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Author: Kim, Won Ho
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Kim, Won Ho |
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The Enrollment Patterns of Higher Education: Do Social Backgrounds Really Matter? Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, 2016 Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): College Enrollment; Educational Attainment; High School Completion/Graduates; Socioeconomic Background Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The first purpose of this study was to identify different attendance patterns and trajectories from the college-going young adult period onwards as a whole while still maintaining and emphasizing the individualized nature of the trajectory itself. Although social backgrounds affect comparatively different college experiences, few if any studies exist that explore how social background relates differently within the college-going population. Thus the study's second purpose was to explore how social background affects different higher education enrollment trajectories. The study used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) to test the research questions. The outcome variable was credits earned, which reflected the cumulative percentage of credits earned toward a BA degree by a respondent in a given year. The outcome variable was rearranged by both age and high school graduation year. This study applied growth mixture modeling (GMM) to explore the variability in the data concerning credits earned. In this way, discrete growth trajectories (classes) were identified, and predictors of membership in those classes were gauged. As a result of GMM analysis, the findings indicate that a quadratic 4-class model based on the high school graduation timing variable, which included traditional and non-traditional trajectories of credits earned, best explained variations in enrollment patterns in higher education in the present sample. This study also investigated whether the credits-earned trajectories within higher education could be differentiated in terms of academic, social, cultural, or economic background factors. The results support the contention that historically disadvantaged students are likely to follow nontraditional college enrollment patterns compared to their advantaged counterparts. Therefore, while existing research has focused on the significant influence of academic, social, cultural, and economic background, this study provides evidence that students follow notably different credits-earned patterns once they have entered the higher education system. |
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Bibliography Citation
Kim, Won Ho. The Enrollment Patterns of Higher Education: Do Social Backgrounds Really Matter? Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University, 2016. |