Abstract

This paper examines factors that contribute to students’ decisions to drop out of a higher learning institution. The aim of this study is to uncover the various associations of factors that could ultimately explain the different drop out situations. Firstly, data were collected from students and dropouts on their perceptions of the teaching and learning model employed in the academic institution to examine the differences in both groups’ orientation within the same system. Evidences on these perceptions were then triangulated with the external and internal factors which the dropouts and teachers perceived to have contributed to students’ decisions to drop out. This process was then followed by a synthesis of the theory of suicide with the theory of propriate functioning to uncover distinct patterns of similarities in the categories of dropouts. The interactions of dropouts' emotional dispositions with the external elements and forces conclusively led to explain the antinomy of a dropout phenomenon.