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This study examines the characteristics that affect college persistence from the first to second year among low-socioeconomic status (SES) high school graduates who enrolled in a two- or four-year college degree program, using the ELS:2002 database. Specifically, this study compares the influences of student entry characteristics, social and cultural capital, institutional characteristics, and college experiences across SES quartiles. While academic preparation and college support measures were predictors of persistence for all groups, predictors of persistence for low-SES students included measures of academic preparation and talking with faculty or advisors. Implications extend to institutional responses needed to support the success of low-SES students.

The twenty-first century will be dominated by technological change as the United States competes in an increasingly interdependent world. If the United States is to maintain its technological leadership, an inclusive engineering education is required. Engineering impacts many important aspects of day-to-day life from the environment to national security and half of our graduate degrees in engineering are granted to foreign nationals. While this influx of creative talent enriches the academic community, the underutilization of domestic talent threatens the engineering enterprise with professional shortages in university classrooms, research facilities, and corporate boardrooms. We are simultaneously challenged with addressing the shrinking pool of African-American males in higher education. The challenge is daunting but not insurmountable. Many African-American students have aspirations for engineering without the preparation and the community college is well suited to provide the bridge between aspiration and accomplishment. Community colleges serve 46% of all African-American students in higher education and there are exemplary programs that have tapped the underdeveloped resources in the African-American community. One example is the Emerson Minority Engineering Scholarship Program. By utilizing best practices, this program has helped to increase the pool of African-American engineers by providing opportunities to students who may have made other academic choices. This paper reviews persistence literature and discusses the challenges and strategies in developing a community college-based minority engineering program.

The purpose of this paper is to examine student, program and institutional support characteristics that relate to cohort intent to persist among Professional Golfers’ Association Golf Management University Program (PGA-GMUP) undergraduate students from 12 universities.

A survey instrument was created and disseminated to the targeted population. Multiple regressions were used to analyze the 473 responses of students’ intention to persist across the three independent variables (student, program and institutional support).

The research findings suggest higher levels of college GPA, career goals specific to the student’s desire to become a PGA professional, higher levels of faculty engagement, higher levels of satisfaction with major, being a leader in the student association and involvement in the student association are related to students’ intent to persist. Conversely, the results suggest career goals focused on being happy instead of graduation or working as a PGA professional and finding it difficult to make friends are associated with lower levels of intention to persist, while parental expectations of advanced degrees negatively affected students’ intent to persist. Additionally, passing a player ability test did not have bearing on intention to persist.

Results from this analysis offer insight into which persistence factors lead to students’ matriculation, with the ultimate goal of program completion. Identifying persistence factors may help PGA-GMUPs and other hospitality programs recruit students that are more likely to persist in the program, develop program characteristics that optimize cohort matriculation, and utilize university or institutional support services characteristics that may ensure program completion.

This study examines family and peer academic social supports as correlates of academic motivation and first-semester GPA.

Using a correlational design, 468 first-semester college students completed an online survey. Demographic characteristics, high school GPA and first-semester GPA were gathered from institutional data and linked to student survey responses.

Bivariate and multiple regression analyses revealed that family and peer academic social supports are predictive of academic motivation and first-semester GPA. The relationships identified were small- to medium-sized and of theoretical and substantive interest.

The main limitations of the study are the measures are self-reported and the study is correlational, the latter limiting the strength of causal inferences. However, the study provides further understanding of the importance of college students' family and peer social supports in relationship to academic motivation and achievement.

The research has practical implications for higher educators developing programs to improve family and peer social support. If future research establishes causal relationships, interventions to enhance family and peer academic supports may prove beneficial in promoting academic motivation. Further, encouraging families to broadly discuss academic topics may be ineffective in terms of academic self-efficacy and achievement for historically underrepresented students.

This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by establishing relationships between family and peer supports with academic motivation. Statistical interactions between family and peer supports and with demographic characteristics in predicting academic motivation were identified. If the interactions are replicable, the findings provide avenues for future correlational and intervention research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between engagement indicators and intent to persist of first-year full-time Hispanic students attending public versus private universities.

Metadata from the Your First College Year survey from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) were selected for this study. The approach included using a descriptive correlational design and regression analysis to examine the relationship between engagement indicators and persistence among first-year, full-time Hispanic students and persistence. Purposeful sampling obtained from the HERI data set resulted in a sample size of 1,206 students who attended public institutions and 1,187 students who attended private institutions.

Analysis of the results disclosed a positive correlation between first-year Hispanic students’ intent to persist, satisfaction with peer interactions, amount of contact with faculty, first-year programs and sense of belonging. The results of the analysis disclosed differences between public and private institutions. Of the collective variables, satisfaction with amount of contact with faculty and sense of belonging are significant predictors of persistence.

The sample of the study was limited to the use of archival data and the responses to specific questions obtained from the 2014 YFCY survey. Factors such as insufficient experience at the college students are attending, unwillingness to provide honest feedback and exaggerating specific areas of their behavior or performance may affect students who respond to surveys (Kuh, 2004), affecting the accuracy of the data. Further, 89.7 per cent of the variance in persistence has not been explained. Adding or using different variables and utilizing a more advanced statistical technique may account for additional variance. Cause and effect cannot be determined from correlational analysis, and the possibility exists that an unknown variable may be the cause of a correlation within the study. Incomplete information from predictors, complete separation and overdispersion can lead to SPSS output errors for logistic regression analysis.

It is important for higher education administrators to understand the cultural differences of not only Hispanic students but other ethnic and racial groups. As a global society, public and private higher education institutions are looking for more inclusion of multi-cultural students. Recruitment is obviously important, but to recruit is not enough. It is the responsibility of higher education administrators to do all that is reasonably possible to retain students through graduation.

Studies have been conducted on academic disparities between Hispanic students and their White counterparts, but few studies exist on the factors associated to persistence among the first-year Hispanic student population. The results of this study may add to the existing body of knowledge and assist with faculty development of programs, decisions on class size, improvements to pedagogy and discussions to improve the campus climate for Hispanic students. Using the resources of HERI, future studies can be conducted involving other races and ethnicities.

Over the past several decades, scholars and universities have made efforts to increase the retention of students in higher education, but graduation rates remain low. Whereas two-thirds of high school graduates attend college, fewer than half graduate. The likelihood of graduation decreases even more for Black, Latino, American Indian, and low-income students, who have a 12–15% lower chance of earning their degree. The importance of psychosocial adjustment to student persistence has received relatively less attention than academic and social integration. Racial/ethnic minority students face unique challenges to psychosocial adjustment in college, including prejudice and discrimination, unwelcoming campus environments, underrepresentation, and a lack of culturally appropriate counseling resources. The current chapter will discuss the impact of these challenges on the persistence, academic success, and health of racial/ethnic minority students, and strategies that universities can employ to create inclusive policies, resources and campus environments that empower students of color and maximize their success.

The purpose of this study is to examine social media use and its impacts on first generation students by answering the two questions: how do FGS use social media on college campuses, compared to their peers? How does the use of social media affect their academic experiences?

This qualitative study adopted social capital theory as a sensitizing framework for understanding the social media (SM) use and the resources valued by first-generation students (FGS) and used a revealed causal mapping method to analyze the narratives of 96 informants to identify key constructs and linkages on SM use and perceived outcomes.

The revealed causal mapping (RCM) analysis revealed nine key constructs that shaped the SM use and academic experience of FGS and their peers. The linkages among the nine constructs: three types of social capital (bridging, family bonding and friend bonding), three types of SM use (social, cognitive and hedonic) and three outcomes (academic support, emotional support and distraction to work) were different between FGS and their peers. Among FGS, SM use and perceptions differed by gender.

Leveraging social media is critical for universities to enhance FGS persistence, yet knowledge remains limited. This study showed FGS differed from their counterparts in the SM use and perceptions. Among FGS, the SM use and perceptions differed by gender. The research contributions are: (1) SM technology can empower FGS by building social capital, impacting their academic experiences and psychological well-being and (2) the intersection of gender and student generation status is worth investigation. This paper enriches FGS research by proposing a model of SM use and social capital.

The Bryant University Mathematics Department has been collecting math placement scores and admissions data for all incoming freshmen for many years. In the past, the authors have used these data mainly for placement in first-year classes and more recently to invite the most mathematically talented students to become mathematics majors. The purpose of this paper is to use the same data source to predict persistence in declared majors for all incoming students.

In order to categorize the students, the authors use cluster analysis, one of the tools of data mining, to see if students in particular majors share similar strengths based on the available data. The authors follow up this analysis by running a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to confirm that the means of the clusters are significantly different.

The cluster analysis resulted in five distinct clusters, which were confirmed by the results of the MANOVA. The authors also found how many students in each cluster persisted in their chosen major.

These results will help to improve counseling and proper placement of incoming freshmen. They will also be helpful in long-range planning of upper-level courses. Retention of students in their majors is an important concern for colleges and universities as it relates to planning issues, such as scheduling classes, particularly for upper classmen. This could also affect departmental requirements, such as the size of the faculty.

The underrepresentation of men of color (MOC) in US higher education and the growing disparities in their educational attainment has prompted much concern among policy makers and educators. The objective of this chapter is to address the comparative perspectives on equity and inclusion aim of the book by exploring why MOC are less like to earn a degree. We begin with a review of the contemporary literature on MOC and their academic transition to college in the United States. Next, findings from a longitudinal study that explored the early transitional challenges experienced by this population are presented. Results show the stark differences between high school and college in terms of faculty expectations, autonomous responsibility for academic coursework, and academic demands permeated early academic experiences of a group of MOC. Implications for practitioners are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the structural relationship between green persistence intentions and their seven drivers – green authenticity, green perceptual evaluation, green co-creation, green experiential memorability, green experiential satisfaction, green passionate love and green need for cognition in a green hotel context.

The data used in this study were based on a sample of 589 customers staying at one green hotel in New Taipei City of Taiwan. The predicted relationship was tested using the structural equation modeling and the hierarchical regression analysis.

The results indicate that green perceptual evaluation, green co-creation and green experiential memorability influence green experiential satisfaction. Green passionate love is influenced by green experiential satisfaction. Green need for cognition moderates the effect of green experiential satisfaction on green persistence intentions. Green persistence intentions are influenced by green experiential satisfaction and green passionate love.

To increase green authenticity, green perceptual evaluation, green co-creation, green experiential memorability, green experiential satisfaction, green passionate love, green need for cognition and green persistence intentions, the study findings will help green hotels to develop and implement market-orientated product and/or service strategies.

This paper provides data that lead to a better understanding of the relationships among green authenticity, green perceptual evaluation, green co-creation, green experiential memorability, green experiential satisfaction, green passionate love, green need for cognition and green persistence intentions in a green hotel context.