Abstract
In the literature on higher education, civic involvement is discussed in connection with civic education or as a protective factor against attrition. In a series of surveys, we have followed higher education students' volunteering at several higher education institutions of Central and Eastern Europe since 2005. Based on Wilson (2000), we distinguish between formal volunteering and volunteer work which does not require organizational membership. Among young people, volunteer work is rather a program-centered, personally motivated, and individual activity (Inglehart 2003). In this study, however, we also examine students' voluntary group membership, which could provide a potential framework for volunteer work. Through a stepwise linear regression model, we analyze the effect of volunteering and voluntary group membership on students' higher education persistence. The analysis is carried out on data from the PERSIST 2019 survey (N = 2199). We find that persistent academic progress is more common among women, individually well-off students from objectively less affluent families, those who pray regularly, those who have a close relationship with their parents, professors, and peers, and those have done volunteer work during their higher education studies.
Highlights
In the analysis of persistent academic progress in higher education, it is increasingly common to investigate the institutional impact of higher education, that is, the way in which the institutional curriculum, cocurriculum, and extracurriculum contribute to elevating the likelihood of successful graduation
We examined the correlation between volunteering and voluntary group membership in the sample
As the two-sample t-test suggests, those who have done volunteer work are involved in 1.34 organizations on average, while the same figure is only 0.49 for those who have not done volunteer work (p 1⁄4 0.000), which implies a correlation between volunteering and voluntary group membership
Summary
In the analysis of persistent academic progress in higher education, it is increasingly common to investigate the institutional impact of higher education, that is, the way in which the institutional curriculum, cocurriculum, and extracurriculum contribute to elevating the likelihood of successful graduation. The separate role of institutional contribution was first formulated by Astin's IEO (Input-Environment-Output) model. The extensive literature of valuable empirical findings based on Tinto's student integration model underscores the importance of uncovering institutional tools, possibilities, and policies. We analyze how students' voluntary work and their membership in groups and organizations contribute to their persistent academic progress. We begin the analysis by discussing the definition of and research findings about persistence, followed by an overview of studies on students' volunteer work and voluntary organization and group membership, complemented with a summary of theories and findings with respect to how volunteering and voluntary group membership could provide support in one's studies. We formulate our hypothesis about the factors behind persistence based on the literature, which we test through stepwise linear regression analysis
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