An Examination of Criticisms made of Tinto ’ s 1975 Student Integration Model of Attrition by Ian McCubbin

Vincent Tinto’s Student integration Model (SIM) (Tinto, 1975) remains the most influential model of dropout from tertiary education. This paper outlines the problems associated with student attrition and examines how the SIM models the factors that drive attrition behaviour. Three criticisms that have been made of the SIM are evaluated; 1: The SIM is not an adequate model of student attrition, 2: The SIM does not generalise beyond traditional students, 3: Academic integration is not an important predictor of student attrition. It is argued that the papers which provide evidence in support of criticisms 1 and 3 are methodologically flawed and that criticism 2 is potentially invalid as, according to Tinto (Tinto, 1982) the SIM was never meant to generalise beyond typical students. Tinto’s later additions and alterations of the SIM are discussed and evaluated. The paper concludes that it is impossible to properly assess the role that the SIM can play in preventing student dropout until the model itself is satisfactorily verified. The Problem of Student Attrition Dropout is perhaps the greatest problem facing institutions of higher education. While attendance in primary and secondary education is compulsory, up to age sixteen, attendance in higher education is voluntary and there are a plethora of reasons why people may choose, or be forced, to withdraw. Generally speaking, enrolment in higher education continues to increase; in the United States of American enrolment in degree granting institutions increased by about 9% between 1989 and 1999 (Snyder and Hoffman, 2002). As the number of students enrolling in tertiary education increases, so does the number of students who will be affected by dropout. There is significant variance in the figures quoted for dropout from higher education, depending on both the nature of the institution(s) concerned and also with the definition of attrition or dropout used. Generally speaking, the rates of voluntary withdrawal from tertiary education are around 23% (Rovai, 2002), while the figure for attrition generally, including academic dismissal has been fairly consistent around the 50% mark for most of the last century (Leys, 1999) (Tinto, 1983) There is a significant financial cost associated with attrition: students who do not complete their studies will already have had significant amounts of money invested in their education, through both resources distributed to them and time spent teaching them. It is fairly obvious that the universities would prefer to spend this money on students who will see their degree course through to its completion There is an associated non financial cost associated with attrition: the dropout or academic failure of students can negatively affect the educational achievement and development of other students, through damaging their morale or making them question their own commitment to their course or educational institution (Tinto, 1975). Also, perhaps counter intuitively, it is rarely the least able students who dropout. Exactly the opposite, those students who dropout from higher education are often more academically able than those who stay (Tinto, 1982). That being the case, the process of attrition can result in a graduating class that is less academically able than the one that enrolled in first year. Given the costs, financial and otherwise, that are associated with attrition, it is obvious that most colleges and universities would like to better understand the forces driving it. If universities and colleges could better understand why individuals withdraw from higher education they could attempt to change their selection policies, or how they deal with their students, with a view to reducing their rates of attrition. Perhaps the most influential model of attrition from higher education was proposed by Vincent Tinto in 1975. Vincent Tinto’s Student Integration Model Vincent Tinto’s 1975 Student Integration Model (SIM) of attrition was designed to offer a longitudinal model which would explain all of the aspects and processes that influenced an individual’s decision to leave college or university, and how these processes interact to ultimately produce attrition. Tinto aimed to do several things. Firstly, he aimed to differentiate between different types of leaving behaviour. This is important as there are a number of different ways in which a student may choose, or be forced to leave, college. Up until Tinto published this paper, these different learning behaviours were often grouped under the rubric of dropout. The different types of leaving behaviour that Tinto identified include academic failure, voluntary withdrawal, permanent dropout, temporary dropout and transfer. Tinto based his model on Durkheim’s theory of suicide. Durkheim’s theory was based on the assertion that the likelihood that an individual will commit suicide is predicted by the level of their integration