EFFECT OF AN ON-TIME DEGREE COMPLETION PROGRAM ON GRADUATION OUTCOMES

Abstract

College degree attainment benefits both private citizens and society. Historically, degree attainment rates have differed based on students’ race, income, and parental education. Along with differences in degree attainment rates, time to degree has been increasing for all students nationally. Increased time to degree has adverse effects for students as it increases the cost of a degree and decreases future earnings through a delayed entry into the workforce.In recent years, colleges and universities have implemented programs to address challenges with graduation rates at their institutions and improve on-time degree completion. Beginning in 2014, a large public university located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, implemented an on-time degree completion program to address its four-year bachelor’s degree completion rate. In addition to increased academic support for all program participants, up to 500 students with high-financial per cohort were given additional grant funding towards their cost of attendance. The Theory of Planned Behavior frames the process of shaping human behavior as the combination of changing the attitude towards completing the behavior, shifting norms to reflect desired outcomes, and reducing perceived barriers to behavior completion. The on-time degree completion program uses a participant contract and a series of checkpoints to encourage positive behavior, shown through research, to increase graduation rates: priority registration, meeting with an academic advisor, earning a minimum of 30 credits per academic year, and completing a degree audit. The current study analyzed the checkpoint and on-time degree completion data for three consecutive first-time, first-year cohorts at a large public university. The total number of participants included in the study totaled 13,323. Using a combination of descriptive and predictive statistics, I found that both checkpoint completion and on-time degree completion differed based on several participant characteristics, including academic preparation, race, family income, and parental education. However, even when controlling for participant background characteristics, checkpoint completion had a positive relationship to on-time degree completion. Therefore, while there are improvements to be made in the checkpoint completion rates and the equality of those outcomes, the program checkpoints predict on-time graduation. Further, for program participants who receive the program grant funding, there is a correlation between multiple years of grant funding and improvements in on-time graduation rate. Further research should be conducted to understand the reasons students fail to complete checkpoints and the barriers to checkpoint completion for some student groups. Additionally, for participants who were not retained until graduation, a study tracking participants’ degree completion across institutions would help explore the true degree completion rate for the participants, as opposed to at the individual institution.