On Time to the Doctorate A Study of the Lengthening Time to Completion for Doctorates in Science and Engineering (1990) / Chapter Skim
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2 MODELS OF THE FACTORS THAT AFFECT STUDENT CHOICE AND TIME TO THE DOCTORATE: A LITERATURE SURVEY
2 MODELS OF THE FACTORS THAT AFFECT STUDENT CHOICE AND TIME TO THE DOCTORATE: A LITERATURE SURVEY
Pages 25-34
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From page 25... ...
Literature on Persistence and Attrition The focus of much of the early research on attrition identified factors that caused students to quit school at the undergraduate and graduate levels (Berelson, 1960; Summerskill, 1962) , not the processes that caused individuals to drop out or the quantitative impact of the factors involved.
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From page 26... ...
Recent research shows that student interaction with faculty has a very small, albeit positive, effect on academic performance. In the Tinto model, faculty-student interaction affects persistence directly through its effect on social interaction and indirectly through its effect on grades.
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From page 27... ...
The relegation of economic factors to a secondly role makes it difficult to study the impact of economic factors other than availability of funds on the decision to drop out and also precludes researchers from using the Tinto model to explore the effects of market forces on student choice. Both descriptive and causal studies point to parents' education, student grade-point average (GPA)
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From page 28... ...
One major line of inquiry looks at how the structural and environmental characteristics of colleges influence students to seek graduate training [see, for example, Astin and Panos (1968~. Pascarella's 1984 study, which used a causal model of educational aspirations based on Tinto's dropout model, finds that the direct effects of any single aspect of the college environment are "quite modest" and the best predictor of educational aspirations at the end of the second year of college is the level of educational aspirations at entrance to college.
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From page 29... ...
The Spaeth study looked at the career plans of 1961 college graduates, using a path-analytic model to relate quality of graduate school attended to student input and family background characteristics. Student undergraduate grades and the "intellectual caliber" of the undergraduate college attended were found to be major determinants of the quality of graduate school attended.
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From page 30... ...
The review also revealed that the price elasticity of demand is lower at high-quality undergraduate institutions than at other 4-year schools and is less for graduate education than for undergraduate education. Finally, the review showed that decreases in financial aid at the graduate and professional levels reduce matriculation, increase the dropout rate, and lengthen time to the doctorate.
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From page 31... ...
More rigorous modeling of the relationship between enrollments and earnings potential in an academic field can be found in the work of Freeman (1971) , who argued that differences in relative earnings signal potential students to enter fields experiencing shortages.
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From page 32... ...
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men for five broad fields of study, Berger used alternative earnings measures to see if students were more likely to choose a field of study based on its potential future earnings than on its sting salary. After controlling for background characteristics, he found the probability of choosing one field over another increases as the present value of its predicted earnings stream increases relative to that in other fields.
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From page 33... ...
Graduate deans, graduate faculty, and doctorate recipients all felt discontinuity of attendance, work as a teaching assistant, and writing the dissertation off-campus contributed to increased TTD. Similarly, financial problems, inadequate preparation in a foreign language, lack of coordination between beginning and advanced stages of graduate work, family obligations, inadequate undergraduate preparation in the major, and transfers among graduate institutions were named by all three groups as factors leading to lengthened I-ID, the study found.
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From page 34... ...
. The Tinto model provided the basis for much subsequent educational and sociological research, but it failed to integrate the economic variables considered important in studies of enrollment and expected returns.
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