Initial Educational Goals of First-Time Full-Time Community College Freshmen and Subsequent Retention Outcomes.

Retention and graduation rates have been topics of concern for undergraduate institutions. These indicators are not as applicable for two-year institutions where students’ goals are more varied. This study examined the retention over four semesters of 678 first-time, full-time community college students with respect to their initial educational attainment goals, academic goals for attending community college and GPA goals for the first semester. Forward blockwise logistic regression was used to investigate the extent to which these goals were predictive of retention over the following three semesters. Three basic tendencies emerged: lower odds of being retained for short-term goals, and lower odds of being retained for transfer goals, which may be associated with higher GPAs. Female students have higher odds of being retained than their male counterparts. Even if students only meet transfer goals, the community college is succeeding in light of accountability standards of retention and graduation rates. INITIAL EDUCATIONAL GOALS AND RETENTION 3 Initial Educational Goals of First-Time Full-Time Community College Freshmen and Subsequent Retention Outcomes Driven in part by increasing demands for accountability from state and provincial governments, student retention has become a pervasive concern for higher education institutions throughout the United States and Canada. Not surprisingly then, retention has been the focus of sustained research for many years. Within both the higher education literature and the psychological literature, goals or life tasks have been identified as important determinants of subsequent outcomes (e.g., Brower, 1992; Klein, Wesson, Hollenbeck, & Alge, 1999; Stark, Shaw, & Lowther, 1989). Although studies examining a wide range of student goals are common in the higher education literature generally (e.g., Dey, Astin, & Korn, 1991), retention studies have tended to focus on the goal of degree completion. Student commitment to the goal of completing the certificate or degree program has repeatedly been identified as a significant factor influencing student retention in both four-year and two-year institutions (Allen & Nora, 1995; Bers & Smith, 1991; Cabrera, Nora, & Castaneda, 1993; Grosset, 1991; Hagedorn, Maxwell, & Hampton, 2001; Sarkar, 1993; Tinto, 1993). Much of the theoretical and empirical work on student retention has been based around traditional students at four-year institutions. Applying this knowledge base to the improvement of educational practice in the two-year institution continues to be a challenge because of differences in mission and student population (Hagedorn et al., 2001; Sarkar, 1993). One important difference in the student populations of four-year and two-year institutions may be their goals for attending. Most students enter a four-year college or university with the intention of obtaining a degree. In contrast, many students enter two-year institutions with shorter-term goals such as to transfer to a four-year institution. Completion of a Certificate or an Associate’s Degree may not be high on the agenda for many students. This study collected evidence on the question of whether retention studies in community colleges need to shift from a focus on retention until graduation to one of retention until goal achievement, whatever the goal may be. The specific objectives of the study were to examine the relationships between both students’ stated goals for attending community college and their longterm educational attainment goals (highest degree aspired to) and subsequent retention outcomes over a four-semester period. These two initial goals were viewed as particularly important INITIAL EDUCATIONAL GOALS AND RETENTION 4 determinants of retention, especially for first-time, full-time freshmen, as to whether or not students transferred from the two-year school to the four-year institution before graduating. If students who transfer early (e.g., after one year) are the highest achieving students, then traditional measures of retention may not be as applicable for two-year colleges. A number of hypotheses were set forth in the study. First, it was hypothesized that an inverse relationship exists between educational attainment goals and the length of time for which students are retained (i.e., the higher the attainment aspirations, the more likely students are to leave the institution prior to graduation). This means that students who aspire to master’s and doctoral degrees would less likely be retained and thus transfer before graduation. Second, it was hypothesized that the more likely students indicate that they will transfer after one year, the less likely they will be retained. Third, the study investigated the influence of several variables that have been shown to be related to goal attainment, namely goal commitment, perceived goal difficulty and goal importance (Allen & Nora, 1995; Donovan & Radosevich, 1998; Klein et al., 1999; Secolsky, 2002). The influence of these variables for the two major goals (attending community college and educational attainment goal) on student retention for the second, third and fourth semesters was examined. Instead of focusing on how goals enable students and other goal setters to achieve success and how the commitment, perceived difficulty and importance are enablers of goals, this study treated the goals students reported at face value. Although it must be recognized that students varied with respect to the degree that they had already internalized their goals. Secolsky’s (2002) paper demonstrated the more definitive nature of the goals for the same Composition students used in this study as compared to the basic English skills students’ goals.