Choices and Tradeoffs on the Path to a Bachelor’s Degree: Essays on Academic Match, College Affordability, and Student Engagement

Cook, Amanda Marie

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-scxr-5237

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Choices and Tradeoffs on the Path to a Bachelor’s Degree: Essays on Academic Match, College Affordability, and Student Engagement

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Lackluster BA completion rates have made it clear that improving postsecondary outcomes in the U.S. is not simply a matter of raising college enrollment rates. In addition to increasing the number of people who attend college, it is also important to increase the number of people who graduate. Over the years, scholars have identified many factors that help and hinder students as they make their way through college. One of these factors, and the focus of this three-study dissertation, is college choice. By college choice, I mean students’ decisions about where to attend college. One way to think about college choice is to think about it in terms of academic match. Academic match refers to the alignment between a student’s academic qualifications and the selectivity of the college they attend. Students “match” when they attend colleges that are well-aligned with their academic qualifications. Conversely, they “undermatch” when they attend colleges that are less selective than we might expect, and they “overmatch” when they attend colleges that are more selective than we might expect. A consistent finding from the existing research on academic match is that students who match or overmatch are more likely to complete a BA than those who undermatch. Little is known, however, about whether this association has changed over time. In Study 1, I use nationally representative data from three cohorts of first-time college students—students who began college in 1995, 2003, and 2011—to examine this question. Findings from this descriptive study show that, in some ways, the association between academic match and BA completion has remained stable over time; across all three cohorts, matched and overmatched students are more likely to graduate than undermatched students. In other ways, however, the association may be evolving; overall, overmatched students’ odds of graduation have increased over time, while matched and undermatched students’ have not. Study 1 highlights the continued importance of programs and interventions that seek to improve BA completion rates by reducing the prevalence of undermatch. By connecting these findings to broader trends in higher education, it also provides some working hypotheses for why academic match continues to be a strong predictor of student success. This sets the stage for future, hypothesis-testing research with additional implications for policy and practice. In Study 2, I contribute to the literature on college choice by evaluating the plausibility of the “cost hypothesis,” as it relates to college proximity and college choice. Existing research has found that college proximity plays an important role in the college choice process. While it is true that some students are eager to attend colleges that are far from their hometowns, the more common scenario is for students to attend colleges that are close to home. Many scholars have argued that this is because it can be more costly to attend a far-away college. I refer to this as the “cost hypothesis.” If it is more costly to attend a far-away college, then people who live in areas where colleges are few and far between—areas with low geographic access to higher education—may find it especially challenging to pay for college, as they have no choice but to attend colleges that are relatively far away. Study 2 assesses the plausibility of this line of reasoning by examining the association between geographic access to higher education, distance traveled to college, and college costs, as indicated by student debt. Using data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, I find that people with lower levels of geographic access tend to travel longer distances to attend college. In addition, I find that people who travel longer distances tend to accumulate more student debt. Finally, I find suggestive evidence that people with lower levels of geographic access tend to accumulate more student debt. These descriptive insights pave the way for future research on this topic. Additional research in this area could be one of the keys to understanding, and ultimately remedying, geographic inequalities in postsecondary outcomes. In Study 3, I contribute to the literature on college choice by investigating whether, for some students, there may be important drawbacks to attending a match college or, more generally, a more selective college. Several studies have highlighted the fact that, for students from low-income, first-generation, and minoritized backgrounds, selective colleges can be socially isolating and difficult to navigate. Given this, some have wondered whether less selective colleges may offer more welcoming and engaging environments for students from these backgrounds. Study 3 uses data from the 2012/17 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study to examine whether this might be the case. Specifically, this descriptive study examines the association between college selectivity and affective engagement (feeling socially and emotionally connected to school), as well as the association between college selectivity and behavioral engagement (engaging in schooling-related activities). Findings show that students from a wide range of backgrounds report higher levels of affective and behavioral engagement at more selective, as opposed to less selective, colleges. This pattern is robust to several potential confounding factors, including college type, college size, and students’ pre-college academic qualifications. However, although the association between selectivity and affective engagement is positive for most subgroups, it is relatively flat for Black students. Overall, Study 3 lends additional support to the argument that selective colleges, though far from perfect, have important advantages over their less selective counterparts. This study has implications for ongoing debates about college choice, including debates about the extent to which prospective college students should prioritize things like selectivity and prestige during the college search process. That said, more research is needed to fully understand the link between college selectivity and student engagement, as well as the link between college selectivity and other indicators of student wellbeing.

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