Completing studies or leaving University: modelling the determinants of student departure

Higher education is a long service process, which results in the students’ –the recipients of this service–being enriched in multiple ways. Despite of the various efforts to improve the quality of education, infrastructure or institutional services, it can be frequently observed that a significant number of the students either fails to finish their studies at their current institutions or they decide to finish them somewhere else. Early termination of studies and departing from an institution are quite serious and complex decisions with a number of factors underlying. This study makes an attempt to outline a model in which we pay attention to value added, to departure factors and specifically to loyalty, which is considered as an influencing dimension beside the relationship quality determining antecedents. Further aims of this study are to define student loyalty and to show the possible relationship between loyalty and the previously examined factors of drop-out. That is to say that the study attempts at modelling the extent to which student departure is affected by such factors as personal characteristics, commitment and loyalty.