Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 384 de 959 Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011 Using complexity theory to develop a new model of student retention Duncan Fraser Duncan.Fraser@uct.ac.za University of Cape Town, Rondebosch South Africa Rachel Moll Rachel.Moll@viu.ca Vancouver Island University, Vancouver Canada Cedric Linder Cedric.Linder@fysik.uu.se Uppsala University, Uppsala Sweden Jonas Forsman Jonas.Forsman@fysik.uu.se Uppsala University, Uppsala Sweden Abstract: This study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the issues affecting student retention in higher education, and the relationships between them. In this paper we explore the use of Complexity Thinking, in conjunction with Exploratory Factor Analysis and Multidimensional Scaling and how these provide different insights into student retention that are not provided by existing models. The vehicle for our pilot analysis is a small data sample collected from undergraduate engineering students at a traditional Swedish university. This analysis shows that issues affecting student retention could more helpfully be viewed as nested, interconnected systems, in which certain components are more influential than others, rather than in the linear ways that existing models tend to encourage. Introduction Student retention has long been an area of research in higher education. This research has led to models of student retention that are widely used (Bean 1982, Tinto, 1997). Although “complex” aspects of the relationships between the variables in these models have been acknowledged by many workers in the field, they have not been explicitly incorporated into these models. To overcome the linear relations between variables implicit in these models, we are proposing a different approach to modelling student retention by drawing on complexity thinking as a conceptual framework. We chose to analyse factors affecting student retention in a traditional Swedish university, using mostly engineering students, because of international concern over the critical increases in demand for new engineers and scientists, coupled with a decline in interest in