Nearly half of students entering South African universities fail to graduate and now a new centre plans to find out why and put a stop to the nation's high dropout rate. For the next three years the South African National Resource Centre for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition will be researching country's high first year dropout rate. Six educational institutions are behind the Centre and funding has been given by the Department of Higher Education and Training.This morning the head of the centre Dr Andre van Zyl‚ the director of Academic Development Centre at the University of Johannesburg (UJ)‚ outlined the extent of the problem.In 2013‚ he said a study commissioned by the department of Higher Education and Training‚ was published. This research‚ he said tracked students who enrolled in 2006/2007. Van Zyl said the study found that only 35% of those tracked graduated in time‚ by the end of five years 41% had dropped out.He explained that those entering university are the top 18% students coming out of school. “Of the top 18%‚ half don’t make it‚ and more than half of them drop out in their first year‚” he said.The reasons for this were numerous‚ he explained. Some were because of poor academic performance‚ although increasingly this was also because of pressures of poverty.He said that at the University of Johannesburg‚ a questionnaire send out to first year students found that 35% said that acquiring food was a problem. The university‚ he said‚ had introduced feeding schemes‚ and distributed dehydrated meal packs.He said that measures that could be introduced to curb dropouts‚ include setting in place early warning systems that monitor the wellbeing of students‚ not only in the academic setting but also at residences.“We need now to track them more effectively and need to more away from ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality to a ‘how can we help you’‚” he said.Today is the start of a three-day conference at UJ that will examine the problem of first year dropouts. - RDM News Wire, The Times..