Indicators of Persistence and Success of Community College Transfer Students Attending a Large, Urban University in Pennsylvania

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which completion of Temple University's Core-to-Core articulation agreement requirements improves transfer students' likelihood to persist and to obtain a baccalaureate degree . Additionally, demographic variables (age, gender, ethnicity, financial aid eligibility), pre-enrollment variables (transfer GPA, transferable credits, Core-to-Core participation, educational intent, class standing, and community college attended), and enrollment variables (enrollment status, GPA trend, credits per semester, number of semester enrollments, and final GPA) were examined in order to determine whether they had any validity in predicting baccalaureate degree attainment. The study used an institutional case study design with historical data as the foundation for a multivariate analysis. The study population included 5419 students who transferred to Temple University between the Fall 1998 and Spring 2002 semesters. from one of eleven local community colleges that participated in Temple's Core-to-Core transfer program. A causal-comparative methodology was used to study the two groups - persisters and non-persisters. Descriptive statistics provided a picture of each group of students, while Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to determine the demographic, pre-enrollment, and enrollment variables that had the strongest ability to predict academic persistence. The Chi-square analyses presented a very detailed picture of the persisters and non-persisters. As a group, enrollment variables were the strongest predictors of baccalaureate degree attainment. However, the independent variables that were most significant and also the most meaningful were the number of semesters for which a student registered, final GPA, enrollment status (full-time/part-time), average number of credits per semester, GPA trend, and financial aid eligibility. A logistic regression analyses was then used to examine the predictive factors for baccalaureate degree attainment after eliminating several variables due to multicollinearity concerns and due to the complexity introduced with variables containing multiple nominal responses. The results were highly significant with 22.6% of the variance accounted for, indicating that the students who have a higher probability of graduating demonstrate a pattern of increasing GPA from initial transfer to graduation, have a higher transfer GPA, attend Temple University on a full-time basis, have taken advantage of Temple's Core-to-Core transfer program are eligible for financial aid, and are female.