Why undergraduates could hit the skids in higher education: a four-stage socialisation-based understanding of academic failure

Drawing on Weidman’s undergraduate socialisation model, this study conceptualises academic failure as a cumulative four-stage breakdown: anticipatory distortion, formal disjunction, informal reinforcement, and personal non-integration. Based on interviews with 30 academic failure undergraduates and 10 faculty members across six universities, we unravel how the “easy university” myth, institutional gaps in transition support and early warning, and entertainment cultures privileging instant rewards erode motivation, entrench maladaptive habits, and culminate in learned helplessness. Conceptually, we have refined Weidman’s framework by specifying a contextually specific anticipatory distortion stage and by situating motivational collapse as socially constructed rather than endogenous. Practically, we propose a “prevention – monitoring – intervention” model: (a) pre-entry expectation calibration and self-regulation training; (b) multi-signal early-warning with tiered responses; and (c) cultural engineering of positive informal norms through peer mentoring and action-learning groups. We argue that structural and cultural recalibration, not individual remediation alone, is essential to change the status quo.