Institutional Impacts on Bachelor's Degree Completion for the New Majority

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

The rate of bachelor’s degree (BA) completion for lower-income and traditionally underrepresented minority students on average lags by 15 to 30 percentage points as compared to high-income and white peers. Scholars have identified college quality as an important contributor to this gap, focusing on whether highly selective institutions enhance disadvantaged students’ chances of BA completion. Yet colleges labeled “most selective” only enroll one-third of all four-year college-goers and disproportionately serve white and high- income students. Considering these statistics, and taking a cue from the substantial literature on “school effects,” my dissertation uses unique, high-quality data and multiple methodological approaches to demonstrate how postsecondary institutions impact students’ chances of BA completion – particularly low-income and traditionally underrepresented students.

Specifically, I draw on longitudinal data from both administrative records and a yearlong interview study of the largest, urban, public university system in the US to make three major contributions. First, I analyze the effects of institution-level mechanisms on BA completion, including college characteristics (e.g., dollars spent per student) and students’ pathways within individual colleges (e.g., major field of study). This contribution requires analytical procedures that carefully account both for the selection process and for students’ route into four-year college: I consider both four-year beginners and transfer students. Second, I determine how these mechanisms vary for particular groups of students, such as black and Latino males and first-generation college-goers. Third, I elucidate the effects of both social experiences and encounters with colleges’ organizational practices and policies in shaping students’ “college-going identity,” which I argue is a key mechanism enabling persistence. Through these contributions, I provide a theoretical, analytical, and policy-relevant template for examining BA completion, especially for colleges outside the “most selective” category.

Author

• Christina Ciocca Eller, Columbia University