Sometimes when I lie awake at night I wonder about stuff. Important stuff. Like why, when we have to turn interested people away every year, do only about half of our Basic Climbing Course students graduate year after year? What happens to the more than 100 students who fail to finish the course every year? What are we doing wrong? How do we hold onto them, or how do we let them know more realistically what they are “in for,” to reduce the number of enrollees who won’t be able to finish and sign up more people who will? What can we learn from the drop-outs? Why hasn’t anyone ever asked them? Stuff like that.

As a member of the Climbing Committee, and to put an end to those sleepless nights, I volunteered to take a survey of all students who didn’t finish the course in 2002. What I learned surprised me.

I started with a set of statistics from Mountaineers’ records. Students leave the course at different times, and for various reasons. In 2002, 224 students began the course:

	2002 Basic Course

1. 101 graduated (45%)
2. 12 graduated pending completion of MOFA (5%)
3. 28 dropped prior to the Knots field trip (13%)
4. 31 dropped during the course (14%)
5. 28 passed the course but didn’t graduate (13%) and
6. 24 requested a second-year extension (11%)

I tried to draw a distinction between those who finished the course work (lectures and field trips) and those who finished the course work and also the required climbs. Almost 3⁄4 of the students who started the class completed the course work.

My intent at the outset of the survey was to contact as many students as possible by phone, asking simply, “Why didn’t you finish the course?”— as opposed to asking them to choose among some pre-selected categories that I had created. However, their responses fell rather neatly into four major categories: scheduling difficulty, injury or illness, dissatisfaction with the course, and failure. The numbers below do not include those who were granted 2nd year extensions or the few whose responses fell into a small miscellaneous category.

Among those who did not complete the course in time to graduate:

	2002 Basic Course Not Graduated

1. 37 either received extensions or only need to attend MOFA to complete their graduation requirements
2. 21 Unavoidable problems of scheduling difficulties
3. 10 Injury or illness
4. 8 (9%) said that they dropped due to dissatisfaction with the course, they generally agreed that although the course was excellent, it simply didn’t meet their needs. Some of the reasons offered were: “too basic”, “too advanced”, “too expensive”, and “too much like the National Guard”.
5. 4 were dropped (4%) for not passing all of the required skills.

Unfortunately, I was unable to include responses from almost 1/3 of those students who didn’t graduate, the majority of these having dropped before the knots field trip. I hope to start the survey process earlier this year to reduce the number of students that I am unable to contact, as their responses could change the results substantially.

As I began the process of “cold-calling” students who had not finished the course, I tried to prepare myself for getting an “earful” of complaints and perceived problems with the course. While I did receive some criticisms that we may be able to address, I was pleased by the number of positive responses that I received. I finished the survey knowing that although we don’t have a perfect program, most of the students contacted still feel that it is an excellent one in preparing them as beginning climbers.

Now I can get a good night’s sleep, although lately I’ve been wondering about those intermediate students. How many of them graduate? Hmm. Maybe another survey…

Editor’s Note: To date the 2003 Basic course numbers look similar to 2002 with 228 students initially starting the course, 198 completing Knots (87%) and 181 completing Rock II (79%).