Oral Presentation Royal Australian Chemical Institute National Congress 2026

Assessing and addressing the high fail rates across the Faculty of Science (135368)

Bianca Aiello 1 , Leah Betts 1 , Alan Chen 1 , Thomas Elton 1 , Stephen George-Williams 1 , Joy Ghrayche 1 , Martin Huang 1 , Helen Johnston 1 , Osu Lilje 1 , Caleb Owens 1 , Sharon Stephen 1 , Sarah Sulaqa 1 , Diana Warren 1
  1. The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia

The reasons students fail a given university course are almost as diverse as the student populations themselves. While not an exhaustive list, students may fail due to:

  • coming from a low socioeconomic (Zembrodt, 2021),
  • experiencing significant physical or mental health (Eisenberg, D., Golberstein, E. & Hunt, J. B., 2009),
  • struggling to deal with the transition to university life (McGhie, 2017),
  • overcommitting to work and study hours (Lowe, J., & Gayle, V., 2007), and/or,
  • becoming disengaged with study or non-attending class / the university in general (Hockings, C., Cooke, S., Yamashita, H., McGinty, S., & Bowl, M., 2008).

Recent data shows that the Faculty of Science has one of the highest student fail (FA) rates at the university alongside a high number of students not participating overall (i.e. ‘ghost’ students). This is especially true in the 1000 level units, and amongst minority groups.

What is particularly unknown now, however, is which of the aforementioned factors that can lead to student failure, if any, are at play in the high science FA rates. It would seem that there is a systemic issue (or set thereof) which impacts science units uniquely. As such, this project sought to first understand why the FA rates are higher in science.

To achieve this, a group of seven first-year coordinators (including the project lead), coupled with seven student partners, undertook a systemic review and investigation into the issue. This investigation included a large scale university-wide correlation analysis of units with high (>15%) non-passing rates, focusing on student demographics and types of assessments present. Additionally, interviews with 44 undergraduate students who did not pass science units, but did pass non-science units, were conducted. The findings from these statistical and qualitative analyses will be discussed.

Eisenberg, D., Golberstein, E., & Hunt, J. B. (2009). Mental health and academic success in college. The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 9(1).

Hockings, C., Cooke, S., Yamashita, H., McGinty, S., & Bowl, M. (2008). Switched off? A study of disengagement among computing students at two universities. Research Papers in Education, 23(2), 191-201.

Lowe, J., & Gayle, V. (2007). Exploring the work/life/study balance: the experience of higher education students in a Scottish further education college. Journal of further and Higher Education, 31(3), 225-238.

McGhie, V. (2017). Entering university studies: identifying enabling factors for a successful transition from school to university. Higher Education, 73, 407-422.

Zembrodt, I. (2021). Commitment: Predicting persistence for low-SES students. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 23(3), 580-606.