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Does community college versus four-year college attendance influence students' educational plans?

Journal of College Student Development, Mar/Apr 1998 by Pascarella, Ernest T, Edison, Marcia, Nora, Amaury, Hagedorn, Linda Serra, Terenzini, Patrick T

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Second, although attempts were made in the initial sampling design, and subsequent sample weighting to make the sample as representative as possible at each institution, the time commitment and work required of each student participant undoubtedly led to some selfselection. We cannot be sure that those who were willing to participate in the study responded in the same way as would those who were invited but declined to participate in the study. Weighed against this, however, is the fact that we found no significant conditional effects involving such factors as precollege academic ability, age, gender, ethnicity, or family social origins. Thus, even if the sample had some bias on these factors, it did not appear to have an appreciable influence on the study findings.

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Third, we could not track individuals who left their institution during the study. Consequently, some students in the two-year college sample who dropped out of the study may have actually transferred to a four-year college to pursue their bachelor of arts degree. Although this is clearly a possibility, at least some evidence suggests that students who dropped out of the study had characteristics that made them less likely to have been successful transfer students than those who remained in the study for years. Compared to those two-year college students who persisted in the study for two years those who dropped out of the study tended to have lower average precollege educational plans, lower average precollege academic ability, lower average self-reported grades during college, and were enrolled for a lower average number of credit hours.

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Does community college versus four-year college attendance influence students' educational plans?

Journal of College Student Development, Mar/Apr 1998 by Pascarella, Ernest T, Edison, Marcia, Nora, Amaury, Hagedorn, Linda Serra, Terenzini, Patrick T

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