원격대학생의 장학금 수혜가 학업지속에 미치는 영향 분석

Abstract

This article examined the effects of scholarships on academic persistence in distance learning environments. Student persistence is one of the most important measurements for both institutional management and student success amidst the changing educational landscape in higher education. It is a particularly important issue for open and distance universities where the student retention rates are much lower than in conventional face-to-face education. To this end, this study aimed to understand how the provision of scholarships may contribute to students' persistence, especially focusing on distance adult learners.
 Data was collected from a Korean public open university regarding students' academic and scholarship information who were enrolled in the first and second semesters in the year of 2019. Logistic regression models were applied to identify the relationship between scholarship types and students' persistence. The finding suggested that students who received need-based scholarships were more likely to continue in their studies than those who received merit-based scholarships. Additional analyses estimating the impact of specific types of scholarships on persistence highlighted the following: in comparing specific types of need-based scholarships, financial scholarship recipients compared to social scholarship recipients may increase the probability of persistence. In terms of different merit-based scholarship types, non-academic scholarship than academic scholarship may positively contribute to students' persistence, controlling for students' individual attributes. Suggestions on scholarship policy concerning open and distance universities as well as implications for future research were also discussed.