Academic success and failure: Student characteristics and broader implications for research in higher education

The paper reports on the findings of a funded research project which investigated factors related to academic success and failure in a Faculty of Arts. The project initially aimed to explore failure which resulted when students remained enrolled but submitted no items for assessment. The initial aim was to investigate whether the problem resided essentially in characteristics of non-completing students, or whether there were institutional factors associated with courses which facilitated failure. However, the wealth of data made available to the researchers also permitted the analysis of factors related to academic success. The paper discusses the student characteristics which were found to be clearly related to academic success and failure – including gender, university entry score, and mode of enrolment. The paper also explores implications of the findings for “mass ” higher education. It concludes that a profitable approach to research on student success and failure might be to investigate the strategies which students develop to effectively cope (or not cope) with competing life demands