The effects of the 2006 tuition fee reform and the Great Recession on university student dropout behaviour in the UK

This paper investigates the causal effect of the Great Recession, and a conditional effect of a tuition fee reform, on the risk of students dropping out of HE. We use HESA data and our analysis combines duration modelling with difference-in-differences. We find that the causal effect of the recession increases the risk of drop out, especially for males. A smaller and positive effect of the tuition fee reform for males, whereas we observe the opposite effect for females. Differences in dropout behaviour are also found for high and low income groups, and between different types of university and subjects studied.