistical differences were found among students’ responses according to their colleges, marital status, grade point average, academic warning, and citizenship status. At the institutional level, Lau (2003) reported that, in addition to relevant retention policies, effective management of multiculturalism, and diversity on campus, institutional administrators can help student stay in higher education institutions by providing them with appropriate funding, academic support services and the availability of physical facilities.

Models and theories to explain factors affecting student persistence have been put forward, among which an interaction model of student attrition proposed by Tinto (1975, 1993) represents one of the theoretical foundations. The basic concept of the Tinto model is the level of students’ integration into the social and academic systems, which eventually determines the decision to persist or dropout; the higher the degree of integration of individual into the system, the greater is the commitment to specific institution and leading to persistence. Since the Tinto model had been applied successfully in western countries, it is interesting to apply the model in a developing country like Thailand, where social and academic systems and environments are different.

Objectives

The objectives of the present work are to examine relationships between student characteristics related to student retention in a science and technology university in Thailand, and to validate the student retention model proposed by Tinto, using a structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

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