Baccalaureate Attainment of College Students at 4-Year Institutions as a Function of Student Engagement Behaviors: Social and Academic Student Engagement Behaviors Matter

Abstract

Vincent Tinto originally asserted, “… it is the individual’s integration into the academic and social systems of the college that most directly related to his continuance in that college” (Tinto, Review of Educational Research 45(10): 89–125, 1975), yet the rates of college degree attainment are still stagnant. Institution-level research on student engagement indicates that both types of engagement contribute to increased student persistence and degree attainment. Research has prompted going beyond institutional-level data and calls for using of nationally representative, longitudinal data to addressing engagement. Using the 2004/09 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/09) and logistic regression, this study finds that both academic and social student engagement behaviors significantly impact degree attainment in postsecondary education net of individual and institutional factors. Interaction analysis of the two different types of engagement finds that the impact is not additive but instead is differential and dependent upon the student’s engagement typology as proposed by Coates (Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 32(2): 121–141, 2007).