ABSTRACT

Governments around the world are increasingly calling higher education to account for the money that is invested in institutions, as is evidenced by the rise of national quality assurance systems during the 1990s and the interest shown in performance indicators of various kinds.1 The failure of undergraduate students to complete their studies is a cost to a government which funds higher education institutions and, a fortiori, is so where the government supports students through contributions to tuition fees and/or maintenance. A government’s concern to keep public spending as low as possible means that the overt aspect of its economic agenda is best served by minimizing non-completion (or, to put it in more pejorative terms, by cutting ‘waste’).