Content provided in partnership with
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
Analytic Procedures
The data analysis was carried out in three stages. In the first stage simple 2 x 2 cross-tabulations were computed to determine any relationship between attending a two-year versus a four-year college and the likelihood of lowering one's lifetime educational plans below a bachelor of arts degree at the end of the first and second years of college. The second stage of the analyses employed logistic regression procedures to determine if any nonchance relationships between attending a two-year versus a four-year college and end of first-yearand second-year educational plans persisted in the presence of controls for the 16 confounding variables specified above. In the third stage of the analyses we added a series of cross-product terms to the logistic regression model to determine if the magnitude of the impact on educational plans of attending a two-year versus a four-year college differed for students with different background (precollege) characteristics. The background or precollege characteristics considered were: gender, ethnicity, age, academic ability, family social origins, and precollege educational aspirations.
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
Parallel analyses were conducted with the weighted and unweighted samples with essentially the same results. The remainder of the paper, however, focuses on the results from the two weighted samples (adjusted to the actual unweighted sample size to obtain correct standard errors). Because of the relatively large unweighted sample size (N = 1,645) the critical alpha was set at 0.01 for all analyses. (Results of the unweighted analyses are summarized in a separate section.)
RESULTS
Cross Tabulations (Sample Weighted to Institutional Populations)
With the sample weighted up to the 23 institutional populations the cross-tabulations for endof-first-year and end-of-second-year educational plans both indicated significant relationships with two-year versus four-year college attendance. At the end of the first year of postsecondary education (Spring 1993) 11.8% of two-year college students who at entrance to college (Fall 1992) had planned to obtain at least a bachelor of arts degree reported that they now planned on obtaining less than a bachelor of arts degree in their lifetime. This compared to 5.2% of students attending a four-year institution (X^sup 2^ = 8.98 with 1 degree of freedom, p
Thus, at the end of the first year of postsecondary education students attending a twoyear college were slightly more than twice as likely as four-year college students to lower their lifetime educational plans below a bachelor of arts degree. By the end of the second year of postsecondary education two-year college students were more than five times as likely as their four-year college counterparts to plan on obtaining less than a bachelor of arts degree in their lifetime.
Cross-Tabulations (Sample Weighted to National Populations)
Cross-tabulation results with the sample weighted up to the national population were quite similar to those obtained with the sample weighted to the institutional populations. At the end of the first year of college 15.97% of the two-year college students who at entrance to college had initially planned to obtain a bachelor of arts degree reported that they now planned on obtaining less than a bachelor of arts degree in their lifetime. This compared to 4.9% of students attending four year colleges (x^sup 2^ = 25.03 with 1 degree of freedom, p
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Arts
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »