Student engagement specialist UniQuest and education consultancy Retinent have joined forces to help universities overcome the issue of student non-continuation. UniQuest estimates that UK universities lose more than £683m as a result of vulnerable students dropping-out of their courses early.
As partners, UniQuest and Retinent are aiming to help universities identify at-risk students at the earliest point in their university careers and encouraging them to use the right-fit resources and student services to improve retention, progression and employability.
To identify vulnerable students before issues occur, Retinent assesses individual student resilience with its ‘Resilience +’ questionnaire program based on the MTQ48 test to recognise retention issues.
“We need to spot those who are more likely to leave the course when the going gets tough before they hit the rough water”
Chief executive of Retinent Charles Cormack explained that by identifying and intervening with students who are less resilient early on you can reduce drop-out rates.
“We need to spot those who are more likely to leave the course when the going gets tough before they hit the rough water and do something about it,” said Cormack.
Informed by each student’s test results, UniQuest engages each student on behalf of the university to encourage them to leverage the best-fit support on offer at the institution.
Through this engagement, UniQuest track and report trends back to university clients on the challenges their students are facing, student feedback on university provision gaps, and students’ reasons for non-continuation.
Co-founder of UniQuest Natalie Letcher said: “We are delighted to work with Retinent to enable more universities to meet their missions of helping students reach their potential through proactive, personal and expert student engagement.”
