Self-Regulation Versus Self-Discipline in Predicting Achievement: A Replication Study With Secondary Data

Self-regulation is one of multiple noncognitive measures that have been found to relate to academic achievement. Zimmerman and Kitsantas (2014) have distinguished self-regulation from the construct of self-discipline and provided evidence that only the former is predictive of high-school GPA, while controlling for the latter. In this brief report we present a preregistered replication study of their finding using secondary data obtained from a published article by Jung et al. (2017). Despite minor differences in the sample, the measures and the analysis approach, the replication supported the original claim that self-regulation was predictive of academic achievement for undergraduate students, while self-discipline was unrelated to the outcome. The positive association for the self-regulation variable with academic achievement was smaller, but in the same direction as in the original study.

Athletics and Admissions: The Impact of the Penn State Football Scandal on Student Quality

We ask whether a scandal in a university’s athletics department affects the quality of the incoming student body. To do so, we evaluate the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University in 2011. The violations involved a former employee with the crimes occurring a decade prior. The plausibly-exogenous shock allows us to make a causal identification of the scandal's effect on the university. We use synthetic control methods establishing economically meaningful impacts. We find that the average high school GPA is 0.12 points less and the proportion of students with high SAT Math scores is down 4.8 percentage points.

Creating equitable access and opportunity: predictors of success for college freshmen who participate in a Living Learning Community

This study examines the relationship between student success measures on student achievement to inform our approach to mediating against potential barriers on persistence and retention for first generation and traditionally marginalized populations for students enrolled in a new Living Learning Community. Success measures examine those beyond the control of the university, including, but not limited to, High School GPA and ACT scores to determine where we should intervene and where we should build upon the strengths of our students. The theme of the PH LLC is Leadership Development and Career Exploration, a program that seeks to empower students by harnessing their individual strengths and capitalizing on them to be successful in college and beyond. The design of this program and its future prospects are also discussed.

An Examination of Campus Engagement and GPA for Latinx College Athlete

Despite the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s focus on improving outcomes among college athletes, research has overlooked Latinx college athletes. This paper focuses on how campus engagement with peers, faculty, administrators, and athletic staff are positively related to GPA among Latinx college athletes. I used an ordinary least square (OLS) regression model to examine the relationships between engagement and Latinx college athletes' GPA. The findings suggest that high school GPA, participation in class, and faculty-student interactions were significant for Latina/o college athletes' GPA. Additionally, interactions with teammates and coach were both significant predictors, but team interactions had a slight negative effect on GPA. Lastly, identifying as a Latina college athlete had a positive association on GPA when compared to Latino college athletes.

What Lies beneath Sustainable Education? Predicting and Tackling Gender Differences in STEM Academic Success

In many societies across the globe, females are still underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM fields), although they are reported to have higher grades in high school and college than males. The present study was guided by the assumption that the sustainability of higher education critically rests on the academic success of both male and female students under conditions of equitable educational options, practices, and contents. It first assessed the persistence of familiar patterns of gender bias (e.g., do competencies at enrollment, serving as academic precursors, and academic performance favor females?) in college students of a society in transition from a gender-segregated workforce with marked gender inequalities to one whose aims at integrating into the global economy demand that women pursue once forbidden careers thought to be the exclusive domain of men. It then examined how simple indices of academic readiness, as well as preferences for fields fitting traditional gender roles, could predict attainment of key competencies and motivation to graduate (as measured by the average number of credits completed per year) in college. As expected, females had a higher high school GPA. Once in college, they were underrepresented in a major that fitted traditional gender roles (interior design) and over-represented in one that did not fit (business). Female students’ performance and motivation to graduate did not differ between the male-suited major of business and the female-suited major of interior design. Male students’ performance and motivation to graduate were higher in engineering than in business, albeit both majors were gender-role consistent. Although high school GPA and English proficiency scores predicted performance and motivation for all, preference for engineering over business also predicted males’ performance and motivation. These findings offered a more complex picture of patterns of gender bias, thereby inspiring the implementation of targeted educational interventions to improve females’ motivation for and enrollment in STEM fields, nowadays increasingly available to them, as well as to enhance males’ academic success in non-STEM fields such as business.

The Effects of Financial Aid Loss on Persistence and Graduation: A Multi-Dimensional Regression Discontinuity Approach

For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full tuition, now called Zell Miller, with other students seeing aid reductions of approximately 15 percent. We exploit the fact that two of the criteria were high school GPA and SAT/ACT score, which students could not manipulate when the change took place. We compare already-enrolled students just above and below these cutoffs, making use of advances in multi-dimensional regression discontinuity, to estimate effects of partial aid loss. We show that, after the changes, aid flowed disproportionately to wealthier students, and find no evidence that the financial aid reduction affected persistence or graduation for these students. The results suggest that high-achieving students, particularly those already in college, may be less price sensitive than their peers.

Grit as a Predictor of Academic Success at Norwich University

The focus of the chapter is on grit as a predictor of academic success at Norwich University. Grit scores were obtained for 4,171 incoming freshmen between 2013 and 2019, and these scores were collected again in the sophomore and senior years for all students who persisted. Cumulative GPAs were also obtained along with demographic data for all participants. Grit was found to be a small to moderate predictor of cumulative GPA with r correlations of .110 in the freshman year, .247 in the sophomore year, and .213 in the senior year. In contrast, high school GPA was a strong predictor of cumulative GPA with correlations of .459 in the freshman year, .518 in the sophomore year, and .500 in the senior year. Although grit was not as strong as high school GPA as a predictor of academic success at Norwich University, it was a significant factor, and it became more predictive of cumulative GPA as more credits were earned.

The relationship between high school GPA and information literacy pre and post-test scores

Although many studies explore the effect of library instruction on information literacy test scores, there are far fewer studies exploring the relationship between high school Grade Point Average (GPA) and scores on information literacy pre- and post-tests of first year college students. This research study compares the scores of three cohorts of Franklin Pierce University students--honors students, Center Scholars (students with a cumulative high school GPA of below 2.5) and Average GPA students --on an information literacy pre-test administered in the first two weeks of the fall, and a similar post-test administered after students have attended a library instruction session. The results of this study show a relationship between high school GPA and pre-test scores and reveal an even stronger relationship between high school GPA and scores on the post-test, with honors students attaining the highest scores and Center Scholars the lowest. This article proposes explanations for these results as well as recommendations for addressing the test score disparities between these three cohorts.

Predicting time to graduation at a large enrollment American university

The time it takes a student to graduate with a university degree is mitigated by a variety of factors such as their background, the academic performance at university, and their integration into the social communities of the university they attend. Different universities have different populations, student services, instruction styles, and degree programs, however, they all collect institutional data. This study presents data for 160,933 students attending a large American research university. The data includes performance, enrollment, demographics, and preparation features. Discrete time hazard models for the time-to-graduation are presented in the context of Tinto’s Theory of Drop Out. Additionally, a novel machine learning method: gradient boosted trees, is applied and compared to the typical maximum likelihood method. We demonstrate that enrollment factors (such as changing a major) lead to greater increases in model predictive performance of when a student graduates than performance factors (such as grades) or preparation (such as high school GPA).