Achievement and Retention of British Pakistani Students in UK Higher Education: Using Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions to Ask all the right Questions

The theories on student retention and academic attainment have been in use since the early 1970s,gradually developing over time to accommodate the shifts in high education dynamics and landscapes. Although the theories grow to accommodate the alterations in the higher education systems being used, they have not been altered to understand the change in higher education demographics which occurred due to the introduction of the Widening Participation Agenda. As British-Pakistanis are the second largest minority in the UK, making up approximately 2% of the entire population (1.17 million people), it is imperative to understand why students from this community have a higher drop-out rate that their White counterparts when they enter higher education with the same qualifications and grades. This paper theorizes this issue by using Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions to explain the cultural confusion experienced by British-Pakistani students in UK’s higher education, and provides insight onto the research being undertaken to further understand what role ethnicity and culture plays in their decision to drop out of higher education.