A Comparative Study Exploring University Withdrawals comparing the UK and Morocco

Students who withdraw from their courses before finishing their studies impact almost all universities in many different contexts. There can be varied reasons for students who leave their courses, ranging from having chosen the wrong course to feelings of not belonging in a course or university institution. To investigate this further we wanted to compare two universities in very different cultural contexts (UK and Morocco) to explore whether there were commonplace factors. Using thematic analysis to analyse the semi-structured interviews and a focus group we found that there were indeed similarities across these different contexts for students who left their courses early. The reasons given included financial reasons, mental and psychological issues, physical challenges and most notably course-related difficulties. We make several recommendations based on our findings that would help students and universities to better support struggling students to have more successful higher education experiences.