Risico op afbreken van een opleiding in de eerste twee jaar van het mbo

Approximately ninety percent of students move on to vocational education after completing pre-vocational education. In vocational education, however, thousands of students drop out each year. Over the past five decades several theoretical models to describe drop out were suggested (bijv., Tinto, 1975; Finn, 1984; Battin-Pearson et al., 2000). A number of 721 students were followed during the first two years in Dutch vocational education in order to investigate the effect of factors from these theoretical models at the students’ drop out risk. Forty-two percent of the students (n = 304) discontinued their studies at one point during this time. A survival analysis brought to light that dropout peaks around or shortly after the transition from the first to the second year of vocational education. Higher educational levels in parents, pre-vocational education in an economy track (compared to a health care track), a lower truancy frequency, and compulsory school attendance seems to be associated with reduced risk at dropping out. Apart from being obligated by law to go to school, not enough evidence was found for the potential role of other time varying
factors (e.g., motivation, expectations and the degree to which student have control over their own learning trajectory). This finding might be caused by the use of operationalizations that deviate from the original ones.