Don Hossler

Family and High School Experience Influences on the Postsecondary Educational Plans of Ninth-Grade Students:

The objectives of this study were to review the current literature on status attainment and student college choice and to develop and test a structural model of predisposition to attend college. Family and student background characteristics, parents’ educational expectations for students, level of student involvement in school, and student achievement were cited as influences on students’ predisposition toward postsecondary education and were the chief components of the model. Data from 2,497 ninth-grade students and their parents were used to test the model using LISREL. Parents’ expectations exerted the strongest influence throughout the model. Parents’ education, student gender, high school GPA, and high school experiences also contributed significantly in explaining students’ aspirations.

State Funding for Higher Education: The Sisyphean Task.

And then I saw Sisyphus, who had difficult pains Pushing a monstrous stone up with both of his hands. And indeed he made a leaning effort with hands and feet To push the stone up the crest. But when it was about To go over the top, then it turned back down with its force; The shameless stone rolled on down again to the plain. Then he pushed it back again, exerting himself, and the sweat Flowed off his limbs and dust rose up around his head. Homer, Odyssey

Student Aid and Its Role in Encouraging Persistence

For more than 3 decades, scholars and practitioners have speculated on the extent to which financial aid increases the odds of students completing their degrees. While the impact of financial aid on persistence has been studied a great deal, we know relatively little about the impact of aid on graduation. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the extant research on how student financial aid affects undergraduate student persistence and graduation. In this pursuit, 74 articles, chapters, and monographs published after 1990 were reviewed to shed light on (a) how the studies define student persistence and student financial aid, (b) the summative knowledge of the relative effects of grants and loans on within-year persistence, continuous enrollment, and graduation, (c) how the existing studies were able to untangle the effects of merit- and need-based aid, and (d) the effect of debt on student persistence.

The influence of student problems on student withdrawal decisions: An autopsy on “autopsy” studies

The influence of student problems, which are often cited by students as reasons for withdrawal, is compared with the influence of constructs derived from Tintos student attrition model. The findings suggest that data from post-hoc attrition studies should be used cautiously.

Diverse Information-Gathering Methods in the Postsecondary Decision-Making Process

This study examined the techniques high school students used to gather information about postsecondary education and institutions. The researchers designated students as “highly diversified” or “less diversified” searchers and identified background characteristics and information-gathering behaviors using factor analysis and discriminant analysis. High diversification was significantly related to, among other things, student certainty about proposed academic major and satisfaction with the student’s chosen postsecondary institution.

Getting serious about institutional performance in student retention: Research‐based lessons on effective policies and practices

The Indiana Project on Academic Success and the College Board Pilot Study on Student Retention evaluated the effectiveness of a variety of approaches to student retention. The authors share empirically grounded insights gleaned from this research.

Being Undecided about Postsecondary Education

This study compares ninth-grade Indiana students who have postsecondary educational plans with those who are undecided. The results of factor analysis and stepwise discriminant analysis indicate that decided and undecided students can be differentiated by the amount of time spent thinking about postsecondary options, the amount of information received regarding postsecondary options, academic achievement, and student and parent educational expectations.

The Study of Institutional Practices Related to Student Persistence

Using literature and illustrations drawn from a pilot study, this article explores the theoretical and methodological challenges entailed in the study of student retention. We center the discussion around two important efforts to expand the theoretical base and scope for research in this area: Bergers (2000) concept of colleges and universities as optimizers of cultural capital and Bensimons (2007) recent critique of the narrowness of the frames that predominate student retention research. By way of exploring these issues through a concrete example, the article presents an overview of processes and findings from a funded pilot study of institutional policies and practices surrounding student retention. This exploration—part essay, part research report—leads us ultimately to pose two central questions on which, we suggest, future research should build: What are institutions doing to improve student retention? and How do institutions intervene in the workings of cultural capital in higher education?

Grounded Meta-Analysis: A Guide for Research Synthesis

Abstract: Research synthesis has been used increasingly to integrate knowledge. Quantitative techniques, however, present special problems. Using Glaser and Strauss (1975) as a model, the authors developed a grounded meta-analytic technique to compare organizational interventions derived from rational-based strategies (MBO, planned change, etc.) with organizational culture-based strategies (organizational culture, climate, etc.). Grounded meta-analysis proved useful when integrating both quantitative and qualitative studies. This paper focuses upon the meta-analytic technique developed using illustrations from the study.

Institutional Merit-Based Aid and Student Departure: A Longitudinal Analysis

The use of merit criteria in awarding institutional aid has grown considerably and, some argue, is supplanting need as the central factor in awarding aid. Concurrently, the accountability movement in higher education has placed greater emphasis on retention and graduation as indicators of institutional success and quality. In this context, this study explores the relationship between institutional merit aid and student departure from a statewide system of higher education. We found that, once we account for self-selection to the extent possible, there was no significant relationship. By contrast, need-based aid was consistently related to decreased odds of departure.