Predictors of institutional commitment at two-year and four-year institutions.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This research compares the predictors of institutional commitment in a population of 8,240 first year students at 28 two-year public and 23 four-year public institutions. Drawing upon key concepts from two relevant outcome models and using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, this study examines an array of campus structural/organizational variables, student pre-college characteristics, and student campus experiences as predictors of student institutional commitment.
This study demonstrates that although the patterns of relationships between most of the predictor variables and institutional commitment are the same for two-year and four-year institutions, differential effects also exist. Similar predictors of institutional commitment at both two-year and four-year institutions include participant's age, marital status, ethnicity, reported impact of financial aid, perceived difficulty financing college, extent of social growth, extent of intellectual growth, and interaction with faculty. Differential predictors include the impact of classroom experiences, stronger for the two-year sector, and the impact of social integration, stronger for the four-year sector.
This study makes three important contributions to the higher education literature. First, the results of this study highlight the importance of academic integration, academic growth, social integration, and social growth in predicting student institutional commitment. Secondly, this study supports the Cabrera, Nora, and Castaneda (1993) Integrated Model of Student Persistence. Finally, from the results of the study, the comparisons between two-year and four-year institutions merit further investigation.