Risk is relative: Person and place do matter in undergraduate engagement and retention

Student engagement and retention in higher education is increasingly a balance between student educational choices and economic and social cost from failure or withdrawal, with identification of at-risk students problematic. This study demonstrates a technique for identifying risk factors (indicators or predictors) by applying relative risk analysis to an archived social ecology data set for a cohort of commencing undergraduate students at a regional Australian university. The analysis identified a set of social ecology risk factors from a broad range of demographic, academic and engagement factors and also allowed a comparison of these factors with pre-determined risk indicators. These social ecology risk factors may be useful in extending current risk factor analyses, offering a more nuanced view of student success under conditions of person and place in an undergraduate learning environment.