Do potentially successful students in tertiary enabling programs have any common characteristics that underpin resilience and persistence? If so, how can this information help future enabling students?

Do potentially successful students in tertiary enabling programs have any common characteristics that underpin resilience and persistence? If so, how can this information help future enabling students?

There is a high attrition rate for students studying enabling courses that do not have academic entrance requirements. The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has an enabling tertiary preparation program (TPP) that has a large cohort of distance education students as well as a substantial on-campus cohort.
Previous research has been done to establish why large numbers of students do not complete the enabling TPP programs. Most research has been impeded by the poor response rate to questionnaires presented particularly to students who have discontinued their studies. Once students have made up their mind to discontinue their studies, they have diminished interest in responding to research that reviews their attitude, motivation and their reasons to drop out of the program.
This research will investigate if there are any common characteristics that exemplify a successful student. Students who were successful in completing TPP were sent questionnaires that examined their attitude and motivation throughout the course to find out what characteristics made them more resilient and persistent compared to their less successful colleagues. The response rate of the completing students was much greater than the response rate of previous
questionnaires that researched the attitudes and motivations of discontinuing students. It was anticipated that the findings of this research may be of interest to
the TPP teaching staff and when developed may assist in the better management and support of future enabling students.

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