# Deep Learning for School Dropout Detection: A Comparison of Tabular and Graph-Based Models for Predicting At-Risk Students

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14057 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14057/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [Optuna: A Next-generation Hyperparameter Optimization Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.10902/) (2019)
- [Fast Graph Representation Learning with PyTorch Geometric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02428/) (2019)
- [TabNet: Attentive Interpretable Tabular Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07442/) (2019)
- [TabTransformer: Tabular Data Modeling Using Contextual Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.06678/) (2020)
- [Graph Filtration Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.10996/) (2019)
- [Graph Neural Networks for Tabular Data Learning: A Survey with Taxonomy and Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02143/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Student dropout is a significant challenge in educational systems worldwide, leading to substantial social and economic costs. Predicting students at risk of dropout allows for timely interventions. While traditional Machine Learning (ML) models operating on tabular data have shown promise, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) offer a potential advantage by capturing complex relationships inherent in student data if structured as graphs. This paper investigates whether transforming tabular student data into graph structures, primarily using clustering techniques, enhances dropout prediction accuracy. We compare the performance of GNNs (a custom Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) and GraphSAGE) on these generated graphs against established tabular models (Random Forest (RF), XGBoost, and TabNet) using a real-world student dataset. Our experiments explore various graph construction strategies based on different clustering algorithms (K-Means, HDBSCAN) and dimensionality reduction techniques (Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP)). Our findings demonstrate that a specific GNN configuration, GraphSAGE on a graph derived from PCA-KMeans clustering, achieved superior performance, notably improving the macro F1-score by approximately 7 percentage points and accuracy by nearly 2 percentage points over the strongest tabular baseline (XGBoost). However, other GNN configurations and graph construction methods did not consistently surpass tabular models, emphasizing the critical role of the graph generation strategy and GNN architecture selection. This highlights both the potential of GNNs and the challenges in optimally transforming tabular data for graph-based learning in this domain.