A STUDY OF DROPOUT AMONG STUDENTS OF COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, EKIADOLOR-BENIN, EDO STATE (EDUCATION PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
According to Gerald Bernbum (2008), the phenomenon of graduate unemployment had disappointed people who had earlier looked to educational expansions on both to reduce social and economic inequalities and to improve the performance of the economy. Going to school was and is still regarded as the surest way to gainful employment especially in the public sectors; the non-employment of most of the graduates for all levels of our educational institutions make the current students in our school to see attending school  as a waste of time. The point that is being emphasized here is that because school leavers and graduates of higher institutions do not readily secure gainful employment in the public or private sectors of the economy as was the case many hears ago, students are no longer motivated to continue their education through the tertiary level.
Statistics on students environment in the post primary schools in the defunct Bendel State as a whole available at the ministry of education shows that the population of students in schools is on the decline. Another evidence of decline in school environment in the recent method adopted by the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) whereby school with less than thirty students for the senior school certificate examinations are grouped together to form a single centre. Many students who has sought admission into schools have prematurely withdrawn and dropped out before graduation. This is caused for concern of interest is the factor responsible for this untimely withdrawal in the first place, the current economic recession in the country has left many graduate, but from secondary school and institutions of higher learning, unemployment.
Government also contributes to the high rate of dropout from schools in charging tuition fees which many parents cannot afford in view of the present economic crisis the country even when many of them have struggled to pay the tuition fees final examination fees are often unaffordable. Another factor which makes students to withdraw from the schools is early marriage. It has been postulated that many girls drop out of school because their parents wanted them to go get married. Some others girls had dropped out because they had unexpected pregnancies which had forced them into early marriages. Some students who originally enrolled into the school had dropped out due to change in career goals.
