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Add "Withdrawn" and "Leave of Absence" options to Student Exit Reason

Phuong Nguyen

February 24, 2015 16:45

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It would be really helpful if these two options could be added.  The "withdrawn" option is important for us in assessing our retention rate.  Additionally, our governing agency wants us to start reporting this information.

Regarding the "Leave of Absence" (or "Temporary on Leave") option, we have many students that take a temporary leave from school either for various reasons WITH the intention of coming back.  So we manage these students differently than those who withdraws or transfer out completely.  Therefore, it'll be useful if we can officially label these students to help us better manage them and pull reports.

Right now, we use the "other" exit reason and create individual tags for "withdrawn" and "Leave of absence" but it becomes a bit clunky to pull reports since they both fall under the "other" exit reasons.  In most programs, students withdraw and take temporary leave often so I feel this could benefit other institutions as well.

Thanks! 

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3 comments

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  Vahe Petrossian February 24, 2015 17:23

  We found it odd as well not to have Withdrawn as an exit reason.  We assumed it was due to some IPEDS requirement.  As an alternative we created a custom Term Field called Official Withdraw and made it into a date field.  This allowed us to indicated on the student record including their transcript that the student withdrew and the date they withdrew.  Then we set the exit code to other.  In your case you could create other custom Term Fields to accommodate different kinds of status.  Once the custom fields are added and used, you can use the data slicer to build reports that includes that information.

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  Phuong Nguyen February 24, 2015 18:12

  Thanks Vahe for your insight.  We haven't explored "Term Field" yet but that seems like a reasonable workaround.  

  However, I would still prefer to have at least "Withdrawn" be added because it's something that's used across most (if not all) institutions.  I don't think the lack of "withdrawn" option is related to IPEDS requirement because there are some specific exit reasons already in place including "Joined armed forces" and "On official church mission" so I believe these were added based on requests from schools.  I am not certain, so i'll await insight from Populi.

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  Toby Robinson March 03, 2016 18:34

  Populi now has custom exit reasons that map to the IPEDS exit reasons. Contact support to get started!