Education Commons^™

Retention Of First-Generation College Students At A Four-Year Regional Public Institution, Matthew Andrew Schumacher

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Every year a significant number of college students stop out of college and fail to persist and complete their degree. First-generation college students are more likely to exit college without a degree than continuing-generation students. The purpose of this quantitative, archival, nonexperimental study was to explore how first-generation college student demographic, academic background, college academic, and student engagement factors were related to and predict first-year to second-year retention at a mid-sized, public regional university. The factors explored were gender, age, race/ethnicity, income status, high school GPA, ACT, cumulative GPA, first term attempted hours, housing, participation in a Living Learning Community, …

Connecting The Dots: Social Capital And The College-Going Beliefs Of Rural Appalachian Students, Amanda R. Butz

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

First-generation students and students of lower socioeconomic status often prepare for postsecondary education without the benefit of information provided by their families, resulting in lower levels of college access (Lundberg, 2007). Few researchers have sought to understand how potential first-generation college students might go about obtaining the necessary information for a successful transition to college. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine to whom students talk about college and to explore the potential reciprocal relationship between resources for and information about college provided by others and students’ educational beliefs.

This dissertation consisted of two empirical studies. In the first …

A Critical Analysis Of The Identification And Treatment Of First-Generation College Students: A Social Capital Approach, Michael Peabody

Kentucky Journal of Higher Education Policy and Practice

This paper examines institutional identification of first-generation college students and corresponding campus retention programs utilizing a Social Capital lens. Building on the theoretical foundation of Astin and Tinto this article argues that all student retention programs are based on Social Capital theory and provides recommendations for improving campus retention programs.

Applying The Rasch Model To Measure And Compare First- Generation And Continuing-Generation College Students’ Academic Self-Efficacy, Nichole Marie Knutson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Students who are the first in their families to attend college are less likely to earn a college degree as compared to their continuing-generation peers. In efforts to increase college graduation rates for first-generation college students, support programs designed to assist first-generation college students are increasing in numbers. These first- generation programs are relying on existing research to build effective curriculums. Even though an extensive body of literature exists in the fields of self-efficacy and first- generation college students, research investigating the self-efficacy of first-generation college students are extremely limited. The research is further limited when examining academic self-efficacy and …