War of Attrition

Tertiary student attrition comes with a multi- billion dollar financial cost, and untold personal consequences. Nevertheless, the majority of research into the field has a retrospective orientation, explaining the loss of students after it is too late. This volume has greater ambition: it tackles the question of what factors cause attrition at a very early stage, and suggests a single, simple intervention that can dramatically reduce attrition. Evidence from a pilot study testing the intervention is reported, and suggests that university and college lecturers and professors can act early, and easily to reduce first year student attrition. While the volume focuses on elementary Spanish language courses as a case study, the findings apply equally to a broad range of disciplines. War of Attrition should appeal to university and college teachers and administrators seeking to stem the losses of their most valuable resource.