Model Of College Choice Research Articles

Factors Affecting College Choice of African American Male Undergraduates at Two Private Liberal Arts Colleges in the South

This article examined the factors influencing the college choice of African American male undergraduate students at two private liberal arts colleges in the South. Utilizing Hossler and Gallagher's (1987) College Choice Model as the theoretical framework, the study explored these students' experiences, perceptions, and attitudes toward the college selection process. The research investigated explicitly how predisposition, search, and choice factors impact the decision-making process for African American males at these institutions. Employing a qualitative methodology, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 20 participants. The findings revealed that family and community influences, financial considerations, campus environment, and diversity significantly shape college choice. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the factors affecting college choice for African American males at private liberal arts colleges in the South. Additionally, it offers insights that could inform the development of policies and practices to enhance access, diversity, and educational equity within higher education.

Latinx Undocumented Students College Choice

ABSTRACT Hossler and Gallagher’s college choice model is a foundational model for understanding students’ college choice experience. Various scholars have critiqued the model for assuming that all students have equitable access to college information and resources. Therefore, building on the literature on Latinx undocumented students college access experience, this paper offers a reconceptualization of Hossler and Gallagher’s linear college choice model that centers the experiences of Latinx undocumented students. The model highlights findings from the literature, such as how undocumented status, immigration policies, family, high school networks, and financial aid are fundamental to Latinx undocumented student’s college choice experience. The reimagined non-linear model focuses on three stages: predisposition phase, search phase, and choice phase. Two key aspect throughout the model is: undocumented status consciousness and fear and trust immigration status disclosure. The revised model serves a conceptual framework for practitioners, policymakers, and college access scholars to create equitable access opportunities for Latinx undocumented students.

Exploring College Choice Experiences of Rural Students Through Creative Nonfiction

Rural students pursue post-secondary education at a lower rate than their urban and suburban counterparts. While the college choice process is complex for all students, it is important to further examine this process for rural students because they are an underserved population. This study utilized Perna’s (2006) college choice model to examine the unique experiences of rural students in Kansas through narrative inquiry. This research sought to answer how rural students described their college choice process as well as the lived experiences that they believed affected their choice in college majors. This research found that the college choice process for rural students is incredibly complex and interrelated. This report utilizes creative nonfiction to showcase that while there are many important factors in the rural student college choice process, previous experiences as well as high school supports/people were two of the most influential factors for the participants.

“You're Poor, so You're Not Going to Do Anything:” Socioeconomic Status and Capital Accumulation as a Means to Access Higher Education for Rural Youth☆

AbstractThis qualitative phenomenological study sought to understand rural students' college‐going decisions through the lens of socioeconomic status, social capital, and Perna's nested model of college choice. The sample included 18 students who were undergraduates at a selective R1 university in the Southeastern United States. Rural first‐generation students reported that they received little practical advice from adults in their family, school, or community. Rural students' choice to take adult advice seemed to be dependent on their family's education background. Family connection was the most common reason for students to choose to attend a selective university if they were not a first‐generation college student. Distance to institution was not a major factor in the participant's decision to attend the university. The students in this study were highly influenced by the policy environment of the state in which they live; a state‐wide merit‐based scholarship provided all the students, regardless of first‐generation status, a motivation to attend what they considered to be the best public school in the state, while still receiving a significant discount on their tuition.

College choice & the consumer: the impact of gender on higher education enrollment

ABSTRACT As marketization and privatization strategies become commonplace in higher education, it is essential for institutions to understand how students make decisions about college choice. Students as consumers engage in complex college choice decision-making that is often impacted by institutional and personal characteristics, such as cost, location, academics, ethnicity, and gender. This concurrent, mixed methods case study brings together a college choice model and a model of consumer behavior to understand how women make decisions about enrollment. Results of the study indicate that women place significant emphasis on feelings related to fit, safety, and comfort. Moreover, the research indicates that considerations of the student as consumer metaphor should expand to include more complex identities and phases. The study also contributes a new theoretical perspective on marketing in higher education, suggesting personalized communication, segmentation, and marketing plans that can be used when recruiting women and consumers to their institution.

Potential engineers: A systematic literature review exploring Black children's access to and experiences with STEM

AbstractBackgroundAs engineering remains central to the US economy, it is imperative that the innovators of this field reflect the world in which we live. Despite decades of concerted effort to broaden participation in engineering, representation continues to lack.PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide education researchers and practitioners with a clear understanding of barriers to the participation of Black American children in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Our interest is driven by the role that precollege STEM experiences play in children's likelihood of becoming potential engineering students.Scope/MethodWe conducted a systematic literature review of 41 articles focused on Black children in precollege STEM contexts. Each article underwent individual review to gain deeper insight into key contextual factors that enable and constrain these potential engineers.ResultsWe situate our research findings in Perna's college choice model to highlight the key factors that may influence one's career and college decisions. The contextual factors are associated with the (1) social, economic, and policy context (e.g., racism, sexism, and classism); (2) STEM educational and community context (i.e., social perceptions and access); and (3) the local support context (i.e., teachers and family).ConclusionsOur results represent the early workings of a “glass ceiling” above the heads of potential engineering students. The underrepresentation of Black Americans who thrive in engineering is a byproduct of the lack of accessibility to quality and advanced learning experiences that too often plague K–12 schools and communities that serve high populations of Black Americans. Such findings have implications for research and practice.

What We Know and Where To Go: A Systematic Review of the Rural Student College and Career Readiness Literature and Future Directions for the Field

College and career readiness has become a national education policy priority. With more than 9.3 million rural students in the United States, the college and career readiness of rural students is a warranted priority for rural education researchers. Using a combination of Conley’s (2012) college and career readiness model, Perna’s (2006) nested model of college choice, and Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent et al., 2014), we systematically reviewed and analyzed the extant literature on rural students’ college and career readiness. In addition to providing a comprehensive discussion of the prominent themes in the literature, we provide recommendations for future research on rural students’ college and career readiness as well as changes to college and career readiness standards and practices that would better align with the strengths and needs of rural students, schools, and communities.

A Systematic Review of Research on Rural College Access Since 2000

Aligning with the NREA's "college and career readiness" research priority, this article presents a systematic literature review of 134 publications regarding the state of rural college access and choice research between the years 2000 and 2020. We use Perna's (2006) college choice model to guide our comprehensive summary of current themes as well as remaining challenges and opportunities. We find that publications generally failed to articulate the rural context in sufficient detail, that studies in the Appalachian region were overrepresented, and that a majority of publications focused on the roles of rural habitus or K-12 and community context in shaping college aspirations and enrollment for rural students. Future research should prioritize rural regions outside of Appalachia, rural youth of Color, rural forms of capital, and how higher education and social, economic, and political contexts impact rural college access and choice.

College Quality and Attendance Patterns: A Long-Run View

We construct a time series of college attendance patterns for the United States and document a reversal: family background was a better predictor of college attendance before World War II, but academic ability was afterward. We construct a model of college choice that explains this reversal. The model’s central mechanism is that an exogenous surge of college attendance leads better colleges to be oversubscribed, institute selective admissions, and raise their quality relative to their peers, as in Hoxby (2009). Rising quality at better colleges attracts high-ability students, while falling quality at the remaining colleges dissuades low-ability students, generating the reversal. (JEL I23, J12, N32)

Student Loans and Social Mobility

Students of poor families invest much less than rich families in college education. To assess the role of financing constraints and subsidy schemes in explaining this gap, I structurally estimate an IO/finance model of college choice in the presence of financing frictions. The estimation uses novel nationally representative data on US high-school and college students. I propose a novel identification strategy that relies on bunching at federal Stafford loan limits and differences between in- and out-of-state tuition. I find that the college investment gap is mainly due to fundamental factors—heterogeneity in preparedness for college and the value-added of college—rather than financing constraints faced by lower-income students. Making public colleges tuition-free would substantially reduce student debt, but it would disproportionately benefit wealthier students, and it would entail more than $15B deadweight loss per year by distorting college choices. Expanding Pell grants, in contrast, would benefit lower-income students at a much lower cost.

Rewriting the Narrative: An Anti-Deficit Perspective on Study Abroad Participation Among Students of Color

Higher education literature has often documented the barriers to participation in study abroad for students of color. However, the majority of study abroad research to date employs a deficit frame; focusing on why students of color do not participate, rather than what enables students of color to rise above barriers. Using an anti-deficit orientation, this study analyzed survey responses of a sample of students of color who studied abroad, in order to highlight the self-reported motivational and influential factors present in their decision-making process. Building on previous applications of the integrated college choice model (Salisbury et al., 2011), and informed by Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model, this article presents a new conceptual framework for understanding how students of color use forms of capital to enable them to study abroad. Implications and practical suggestions for future research and study abroad administration are described in light of the study’s findings.

Signalling, student identities, and college access: a proposed conceptual model of college choice and going

Relying on a multitude of studies from the college choice literature, I propose an updated model of college going and choice that draws on four conceptual, theoretical, and analytic approaches. With guidance from the economic, sociological, information processing, and combined theories of college choice, I situate my proposed framework within this extant literature to provide some direction and formal conceptualization of the role that signalling and identity play with regard to college access. In addition to understanding students’ identities within typical utility models, this essay also attempts to carefully consider both the explicit and implicit assumptions about valued identity categories (insiders) and those that are less valued (outsiders) in the college going and choice process. Finally, through deliberate examination of how signals are sent to students and the acquisition of signals (credentials) by students, I consider how this relays information about which identities are valued by higher education socially, and by specific institutions in particular. In so doing, I feel that I have laid a foundation for future work that carefully ties philosophical and public good notions back to the college choice process and to higher education’s underlying ethos of service in the public interest.

THE RETURN TO COLLEGE: SELECTION AND DROPOUT RISK

AbstractThis article studies the effect of graduating from college on lifetime earnings. We develop a quantitative model of college choice with uncertain graduation. Departing from much of the literature, we model in detail how students progress through college. This allows us to parameterize the model using transcript data. College transcripts reveal substantial and persistent heterogeneity in students' credit accumulation rates that are strongly related to graduation outcomes. From these data, the model infers a large ability gap between college graduates and high school graduates that accounts for 59% of the college lifetime earnings premium.

Deciding about College: How Soon is Soon Enough?

Background/ContextPrior research has stressed the importance of timing in the college choice process, especially as it relates to receiving early information and making plans and decisions. Little has been done, however, in terms of empirically demonstrating how soon students make their decisions about college and the ways in which the timing of student decisions are related to planning behaviors.Focus of StudyThis paper examines the relationships between the timing of decisions related to college attendance and outcomes such as aspirations, course-taking patterns in high school, and eventual college application. It also considers how the timing and various sources of information are related to when students make these decisions.Research DesignThis study provides secondary statistical analysis of data obtained from a statewide survey of high school seniors in New Hampshire during the spring of the 2004– 2005 school year.Conclusions/RecommendationsFindings suggest that the dominant model of college choice involving predisposition, search, and choice should be updated to acknowledge that predisposition may begin much earlier than the literature has typically considered. To wit, many students begin gathering information and making decisions about postsecondary education as early as elementary school. Additional resources should be dispatched to address the needs of economically disadvantaged and first-generation students who often lack the types of human, social, and financial capital needed to make the most of their early educational opportunities.

How risky is college investment?

This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor's degree. Its objective is to quantify how much uncertainty college entrants face about their graduation outcomes. To do so, we develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college degree. The model is calibrated using transcript and financial data. We find that more than half of college entrants can predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against the financial risks associated with uncertain graduation have little value for the majority of college entrants.

A New Model of College Choice for Distance Learners

The expansion and diversification of postsecondary education in the United States has led to greater options for students and prospective students for pursuing a college degree. With the roll out and scale up of sophisticated education technology systems, an important trend in higher education today is distance education. Despite the growing prevalence of distance learning opportunities and the expanding body of research on distance education, research on the college-going decisions of distance learners is sparse. As more students enroll in distance-based postsecondary education programs, it is increasingly important to understand how and why students make the decision to enroll in collegiate degree-granting programs. This study bridges the college choice and distance education literatures to posit a new model of college choice to shed light on students’ decisions to enroll in a distance-based, nontraditional degree program.

Complicating Conditions: Obstacles and Interruptions to Low-Income Students' College “Choices”

Although a major focus of current research and policymaking efforts involves understanding and minimizing the barriers to postsecondary access, conventional reform strategies do not appear to be effecting substantial change in the college-going opportunities for students from low-income and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This article presents the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study of the high school-to-college transition for a sample of 16 low-income, Black and Latino students at two inner-city high schools in the Northeastern United States. Drawing on interviews with students over a three-year period—from their junior year of high school through one year after high school graduation—this analysis highlights the interruptions to students' postsecondary plans. In this sample, students' actual postsecondary paths, which included delayed college enrollment and two-year college matriculation, diverged substantially from the initial plans participants developed during high school. Ultimately, the findings illustrate how these students' life circumstances engender decisions that preclude the kinds of choices assumed in the college choice model.

Complicating Conditions: Obstacles and Interruptions to Low-Income Students’ College “Choices”

Although a major focus of current research and policymaking efforts involves understanding and minimizing the barriers to postsecondary access, conventional reform strategies do not appear to be effecting substantial change in the college-going opportunities for students from low-income and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This article presents the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study of the high school-to-college transition for a sample of 16 low-income, Black and Latino students at two inner-city high schools in the Northeastern United States. Drawing on interviews with students over a three-year period—from their junior year of high school through one year after high school graduation—this analysis highlights the interruptions to students’ postsecondary plans. In this sample, students’ actual postsecondary paths, which included delayed college enrollment and two-year college matriculation, diverged substantially from the initial plans participants developed during high school. Ultimately, the findings illustrate how these students’ life circumstances engender decisions that preclude the kinds of choices assumed in the college choice model.

How Risky is College Investment?

This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor’s degree. Its objective is to quantify how much uncertainty college entrants face about their graduation outcomes. To do so, we develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college degree. The model is calibrated using transcript and financial data. We find that more than half of college entrants can predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against the financial risks associated with uncertain graduation have little value for the majority of college entrants.

How Risky is College Investment?

This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor’s degree. Its objective is to quantify how much uncertainty college entrants face about their graduation outcomes. To do so, we develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college degree. The model is calibrated using transcript and financial data. We find that more than half of college entrants can predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against the financial risks associated with uncertain graduation have little value for the majority of college entrants.