Two thirds of students dropping out of some courses at UK's biggest universities

More than two thirds of students enrolled on some courses at the UK’s biggest universities are dropping out after their first year, a freedom of information request has found.

Subjects like entrepreneurship, film and business management are seeing significant drop out rates, amid calls for university chiefs to review their worst performing courses.

The universities ministers Jo Johnson has said institutions urgently needed to reassess the “value for money” of some courses as students paying £9,250 fees face being let down by subjects with huge dropout rates.

Sky News made an FOI request to 24 of the universities with the highest dropout rates asking how many students had withdrawn in their first year – not including those who failed exams.

It found two courses, one at Wrexham University and the other at Middlesex, to have 67 per cent dropout rates. These were marketing and consumer psychology and human resources management respectively.

At the University of East London, the dropout rate for a BSc course in computer games development was more than half, while at London Metropolitan University 59 per cent quit a BA course in music, film and drama.

In a statement, London Met said the music, film and drama course is foundation level, "which often sees a higher incompletion rate than other levels of entry".

"Improving retention and student attainment is one of our top priorities," the university added

Mr Johnson told Sky News: "I urge these universities to take action and look urgently at these courses to ensure that students and the taxpayer are receiving value for money for their investment in higher education.

"Dropout rates are lower now than they were in 2009, but we know there is more work to do."

All students who drop out have to pay either the full year’s fees or an amount in proportion wiuth their time there.

Lord Adonis, the former Labour education minister who increased tuition fees to £3,000 a year in 2004 said each dropout was a “personal tragedy”.

He told Sky News: "But it's very telling that the universities where individual courses have drop rates of 40, 50, 60% are the same universities that have overall drop rates of more than 10%. So it's clear that there's something systematically going wrong."