Earning college credit in high school: Variables that predict persistence to the second year of college

Abstract

This research examined positive and negative aspects of high school students earning college credit. Precollege characteristics—high school academic performance, college credit earned in high school, and academic performance during the first year of college—were analyzed to predict student persistence to the second year of college. Academic performance and persistence rate to the second year of college were compared between students who had and had not earned college credit in high school. Consistently, for each of the five years, the firstsemester college mean GPA was always higher among students who had earned college credit in high school than that of students who had not. Also, on average, students who earned college credit in high school were 9% more likely to persist to the second year of college than students who had not. Four sequential logistic regression models were developed to analyze the relationships between independent variables (gender, race, first-generation status, high school GPA, ACT score, AP credit, PSEO credit, CC credit, no college credit, and firstand second-semester college GPA), and to assess the contribution of each independent variable on the dependent variable, persistence to the second year of college: • Models one and two examined the quantity of different types of college credit earned in high school and the high school cumulative GPA. The high school GPA variable contributed the most to predicting student persistence to the second year of college.