Not all college “stayers” and “leavers” stay or leave for the same reason or with the same experience. However, traditional measures and studies of academic success have limited their scope to either performance or persistence as individual variables. This study explored whether a more nuanced definition of success as a composite of both performance and persistence (GPA and retention) produced different results than when using the variables separately. The influence of academic self-efficacy on student success served as the context for this exploration. The study used an existing incoming student survey dataset from a small private liberal arts college. Subjects were grouped into one of five categories based on academic performance and persistence after two terms: Good Performing Leavers, Good Performing Stayers, Bad Performing Leavers, Bad Performing Stayers, and Early Leavers. The relationship between academic self-efficacy and student success, using the individual and composite outcome variables, were explored. The results of the study were inconclusive with the composite measure resulting in only a slight increase in the number of significant relationship with self-efficacy items. Post hoc exploratory analysis that controlled for high school GPA and removed subjects who did not appear to have engaged in the survey resulted in some support for the original hypothesis. These and other suggestions are made for future investigations of this question.

American democracy fosters the common good of society by allowing citizen involvement in government. Sustaining American democracy depends on civic involvement among citizens. Civic involvement, which consists of citizens' informed involvement in government, politics, and community life, is a desired behavior among adult citizens in the United States and it is a desired outcome of higher education. However, people in the latter part of the twentieth century have questioned the extent to which higher education makes a difference in civic involvement among adults in the United States. College educators are challenged to explain the relationship between higher education and civic involvement among adults in the 1990s. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between higher education and civic involvement. The researcher approached this issue by examining relationships between measures of civic involvement and personal characteristics such as education level, race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status among adults in the United States. The researcher compared joint relationships between civic involvement and personal characteristics among college graduates with the joint relationships between civic involvement and personal characteristics among adults with some college education and adults with no college education. Data from the Adult Civic Involvement component of the National Household Education Survey of 1996 (NHES:96) were analyzed. This survey was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. Using list-assisted, random digit dialing methods and computer assisted telephone interviewing techniques, data were collected from a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized civilians who were eighteen years of age or older at the time of the survey. Data were collected regarding respondents' (a) personal characteristics, (b) use of information sources, (c) knowledge of government, (d) community participation, and (e) political participation. The selected technique for analyzing data was canonical correlation analysis (CCA), which is a form of multivariate analysis that subsumes multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance, and discriminant analysis. The results revealed that civic involvement among adults in the United States is moderate at best. Low to moderate civic involvement among adults is mostly attributed to the absence of civic behaviors among adults with no college education. Among adults, overall civic involvement has strong relationships with education level, race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. While the relationship between higher education and civic involvement is strong, there are significant differences in civic involvement among college graduates when grouped according to race, gender, age, and socioeconomic status. White male college graduates with high incomes tend to demonstrate the attributes of civic involvement to a greater extent than other groups. Among adults with some college education, overall civic involvement is characteristic of older males.Similarly, older adults with no college education demonstrate civic involvement to a greater extent than younger adults with no college education. These findings are consistent with the results of previous studies. The findings also extend the results of previous studies by explaining the relationships between civic involvement and multiple personal characteristics when analyzed simultaneously. The findings suggest a need for ongoing analyses of civic involvement among adult citizens and among college students. The results further imply a need for college personnel to identify and implement strategies that will improve the civic outcomes of higher education for minorities and females in various age and income categories. / Ph. D.

College degree attainment benefits both private citizens and society. Historically, degree attainment rates have differed based on students’ race, income, and parental education. Along with differences in degree attainment rates, time to degree has been increasing for all students nationally. Increased time to degree has adverse effects for students as it increases the cost of a degree and decreases future earnings through a delayed entry into the workforce.In recent years, colleges and universities have implemented programs to address challenges with graduation rates at their institutions and improve on-time degree completion. Beginning in 2014, a large public university located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, implemented an on-time degree completion program to address its four-year bachelor’s degree completion rate. In addition to increased academic support for all program participants, up to 500 students with high-financial per cohort were given additional grant funding towards their cost of attendance. The Theory of Planned Behavior frames the process of shaping human behavior as the combination of changing the attitude towards completing the behavior, shifting norms to reflect desired outcomes, and reducing perceived barriers to behavior completion. The on-time degree completion program uses a participant contract and a series of checkpoints to encourage positive behavior, shown through research, to increase graduation rates: priority registration, meeting with an academic advisor, earning a minimum of 30 credits per academic year, and completing a degree audit. The current study analyzed the checkpoint and on-time degree completion data for three consecutive first-time, first-year cohorts at a large public university. The total number of participants included in the study totaled 13,323. Using a combination of descriptive and predictive statistics, I found that both checkpoint completion and on-time degree completion differed based on several participant characteristics, including academic preparation, race, family income, and parental education. However, even when controlling for participant background characteristics, checkpoint completion had a positive relationship to on-time degree completion. Therefore, while there are improvements to be made in the checkpoint completion rates and the equality of those outcomes, the program checkpoints predict on-time graduation. Further, for program participants who receive the program grant funding, there is a correlation between multiple years of grant funding and improvements in on-time graduation rate. Further research should be conducted to understand the reasons students fail to complete checkpoints and the barriers to checkpoint completion for some student groups. Additionally, for participants who were not retained until graduation, a study tracking participants’ degree completion across institutions would help explore the true degree completion rate for the participants, as opposed to at the individual institution. / Educational Administration