unisa drop out rate

95%!!! That according to UCT's Varsity newspaper(i think that what it is called) Campus based university such as UCt, Wits etc have a drop out rate between 30-40%.
I seriously hope that i wont be part of the 95%...courses like accounting sometimes make feel like i will never graduate.
Considering that not a lot of people have a Unisa degree, does it mean that a degree from Unisa has more "weight" when looking for employment?
I seriouly hope so...

XL

I believe that several factors are at play, of course the largest being that it is 'harder' in a way as you have to keep yourself motivated.

Definitely a large role in this is also the "access" modules that UNISA offers that allow people who would not be able to get into courses at other universities to study.
Obviously not everyone who takes the access modules drops out (I am one such example of this) but I am sure a large percentage do as if they did not do well in school to get the required marks to begin with there is probably a fairly large chance they wont cut it at university either.

As for your final theory there are a few flaws, UNISA has a lot more students then say for example UCT I don't know any exact figures but wikipedia puts this number at 200000 or so now 5% of 200000 is 10000 degrees, Now going by wikipedia again (These figures are probably not entirely accurate but anyway) UCT has about 21000 students of which 60% is 12600 degrees. So while there are still more UCT students with degrees by this number it is not really significantly more.

I do believe that many companies do view a UNISA degree as having more "weight" though on the basis that the percentage of passes is much less and that distance education is tough meaning that a person with a UNISA degree is likely to be more determined/have other character traits they like. I have however also unfortunately met quite a few people who do not understand what distance education is all about and think UNISA degrees are far easier to get then other degrees. So it is a bit of a mixed bag depending on where you look for employment

This is of course just my personal experience others might have different views to add

Just for some more interesting stats I found the following on google from a paper dated 2005...

Throughput rate
Many tertiary students find distance education as a method of studying very
difficult indeed. According to Rixon (1985), dropout rates can be as high as 50
percent after 12 months and as many as 10 % may never submit an assignment. At
Unisa it takes the average student nine years to complete a degree and only about
15 % persevere to the end.

Im not sure if the UCT paper said where they got there stats from or not but 95% sounds a little bit inflated to me 85% sounds a bit more likely to me(Although I am just guessing here and could be wrong.) If anyone has some solid stats on this I would be interested to see them

I heard that 30% of the people who start working towards a degree through Unisa actually qualify. I don't know how true that is though.
Something else that makes distance learning harder is most of the people work which means less time to spend on their studies and the average age is probably higher then at a university like UCT so they have bigger commitments eg family etc. so the time they have availabe to study and do assignments is alot less.

9 years to complete a degree - that's frightening. Sounds more like a sucker for punishment rather than perseverence and commitment.
I agree with what Malcolm said about some people not have a clue what distance learning is about - until they take a single short course that is, nevermind a degree.
9 years - bloody depressing.

ill slam those stats by a third ;D