EFFECT OF COUNSELING ON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITH DROPOUT*

Introduction: University students are faced with a lot of stresses such as workload, maltreatment, etc. They cope with these problems differently. The coping may be manifested as depression, anxiety, changing life style, etc., which will affect their educational performance and sometimes causes dropout. To prevent this loss, it is essential to understand the phenomenon of dropout and find the causes and decrease or remove them. Methods: The population of study was students referring to the University Counseling Center during 1998. They came either voluntarily or in response to invitation. Invitations were made for those who had been known as high-risk students according to the screening study of entering year (1996, 1997). The intervention was counseling for psychological, educational, familial, and social problems. The effectiveness of intervention was assessed by comparison of the students' average grade before and after that. Results: The mean of average grades increased after intervention. This was more prominent in three groups: students with higher average grades from high school, students with university averages below 14 (out of 20), and not married students. Conclusions: This study was a part of a university project for prevention of dropout. As previous researches showed, it may be concluded that taking care of students, and counseling their problem may result in less dropout and improve their achievement. To apply this, establishing a Student Health Center with counseling supports is recommended.