Undergraduate Throughput Trend at a South African Dental School

Objectives: Introduction
There is a shortage of oral health personnel in South Africa. The size of the oral health personnel, which includes dental assistants, oral hygienists, dental therapists, and dentists, has been estimated to be 0.2 per 1000 population. A meagre dental practitioner to population ratio of 1.09 per 10,000 has been estimated. The throughput of dental students at the four dental schools in the country has not previously been described. The results of such a study will be useful to policy-makers in developing human resources plan for oral health.

Aims and objectives
This study describes the progress to degree of the 2005 and 2010 cohorts of new first year dental students. The cohorts’ throughputs, which were defined as the numbers of students who completed their degree and graduated within the regulation time, were determined and compared.

Design
This was a record based comparative cross-sectional study.
Methods: Enrolment and academic data was gathered from records in the school’s registrar’s office. Data related to demographic characteristics, numbers enrolled, numbers that dropped out, and numbers that graduated was acquired and analysed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software.
Results: The cohort of first-time registered students comprised 73% and 92% (38 enrolees vs 34 enrolees) of the 2005 and 2010 first year dental classes respectively. Female students constituted more than half of both 2005 and 2010 cohorts (55% vs 56% respectively). Students with a bachelor’s degree constituted 50% and 41.2% of the 2005 and 2010 cohorts respectively. The first year pass rates of the 2005 and 2010 cohorts were 76.3% and 91.2% respectively. None of the students who started the course dropped out. However, more than half of both 2005 and 2010 cohorts (57.9% vs 58.8% respectively) took longer to qualify.
Conclusions: The undergraduate dental students’ throughput has stabilized at 40%.