Attrition Rates of Actuarial Students

[Wigmeister General]

Does anyway know of a source or sources of data to help determine the attrition rates of actuarial students? In particular, the facts I'm curious to learn are:

1. The approximate numbers of entrants into the profession each year.
2. The approximate numbers of students who leave the profession each year.
3. The approximate numbers of students who remain in the profession, but choose to cease taking more exams. (This could be defined as students who have not taken an exam in at least X years.)

[Emily]

That would be very interesting. You can come up with a few statistics based on the number of people taking and passing exams, but that only tells you so much.

[Wigmeister General]

I would think this information would be of some value to the actuarial recruiters.

[Emily]

I had always thought that the industry (including employers as well as recruiters) would not want the attrition rates known. They are quick to tell you how much actuaries like their jobs. By "actuary", of course, they mean with letters. But, they do not want to tell an entry level student that they have little chance of ever becoming one. In order for the stick to be effective, you need the worker to believe that he might get the carrot.

[Wigmeister General]

OTOH, if I devote my recruitments to a dying profession (and I'm not suggesting actuarial work is dying), I'm a fool. I should switch to a profession that is growing. Thus, monitoring the attrition and growth rates of certain professions is prudent.

Whether the information is being gathered but won't be disseminated, that's another story.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

If it were available, it would be known. Instead only the misused "Travel Time" stat is known and published. This provides severity, in length of time until success, of the career, but not the probability of success. Now, what actuary (or even future actuary) would be happy about half the data?

You could create a model that tries to correlate Course 1 results with Fellowship attainment. You'd have to assume a Course 1 retake rate for each of, say, four retakes. You could assume that recently-made Fellows took their first exam at some range in the past, around the average travel time of seven years or so, take a weighted average of the Course 1 (course 100) exam takers of 5-9 years ago, and say that the drop-off rate is around (1 - Fellows/Takers). Sure there are still some folks taking exams, so assume some percentage of those takers will eventually become Fellows. Lower the attirtion rate by this amount.

Yes, there are problems with this model. Figure them out and adjust for them. I'm just a jump-starter of batteries, not a charger.

[avocadoboy]

Originally Posted by Ludwig Von Beethoven III

Does anyway know of a source or sources of data to help determine the attrition rates of actuarial students? In particular, the facts I'm curious to learn are:

1. The approximate numbers of entrants into the profession each year.
2. The approximate numbers of students who leave the profession each year.
3. The approximate numbers of students who remain in the profession, but choose to cease taking more exams. (This could be defined as students who have not taken an exam in at least X years.)

I don't know if this would be helpful or not, but http://www.soa.org/eande/earchive/archivedlist.html has lists of new fellows back through 1997 and new associates back through 2001. It also has examination results through 1997.

[Wigmeister General]

I appreciate the responses. At this time, I don't plan to create a model. I was curious if anyone out there had gathered statistics or if someone was working on gathering data, or if I was only one who had any curiousity at all about it.

[Dr T Non-Fan]

We're all curious, but lazy.

Originally Posted by Dr T Non-Fan

We're all curious, but lazy.

Yup, that about sums it up for me too.