Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education
Vol. 9 No. 1 (2026): Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education, June 2026

Early Detection of Student Dropout Risk in State Islamic Higher Education Using a Support Vector Machine Model

Fathur Rahman (Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda)
Ahmad Maulana Syafi'i (Universitas Islam Negeri Sultan Aji Muhammad Idris Samarinda)



Article Info

Publish Date
30 Jun 2026

Abstract

Student dropout remains a persistent challenge in State Islamic Higher Education because it is shaped by the interaction of academic performance, socio-economic conditions, psychological factors, and student engagement. Traditional approaches that rely only on static academic indicators such as Grade Point Average (GPA) often fail to capture early signals of dropout risk. This study aims to develop an early detection model for student dropout risk using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm by integrating academic, behavioral, socio-economic, and psychological indicators. This research employed a quantitative approach within an Educational Data Mining framework and followed the Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process. The dataset consisted of 467 undergraduate students with at least two semesters of academic records. Variables included GPA, GPA trend, attendance, Learning Management System (LMS) engagement, parental income, part-time work hours, financial support, motivation, and stress indicators. The results show that the optimized class-weighted SVM model using the Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel achieved an accuracy of 81.9%, specificity of 88.1%, precision of 23.1%, and recall of 30.0% for the at-risk class. These findings indicate that the model is useful as an initial screening tool, especially for reducing false alarms among active students. However, its limited recall suggests that it should be combined with academic advisor verification and institutional follow-up. The study highlights that dropout risk is multidimensional and requires data-informed, timely, and human-supported intervention.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

SAJIE

Publisher

Subject

Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Mathematics Other

Description

Southeast Asian Journal of Islamic Education accepts unpublished, high quality, and original research manuscripts in English and Arabic related Islamic Education. The journal publishes high quality empirical and theoretical research covering all aspects of Islamic Education. These issues include: ...