Investigating Student Retention in an Economics Degree Programme

For financial and reputational reasons, every university and degree course is committed to the goal of increasing the number of enrollments and improving indicators of students' success, including decreasing the time taken by students to obtain their degree and reducing the incidence of dropping out. High rates of dropping out from university courses and excessive time to graduation are matters of great practical importance, with substantial financial and social costs. Student retention or dropout depends on a combination of various factors, the influence of which is mediated by the student's ability to integrate into the academic system. The identification of those factors which may affect the outcome and upon which the academic system can act, is an object of extensive study and research.In order to examine this topic, we collected data at the University of Perugia at the time of initial registration for three bachelor degrees in Economics. The 2015 cohort of students was tracked up to 2025, a period substantially exceeding the nominal duration of their degree courses, allowing the determination of each student's current status at the time of data extraction.Applying binary and multinomial logistic regression, survival analysis and competing risks (graduation and dropout) analysis, we explore which factors influence the students' performance and highlight pros and cons of the applied statistical methodologies in this context.