Towards a health promoting university: descriptive findings on health, wellbeing and academic performance amongst university students in Australia

Table 7 Learning and Academic Factors (N = 14,880) and by Local (N = 9,398) and International students (N = 5,482)

	Total			Local			International
	N	%	Wt %	n	%	Wt %	n	%	Wt %
Failed at least one subject in 2019 Semester 1^a,b
No fails	9628	91.6	91.4	6196	92.4	92.2	3432	90.2	89.9
At least one fail	881	8.4	8.6	508	7.6	7.8	373	9.8	10.1
Considered dropping out of current course in past 12 months
Yes	3353	27.0	26.6	2294	28.7	28.3	1059	23.8	23.7
No	9085	73.0	73.4	5699	71.3	71.7	3386	76.2	76.3
Most common reasons (from a list of 30 reasons^c for dropping out^d)
Health or stress	1824	54.4	53.3	1348	58.8	57.6	476	45.0	44.2
Study/life balance	1492	44.5	44.1	1156	50.4	49.9	336	31.8	32.0
Difficulty with workload	1464	43.7	43.1	1141	49.8	49.2	323	30.5	30.3
Need a break	1097	32.7	32.4	804	35.1	34.8	293	27.7	27.3
Personal reasons	953	28.4	28.5	684	29.8	30.0	269	25.4	25.4
Lack of academic support	863	25.8	25.9	562	24.5	24.6	301	28.4	28.8
Standards too high	744	22.2	21.8	526	22.9	22.4	218	20.6	20.6
Financial difficulties	742	22.1	22.2	534	23.3	23.2	208	19.7	20.1
Lack of interest	704	21.0	21.1	499	21.8	22.0	205	19.4	19.1
Expectations not met	686	20.5	20.5	403	17.6	17.6	283	26.7	26.4
Change of direction	681	20.3	20.8	523	22.8	23.5	158	14.9	15.1
Lack of career prospects	654	19.5	19.5	446	19.5	19.4	208	19.7	19.7
Need to do paid work	622	18.6	18.3	543	23.7	23.4	79	7.5	7.6
Paid work responsibilities	500	14.9	14.7	466	20.3	20.2	34	3.2	3.1

^aData reported only from students who consented to have their survey results linked to their academic performance transcripts
^bStudents who did not complete any subjects for Semester 1 were excluded from the denominator. Total number of participants that consented to accessing official academic records and had undertaken at least one subject in Semester 1 = 10,509; 6,704 local students and 3,805 international students
^cOther reasons listed in survey: Boredom, family responsibilities, lack of administrative support, difficulty paying fees, gap year/deferral, quality concerns, lack of government assistance, social reasons, commuting difficulties, Other reasons, Travel or tourism, Other opportunities, moving residence, institution reputation, received other offer
^dReasons for dropping out are not mutually exclusive; Denominator used to calculate the percentages for the reasons were based on the number who considered dropping out. Note: two local students and one international student had missing responses for the reasons

ISSN: 1471-2458