Every September, UK universities welcome thousands of new undergraduates through their doors, full of hope, ambition, and potential. Yet for many institutions, as much as 6% of that intake will quietly disappear before their second year begins.
That figure might not seem shocking at first glance – until you run the numbers.
For a university with 10,000 new students, a 6% dropout rate equates to 600 students walking away. At £9,250 per year in tuition fees alone, that’s a minimum £5.5 million loss. Stretch that across a three-year degree, and the cost climbs to over £16 million – all while the university’s fixed costs remain largely unchanged.
And that’s before we consider the knock-on effects:
The uncomfortable truth is this: retention is one of the biggest unaddressed risks to university income – and student outcomes – in the sector today.
Universities are already looking for the red flags: missed seminars, lack of assignment submissions, disengagement from student life. But by the time these patterns become visible, it’s often too late.
Worse still, the data that could help – academic records, wellbeing interactions, VLE engagement, library usage, even UCAS application sentiment – sits in separate systems, owned by different teams, rarely connected or analysed together.
The result? Siloed insight. Missed opportunities. Students slipping through the cracks.
Imagine if, before a student set foot on campus, you already had a sense of how likely they were to stay the course.
Now imagine that score updating every week based on hundreds of behavioural signals – from seminar attendance to counselling enquiries, club participation to financial support requests.
Crimson’s Student Retention Model does exactly that.
By analysing historic data and live engagement indicators, we generate a student-specific Risk Score (1–100) that highlights which individuals are most likely to drop out – and when. This gives universities the chance to intervene early, often long before the student even realises they’re in trouble.
The Office for Students has made it clear: access and participation must be matched by completion. Universities are being measured not just on who they admit, but on who they support through to graduation.
And from a business perspective, the case is just as strong. A 2% uplift in retention at a 10,000-student university could protect £3.7 million in tuition income over two years – not to mention the wider gains in satisfaction, reputation, and student wellbeing.
Retention isn’t just a moral imperative. It’s a strategic one.
Crimson is already helping institutions spot dropout risks early – and intervene with data-led precision. If you’d like to see how your university could benefit from a predictive retention model, we’re offering a retrospective analysis using your existing data – no obligations, just insight.
Let’s stop losing students we could have saved. Book your free 15-minute Discovery Call today.