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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
As an explanation for the negative influence of two-year college attendance on bachelor of arts degree completion, the cooling-out hypothesis has a considerable logical appeal. A review of existing literature, however, suggested that the hypothesis has yet to be tested directly. In this paper we report the results of a study in which we sought to test, at least preliminarily, the cooling-out hypothesis by estimating the extent to which two-year college attendance is linked to the lowering of educational plans. Specifically the study had two purposes. First, we attempted to determine the net impact of two-year versus four-year college attendance on students' lifetime educational plans after 1 and after 2 years of college. Second, we sought to determine if the net impact on lifetime educational plans of twoyear versus four-year college attendance differed in magnitude for different kinds of students (e.g., students differing in ethnicity, gender, family socioeconomic origins, precollege academic ability, and precollege educational plans).
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METHOD
Institutional Sample
The sample was selected from incoming firstyear students at 18 four-year and 5 two-year institutions located in 16 states throughout the country. Institutions were selected from the National Center on Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to represent a variety of colleges and universities in terms of institutional type and control (e.g., private and public research universities, private liberal arts colleges, private and public comprehensive universities, historically Black colleges, and two-year colleges), size, location, commuter versus residential character, and the ethnic distribution of the undergraduate student body. The two-year colleges included three located in large metropolitan areas (one on the West Coast, one in New England, and one in the Carolinas), and two located in or near smaller communities (one in a Midwestern state and one in a Rocky Mountain state). The four-year college sample included: three public research universities (two located in urban areas and one in a small town); one private research university located in an urban area; four liberal arts colleges (three located in a small town and one located near an urban area; eight regional colleges and universities (four in urban areas and four in smaller towns); and two historically Black colleges (both located in urban areas). The 18 four-year institutions were located in 15 states from across the country.
Student Sample and Instruments
The individuals in the overall sample were 1,645 students who participated in both the first-year and second-year follow-ups of the National Study of Student Learning (NSSL). The initial sample was selected randomly from the incoming firstyear class at each participating institution. The students in the sample were informed that they would be participating in a national longitudinal study of student learning and that they would receive cash stipends for their participation in each data collection ($25, $35, and $45, respectively). They were also informed that the information they provided would be kept confidential and would never become part of their institutional record.
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