Factors Influencing Early Dropout: The Case of Russian Immigrant Students Attending an Israeli University

This study focused on factors that contribute to Russian immigrant students' persistence versus voluntary withdrawal from an Israeli University. It adopted Tinto's model and its core concepts of academic and social integration as main contributing factors to continuance in the academic institution. Background characteristics were also suggested as potentially explanatory factors of adjustment to the immigration transition. Data were collected at an Israeli University from 151 Russian immigrants and 138 Israeli freshman students at two time points. The patterns of factors influencing the persistence or with-drawal behavior of the two groups were compared. The variables in the model accounted for 29% of the explained variance for the native students and 63% for the immigrant students. Although academic integration had a strong effect on persistence, the social integration construct failed to make a significant contribution to R ² for either sample. Some differences between the two samples were found when background effects were considered.