finishing college: the effects of college type

Finishing College: The Effects of College TypeAuthor(s): William VelezSource: Sociology of Education, Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jul., 1985), pp. 191-200Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2112419 .

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FINISHING COLLEGE: THE EFFECTS OF COLLEGE TYPE

WILLIAM VELEZ University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Sociology of Education 1985, Vol. 58 (July):191-200

This study uses multivariate analysis to determine the odds that a sample of high school seniors will earn a bachelor's degree. The study compares the effects of attending two-year and four-year colleges and finds that where one starts college drastically affects the chances of completing the baccalaureate. Students who start in two-year colleges are less likely to finish than students who start in four-year colleges. However, other variables, such as religious background (i.e., being Jewish), educational aspirations, academic performance in college, participation in a work-study program, and living on campus, exert substantial positive effects on finishing. The study finds that nonwhite students with low educational aspirations are more likely to finish college than similar white students, but white students with high aspirations are more likely to finish than comparable nonwhite students.

INTRODUCTION

More than twenty years have passed since the publication of Burton Clark's article "The 'Cooling Out' Function in Higher Education" (1960), in which he argued that two-year colleges teach some of their students to lower their aspirations and reconcile themselves to obtaining a two-year degree. Since the publication of Clark's article, the role of two-year colleges in American higher education has grown tremendously (Thomas et al., 1981). Higher education plays an important role in promoting economic mobility in American society, and social scientists have found that a college degree has considerable positive impact on occupational attainments and earnings (Jencks et al., 1979:Ch. 6). Since one of the goals of two-year colleges is to prepare students for transfer to four-year institutions, it is important to assess the potential effects of two-year colleges on the educational achievements of their students.

Alba and Lavin (1981) suggest that two-year colleges have a discouraging effect on educational attainment, and indeed, dropout rates in two-year colleges are known to be high (Astin, 1977). Anderson (1981) found that a two-year college entrant has a higher probability of dropping out during the first two years of col-

lege. However, until recently, there had been no serious research effort to determine whether these effects were attributable to characteristics of the institutions or to the background characteristics of the students who entered them.

Alba and Lavin (1981), in a study of CUNY students, concluded that two-year colleges function as a separate track within higher education. While controlling for differences in academic background, they compared students who started in community colleges with those who started in senior colleges and found that "students placed in the two-year schools did not stay as long in school, earned fewer credits and were less likely to earn the baccalaureate than academically similar students placed in the senior colleges." Furthermore, "senior college placement apparently doubled a student's chances of earning the degree within five years" (Alba and Lavin, 1981:235). Although very revealing of the role of the two-year college, Alba and Lavin's study is not very con- clusive for a number of reasons. First, they could not control for curriculum in their sample, so community-college students in vocational curricula were compared to senior- college students. Second, they did not use multivariate analyses to determine the effects of a number of variables, in addition to college type, on finishing college. Therefore, they have no way of ascertaining the relative effects of college type on the probabilities of getting a bachelor's degree. Finally, their findings may be applicable or relevant to New York City but may not be representative of the nation as a whole.

Of course, it is generally assumed that students starting in a two-year college- are less likely to finish a four-year degree than students starting in a four-year college. There may be

I want to thank Wendell Bell, Henry A. Walker, and Susan Olzak for a number of insightful com- ments. I am also indebted to Rajshekhar G. Javalgi for his research assistance. In addition, two anony- mous reviewers for this journal provided useful criticism, enabling me to move my analysis toward greater clarity. Address all correspondence to the author at the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, 4412 Social Science Build- ing, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706.

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" articulation" problems in some state systems-i.e., two-year college students may lose credits when transferring to four-year colleges. Also, there may be more stigma at- tached to dropping out after two years in a four-year college than in a two-year college. Finally some students choose a two-year college because all they really want is an associ- ate's degree. Finishing to them may mean two years in one setting and four years in the other.

But there are other possible reasons for the negative effects of two-year colleges. First, students enrolled in two-year colleges are more likely to be exposed to peer influences that encourage them to leave an academic track for vocational schooling or employment. Second, they are more likely to have off-campus jobs. Third, they are more likely to be dissatisfied with certain features of the college environment and, therefore, are likely to be less integrated into college. Finally, two-year students are more likely to have lowered their achievement goals. In studying persistence up to the third year of college, Anderson (1981) found that the effects of college type are mediated by all the above processes.

The factors affecting college completion can be grouped into five categories: (1) personal background, (2) academic processes, (3) psychosocial processes, (4) institutional factors, and (5) institutional integration. Personal-background variables include parents' socioeconomic status (SES) and the student's sex, race, and religion (or whether or not the student is Jewish). Academic processes include high school curriculum enrollment (track), number of math courses taken in high school, and high school and college grades. Psychosocial processes include the stu,dent's educational aspirations (the highest level of education s/he plans to attain) and the student's perception of mother's educational aspirations for her/him. Institutional factors include type of control (indicating whether the student attended a public or private college) and college type (indicating whether the student first attended a two-year or a four-year college). In- stitutional integration is measured by two variables: living quarters in the fall of 1974 (indicating whether or not the student was living in a dormitory, fraternity house, or sorority house) and participation in a work-study program in the fall of 1974.

In studying the effects of these variables, I am assuming that the college attainment process is complex and that the student brings in characteristics, aspirations, and experiences that can be mediated and only partially transformed by the specific college type. That is, I expect these variables to have similar effects on college attainment among two-year

and four-year entrants, but I also expect college type to have an independent effect on college completion.

THE COLLEGE ATTAINMENT PROCESS

Traditional societal values, socialization practices, and situational constraints have generally worked to the advantage of males, enabling them to achieve many desired goals more successfully than females. A longitudinal study of a large southwestern university found that male community-college transfer students were more likely to graduate than female transfer students (Hollahan, Green, and Kel- ley, 1983). I hypothesize that in this sample, males have a higher finishing rate than females.

Anderson's (1981) study of college attrition shows that a student's race has a small effect on college persistence up to the second year and that blacks have slightly higher odds of persisting than whites. The returns of education to young blacks are now, for the fir.st time, similar to t-he returns to comparable whites (Wilson, 1978). Furthermore, Velez (1983) found that nonwhite students transfer from two-year to four-year colleges at higher rates than comparable white students. Assuming that this advantage holds throughout college, I expect nonwhite students to have higher odds of completion than white students.

Historically, Jews, on average, have attained higher levels of education than white gentiles (Lieberson, 1980). Their greater educational achievement is attributed to their higher socioeconomic status and to their higher rates of literacy upon immigration to the United States, compared to other immigrant groups (Stein- berg, 1981). In addition, Jewish culture empha- sizes respect for learning, which also has a positive effect on educational attainment (01- neck and Lazerson, 1974). Thus, I hypothesize that being Jewish, other things being equal, is positively and causally related to finishing college (Featherman, 1971; Anderson, 1981).

Previous research has shown that academic performance has a significant effect on college completion (Pantages and Creedon, 1978; Astin, 1977). This effect can be direct: i.e., a student's grades can be so low that s/he is dismissed from college. Also, as Anderson (1981:5) suggests, low grades can "indicate a lack of fit between the student and the academic standards of the college" and may lead to lowered goals. Therefore, I expect that a student's high school and college grades significantly and positively affect the student's chances of finishing college.

Thomas (1978) has shown that having high educational aspirations is causally related to finishing college. Students in this study were



FINISHING COLLEGE 193

asked to indicate the highest level of education they planned to attain: (1) less than four years of high school; (2) four years of high school but no college; (3) vocational, technical, business, or trade school; (4) junior college; (5) four years of college; (6) graduate or professional school. In preliminary analyses of the data, I noted that a significant proportion of the respondents (26 percent) did not answer this question. I used further tests to determine whether this group of students was distinctive in any way. Simple cross-tabulation of.race and educational plans showed that minorities (His- panics, blacks, and Native Americans) were twice as likely as whites to leave the question unanswered. I also discovered that a majority of these nonrespondents (75 percent), in response to another question, indicated that they had no immediate plans to attend college (within the first year after high school graduation). Moreover, all the nonrespondents indicated that they had not formed college plans in previous years of high school.

One could speculate that nonrespondents were alienated from school and from the questionnaire process and probably had no desire to attend college. Alternatively, one could speculate that these students wanted to go to college, but for some reason (e.g., lack of funds, perceived personal deficiencies, personal problems) were uncertain about their immediate plans. This uncertainty could have caused them to disregard the question on educational aspirations. Normally, nonrespondents are considered missing cases and are eliminated from the sample. However, in con- sideration of the latter hypothesis, I include them in the analysis.

There remains the question of whether the finishing rate of this subsample differs substantially from the finishing rate of the sub- samples of students who answered the question. I hypothesize that students who were uncertain about their college plans have higher finishing rates than students who had not planned to attend college, but lower finishing rates than students who had planned to attend, ceteris paribus.

Recent studies have found that significant others have an important influence on college access, performance, and attrition (Reitzes and Mutran, 1980; Velez, 1982; Anderson, 1981). I hope to extend these findings by showing that a student's perception of parents' high educational expectations reinforces the student's commitment to obtain a four-year degree.

Institutional integration may have an important intermediary effect on the relevance and effectiveness of the college experience. Residence and employment are used as relevant predictors because of "their implications

for conflict with the student role, peer influence, integration into the college versus the social systems, and achievement goals" (An- derson, 1981:4). For example, working off campus while in school presents a potential role conflict because it decreases a student's chances for interaction with faculty and other students. Having a work-study job, on the other hand, increases a student's opportunities for interaction with faculty and students out- side of class, thus augmenting integration.

Residential factors are also likely to affect college completion. Feldman and Newcomb (1969) found that students who joined sororities were more gregarious, more self- confident, and more assertive than other students. They also found that students who lived in dormitories participated in more extracur- ricular campus activities and obtained higher grades than students who lived elsewhere (also see Griffeth, 1958). Students who live on campus, in a dormitory, fraternity house, or sorority house, interact primarily with other college students, are structurally integrated into the college, and are insulated from exter- nal influences (Astin, 1977). In contrast, students living either at home with parents or in other off-campus living arrangements are exposed to fewer integrating influences and are more likely to be influenced by nonstudents whose attitudes toward college are not favor- able (Chickering, 1975).

METHOD

Sample This study follows the educational careers of

a sample of students who were high school seniors in 1972. The data are taken from the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 (National Center for Edu- cation Statistics, 1980). The NLS is a two-stage probability sample: Schools were sampled first, then students were sampled within schools. In the spring of 1972, the Educational Testing Service, administered the test battery and base-year questionnaire to 16,683 seniors enrolled in 1,070 public, private, and parochial secondary schools in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. Schools in low-income areas and schools with high proportions of minority students were sampled at about twice the normal rate. The first follow-up survey was done in the fall and spring of 1973-74, the second follow-up in the fall of 1974, the third follow-up in the fall of 1976, and the fourth follow-up in the fall of 1979.

Included in the nonwhite category were blacks, American Indians, and Hispanics. Stu- dents of Asian ethnicity were excluded from the sample. Although the term Hispanic is as-



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sociated with national or ethnic origins, and although most Hispanics could be classified as white on strictly racial grounds, for the pur- pose of this study they are classified- as nonwhite. It is important to note that the NLS only

sampled seniors. Therefore, because minorities have higher dropout rates than whites, the minority students included in the sample are a very special group.

Initially, a 50 percent random sample of all students enrolled in an academic program in any college in the fall of 1972 or 1973 was obtained, yielding 6,029 cases. Then, only those students enrolled in 1972 with no missing values were selected, yielding a sample of 3,169 students. Approximately 84 percent of the students in the sample were white, and 16 percent were nonwhite. Male and female students were equally represented in the sample.

Variable Measurement

Following is a description of the variables included in the analysis.

SES is "a composite of five components: father's education, mother's education, parents' income, father's occupation, and house- hold items. Each component variable was standardized and given equal weight in cal- culating the composite index" (Fetters, 1976:2). Sex was coded 1 if the respondent was male, 0 if the respondent was female. Race was coded 1 if the respondent was white, 0 if the respondent was nonwhite. Religion is a dichotomous variable distinguishing Jewish respondents from non-Jewish respondents: Jewish = 1, non-Jewish = 0.

High school curriculum is an original seven-category variable obtained from school records. This variable was recoded as a dichotomous dummy variable indicating enrollment in academic or other curricula: academic curriculum = 1, other curricula = 0. Math is the number of math courses the student took in high school. High school grades indicates a student's grade-point average, which was obtained from school records. This variable was coded into 14 categories, from A+ to F. College grades represents the student's response to a question on the first follow-up, which asked students to indicate how they had done in all their education since high school. Responses ranged from "mostly A" to "mostly below D." This variable was coded into eight categories. In most cases, these grades represent freshman year academic performance. Aptitude is "the composite value of test scores in four areas: vocabu- lary, reading, letter groups, and mathematics.

The mean of the four standardized scores serves as an ability index" (Fetters, 1976:2).

Plans indicates the highest level of education the student plans to attain. The variable was coded as follows: if the respondent plans to complete high school, vocational/technical school, or less (or if the respondent did not answer), college plans = 0; if the respondent plans to obtain a two-year college degree, college plans = 1; if the respondent plans to complete four years of college, graduate school, or professional school, college plans = 2.1 Race*plans is an interaction term, coded 1 if the respondent is white and aspires to a four- year degree or greater. Uncertainty is a dichotomous dummy variable indicating whether or not the student responded to the question on college plans: if the student did not respond, uncertainty = 1; if the student did respond, uncertainty = 0. Mother's educational aspirations is a student's perception of mother's aspirations for her/him. The variable was coded as follows: high school, vocational/technical school, or less 0; two- year college = 1; four-year college, graduate school, or professional school = 2.2

Control indicates whether the student was enrolled in a public or private college in Octo- ber 1972: private = 1, public = 0. College type indicates whether the student was enrolled in a two-year or four-year college in October 1972. Only those students in academic curricula are included: four-year college = 1, two-year college = 0.

Living quarters indicates the type of residence in which the student lived in October 1974. This variable was recoded as a dummy variable: dormitory, fraternity house, sorority house = 1; parents' home or other off-campus housing = 0. Work-study program is a dummy variable indicating whether or not the student

I Use of the categorical measures, however, re- sulted in only a marginal improvement in fit (chi square = 1,274.7); and the resulting coefficients for the other variables were negligibly different from those reported in Table 2. The only noticeable change was in the coefficient for race, which shifted from -0.665 to -0.573. Consequently, I retained the more parsimonious specification reported here.

2 J also experimented with categorical codings permitting nonlinear effects for college plans and mother's aspirations. The effects were distinctly nonlinear. For college plans, the coefficient con- trasting two-year college with high school, vocational/technical school, or less was a statisti- cally insignificant 0.025, and the coefficient con- trasting four-year college or more with the same omitted category was 0.542. The analogous coefficients for mother's aspirations were 0.046 (insignificant) and 0.343.




had a work-study job in the fall of 1974: work- study job = 1, no work-study job = 0.

Finishing college was created from "three Fourth Follow-up Questionnaire items: (a) years of education at vocational, trade or business school as of October 1979 (Item 66); (b) highest level of college education as of October 1979 (Item 67); and (c) kind of degree earned (Item 76)" (Riccobono et al., 1981:App. L.2). This variable was recoded as a dummy variable: bachelor's or graduate degree - 1, less = 0.

RESULTS

Effects of Background Variables In the NLS sample, students from high-SES

families had larger predicted probabilities of finishing than students from low-SES families, although the magnitude of the effect was only moderate.

Males and females had the same finishing rate-about 60 percent. The zero-order correlation between sex and finishing (0.001) suggests an absence of sex effects (see Table 1). In the full equation, however, I found that males had a significantly (6 percent) higher probability of finishing than females (see the last column of Table 2). White students in the sample had substan-

tially higher rates of college completion than nonwhite students: 62 percent of the white students graduated from college, compared to only 49 percent of the nonwhite students. The zero-order correlation between race and finishing (0.103) also suggests an advantage for white students. But when all other independent variables are included in the logit equation, a completely different picture emerges: White students who planned to obtain at least a four-year degree had slightly higher probabilities of finishing than comparable nonwhite students, but nonwhite students with low educational aspirations had substantially higher probabilities of finishing than similar white students (by 16 percent). White students who had no plans to attend college might simply be killing time. But similar nonwhite students may have a stronger commitment to finishing, because the economic/occupational payoff is rel- atively larger for them (Jencks et al., 1979). Since the multivariate analysis yields different results than the zero-order correlation, the ap- parent advantage of whites over nonwhites must be due to other variables, rather than to race per se.

The effects of religion are very large: Being Jewish increased a student's probability of finishing by 25 percent. The coefficient for religion is the second strongest predictor in the

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Table 2. Logit Coefficients for Significant Predictors of College Attainmnent

First Variable Coefficienta SE T-ratio Derivativeb SES .293**** .072 4.06 .070 Sex .255*** .096 2.66 .061 Race - .665*** .222 3.00 - .160 Religion 1.050*** 2.730 3.83 .252 High school curriculum .188* .104 1.80 .045 Math .052** .027 1.97 .012 High school grades .096**** .020 4.80 .023 College grades .353*** .039 9.14 .085 Plans .173 .195 0.89 .042 Race*plans .927**** .245 3.75 .222 Uncertainty 1.001**** .285 3.51 .240 Mother's aspirations .314**** .084 3.75 .075 College type .780**** .114 6.83 .187 Living quarters 1.790**** .121 14.80 .430 Work-study program .943**** .165 5.71 .226 Constant -5.135**** .430 12.00

x2= 1,269.94 Percent of predictions correct = 77 N = 3,169

NOTE: Preliminary analyses failed to show any significant effects for the aptitude and control variables. They are not included in the logit equation, since they do not alter, in a random or systematic way, the values of the significant predictors.

a The coefficient expresses the incremental effect of the independent variable on the log of the probability of finishing college. The criterion variable is the log of finishing rather than not finishing in any of the six academic years following college entrance in the fall of 1972.

b Derivatives are calculated using the equation b = P*(1-P*), where b is the relevant coefficient and P* is the estimated probability (Hanushek and Jackson, 1977:188-189). The sample proportion is assumed to be a reasonable estimate of P*. Under this assumption, partial derivatives are interpretable as the net change in the probability of fnishing college associated with a unit change in the exogenous variables.

* Significant at the .10 level. ** Significant at the .05 level.

* Significant at the .01 level. * Significant at the .001 level.

equation, which indicates that Jews have an educational orientation that is not captured by the college plans variable (Steinberg, 1981).

Effects of Academic Processes

Table 2 shows that students who were enrolled in a college preparatory track in high school had slightly better chances of finishing college. The number of math courses a student took' in high school also had a very small positive effect on finishing.

Students who got good grades in high school and college had a higher predicted probability of finishing. The effects of high school grades are cumulative; i.e., they determine whether or not a student is selected into the next level of schooling. The effects of college grades are larger: A student with an A average had a 34 percent higher probability of finishing than a student with a C average. A good academic performance may increase a student's integration into college life and raise the student's achievement goals. On some campuses, it may even help a student get into a college dorm.

Effects of Psychosocial Processes

Students who had formed college plans in their senior year of high school and students who were uncertain of their plans had larger predicted probabilities of finishing than students with no college plans. Surprisingly, among nonwhite students, those who were uncertain were more likely to finish college than those who had college plans. Also, Table 2 shows that the interaction term (race*plans) had a stronger positive effect on finishing than college plans alone. Among white students, however, those who had college plans and those who were uncertain had about the same advantage over those who had no plans. In any case, the results indicate that students who were uncertain about college in their senior year of high school had a high desire to obtain a higher education and, once enrolled in college, were much more committed to finishing than those with no college plans. I A student who perceived his/her mother to have high educational aspirations for him/her had a larger probability of finishing than one who perceived such expectations to be lower.




Effects of Institutional Factors

The control-type variable had no effects on college completion. Students enrolled in private colleges enjoyed no special advantage over those enrolled in public colleges.

Where one began college (i.e., in a two-year or a four-year school) did, however, have an important effect on college attainment. A student who started in a four-year college had a 19 percent higher probability of finishing than a student who started in a two-year college. By the fall of 1976, 42 percent of the four-year college entrants had already finished the baccalaureate, compared to only 12 percent of the two-year entrants.--By the fall of 1979, 79 percent of the four-year college entrants had finished, compared to only 31 percent of the two-year entrants.3 In the logit equation, the large and positive coefficient for college type indicates that the greater finishing rates among four-year college entrants cannot be explained by selection factors.

Effects of Institutional Integration Processes

Living quarters had the largest significant effect on the probability- of finishing college. Students who lived on campus were 43 percent more likely to finish college than students who lived off campus. There are a number of possible reasons for this large positive effect. First, employed students who live on campus work fewer hours than employed students who live off campus. Second, students who live on campus have more academically oriented friends. Finally, these students are more integrated into college life (see Anderson, 1981). This pattern, however, may be due to the forces of self-selection and group membership, rather than to the independent effects of living quarters. A student may choose to live in a particular residential arrangement that "fits" his/her characteristics and orientations to campus life (Feldman and Newcomb, 1969). Also, fraternities and sororities are known to be selective in their recruitment of new members, admitting only those students who have values

and orientations similar to those held by active members (Bohrnstedt, 1966).

Students who had work-study jobs had a 23 percent higher probability of finishing college. It is very plausible that participating in a work-study program has a positive effect on recent educational goals (the college plans variable in this study reflects high school goals). Also, being able to work on campus prevents a student from holding a regular job, in which s/he is more likely to find encourage- ment for vocational education and work (An- derson, 1981). Some students hold work-study jobs simply for extra money. But many students work to pay off the cost of tuition, housing, or meals. It is probable that for these students, a work-study job is a proxy for financial need. However, the zero-order correlation between SES and work-study program is about zero, suggesting that these jobs are not given solely on the basis of financial need.

The combined effect of the institutional integration variables is larger than the effects of the other variable clusters. However, there is a question whether these variables are simply endogenous to college type. The zero-order correlations between college type and living quarters (0.228) and between college type and work-study program (0.140) suggest that the opportunities to live on campus and participate in a work-study program are more available in four-year colleges. To test whether these two variables added predictive power beyond that of college type, I tested two models for finishing college, using the root-sum-squared-error test (RSSE) (see Table 3). Living quarters and work-study program are included in Modei 2, but not in Model 1. As Table 3 shows, the RSSE is 377.60 for Model 1, and 69.30 for Model 2, indicating that Model 2 offers greater predictive power than Model 1. The proportion of correct predictions for each model (73 percent for Model 1, 77 percent for Model 2) also proves that living quarters and work-study program have significant and independent effects on finishing college.

DISCUSSION

This study has shown that where students start college drastically affects their chances of finishing the baccalaureate. Students who start in two-year colleges have lower odds of finishing than students who start in four-year colleges. However, other variables, such as religious background, academic performance in college, college plans, living quarters, and participation in a work-study program, also exert substantial effects on finishing.

The large positive effect of being Jewish on finishing college indicates the continuing im-

3 These figures, of course, are for those students who were in an academic program for at least one semester in college and for which complete information was available. Of all the original respondents in the NLS class of 1972 for which information was available as of the fourth follow-up, 26 percent obtained at least a bachelor's degree. Of those who attended college, 42 percent graduated by the fall of 1979. However, some of the students included in the pool from which the graduation rate is calculated may have been enrolled in vocational programs. (See Riccobono [1981:App. L.2] for the criteria used to construct the educational attainment variable.)



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Table 3. Comparison of Predictive Power of Two Models of Finishing College

Root Sum Percent Squared Error of Correct

Actual Predicted (RSSE)- Predictions X2 N Model 1 1,856 2,123 377.60 73 916.59 3,169 Model 2 1,856 1,905 69.30 77 1,269.94 3,169 NOTE: Model 1 includes 13 explanatory variables: SES, sex, race, religion, high school curriculum, math, high school grades, college' grades, plans, race*plans, uncertainty, mother's aspirations, and college type. Model 2 includes two additional variables: living quarters and work-study program.

a The root sum squared error is defined as follows:

RSSE= [ i (4q)2 ?

where qi = actual share for i = 1, 2; and 4, = predicted share for i = 1, 2.

portance of religio-ethnic group membership. It is possible, for some historical reasons, that growing up Jewish gives one a different orientation toward educational achievement-an orientation that is not reflected in the college plans variable. Since this effect is independent of SES and mother's aspirations, a cultural ex- planation is more appropriate. Olneck and Lazerson (1974:473), who studied the educational achievements of German and Russian Jews, suggest that a Jewish upbringing may stimulate high levels of educational attainment by encouraging "mental agility, close attention to the meaning of words, and lively criticism." They also suggest that Jewish families are more willing than other ethnic/religious groups to tolerate economic burdens in order to keep their children in school for extended periods. In sum, Judaism fosters respect for learning, trust in educational institutions, and a be- lief that educational attainment will translate into occupational attainment.

There is no evidence that the college experience eliminates many of the achievement differences between the sexes (Astin, 1977). Therefore, the effects of college attendance on women's achievement must be interpreted cautiously. Women may attend college for other than academic or professional reasons, or they may place more emphasis than men on certain aspects of college life. For example, supportive personal interactions with faculty members are important to female students (Heam and Olzak, 1981), but these interactions are less available to women in higher education. In any case, a female student's lower odds of finishing college may result from a general cooling-out process that specifically affects women.

The effects of academic performance may indicate that students use grades as feedback, to modify or reaffirm their achievement goals. Grades are used as a measure of academic

competence, thus students base their educational decisions on them. Some theorists view grades as teachers' judgements, in many cases unrelated to the actual intellectual accom- plishment of a student: "Any grade is a com- munication about past performance; but it also sets the stage for future performance. Future performance will be affected by the grade, and especially by the interpretation put on the grade" (Goldsmid and Wilson, 1980:313). Ap- titude may partially determine college grades, but the effect of grades on college completion probably reflects the importance of motivation, how hard one works, and actual performance, rather than aptitude.4

The positive effects of high educational aspirations on educational achievement point to the importance of psychosocial- variables and images of the future (Bell and Mau, 1971). Stu- dents who had planned to attend college, graduate school, or professional school generally had higher rates of college completion than students who had not planned to attend. How- ever, students who were uncertain about their college plans in their senior year of high school were at least as likely to finish as students who had planned to attend college.

The large effects of the institutional integration variables indicate that success in college depends in part on active involvement in all aspects of the college environment. Living and working on campus exposes the student to peer influences that encourage studying and increase achievement goals. It also increases the likelihood of interaction with faculty and other college functionaries, which socializes the student to academic life and its goals. The im--

4 The correlation coefficient between aptitude and college grades was 0.309, a moderately large re- lationship. Preliminary analyses failed to show any significant effects of academic aptitude on finishing.




portance of living on campus and having a work-study job suggests the usefulness of the concept of "total institutions," first suggested by Goffman (1961), to account for the college attainment process. Living and working on campus approximates membership in a total institution, which enforces upon the student the formal rules, activities, and goals of higher education. Although a student's attendance at college may indicate that s/he has already ac- cepted the goals of the institution, active involvement in campus activities may strengthen such goals or socialize low-aspiring students into accepting them. Students who are actively involved in campus life follow a tight schedule of school activities (either academic or social), and they are constantly in the company of other students, which makes their academic performance more public. Thus, the most pre- stigious and selective colleges and universities have higher graduation rates because of the superior academic performance of their students and because they are more able, due to

greater financial resources, to provide campus housing and work-study jobs.

The effects of living and working on campus can offset the negative effects of starting in a two-year college. Two-year college entrants who lived and worked on campus had greatly increased odds of finishing. However, while 34 percent of the four-year college students were living on campus in 1974, only 13 percent of the two-year college students were able to do so (see Table 4); and four-year college students were three times more likely to hold work- study jobs than two-year college students.

This study has shown that two-year and four-year colleges constitute different tracks within higher education and that these tracks are associated with very different educational life chances (Karabel, 1972). The results suggest that policies aimed at increasing the amount of campus housing and the number of work-study jobs will increase the rates of college completion for all students, but especially for those who start in two-year colleges.

Table 4. Means and Standard Deviations by College Type

Two-Year Four-Year All Variable College Students College Students College Students

SES .11 .36 .28 (.68) (.72) (.72)

Sex .50 .49 .49 (.50) (.50) (.50)

Race .81 .86 .84 (.39) (.36) (.37)

Religion .03 .05 .04 (.17) (.22) (.21)

High school curriculum .48 .74 .66 (.50) (.44) (.47)

Math 4.06 4.79 4.56 (1.82) (1.83) '(1.87)

High school grades 7.78a 9.47b 8.95b (2.84) (2.75) (2.78)

College grades 5.50c 5.57c 5.53c (1.34) (1.35) (1.35)

Aptitude 2.06 2.44 2.33 (.17) (.65) (.68)

Plans 1.09 1.74 1.53 (.84) (.66) (.78)

Uncertainty .24 .11 .15 (.43) (.32) (.35)

Mother's aspirations 1.41 1.85 1.71 (.76) (.51) (.63)

Control .08 .25 .20 (.26) (.43) (.40)

Living quarters .13 .34 .28 (.34) (.48) (.45)

Work-study program .05 .15 .12 (.22) (.36) (.32)

Finishing college .31 .79 .60 (.45) (.52) (.50)

N 1,398 1,771 3,169 a C+ (letter grade). b B- (letter grade). c B (letter grade).



200 VELEZ

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