Abstract
Each semester, students withdraw from one or more of their classes, increasing their time to degree and impeding the progress of other students who might have been able to complete courses if the seats were available. In the literature on retention and persistence, juniors and seniors are not studied as frequently as freshmen and sophomores. Withdrawal has economic consequences that extend past the individual student to the institution and beyond. The purpose of this research is to investigate the rate of withdrawal for this population at a four-year, public university and determine if the rate of withdrawal decreases as a result of the implementation of a system wide policy that restricts the number of units from which students can withdraw. Student level enrollment data from the Office of Institutional Research and the Office of the University Registrar and financial aid data from the Office of Analytics are used to examine the rate of withdrawal over time and any changes that coincide with the implementation of the policy. Using linear, probit, and logit regressions, this study finds that the incidence of withdrawal for juniors and seniors is decreasing and the magnitude of the effect is increasing over time since the implementation of the policy, but the policy may be only part of the explanation of the drop in withdrawals. Based on the literature review, other factors considered were gender, age, major, ethnicity, admit status, units attempted, and grade point average. The 18-unit limit for withdrawal does not appear to be binding. Future research on the interaction between variables is planned.