| This research produced findings that are important to higher education policy makers who are concerned with the graduation and retention rates of college students. A longitudinal research design was applied incorporating logistic regression analysis to assess the influence of high school experience, college experience, and demographic variables upon persistence. This study sought to learn if college-level remedial courses help students to persist toward graduation in college. An examination of the differences in the graduation rates of students who enroll in remedial courses and those who do not was conducted. This study further examined the role of certain characteristics, such as individual attributes, high school experiences, and college experiences upon the likelihood of graduating. The subjects were 438 first-time "true" freshmen who enrolled in the fall of 1989 in a large private research university in Southern California. In addition to finding that remedial and non-remedial students did not differ with respect to graduation rates, this study found that increases in cumulative grade point average are an accurate predictor of increases in graduation rates for all of the students in the cohort. Moreover, the variables associated with declared major and changing majors were found to influence persistence in differing ways for the samples. |
