STUDENT ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES
Authors: Cliff Norman 
Published: August 2014

This report details the results of the analysis of students' (scholarship applicants') responses to a questionnaire inquiring into student economic behavior and feelings about college financing and financial aid practices as they have experienced them. Questionnaires sent to the parents of these students have been analyzed and described in two earlier reports (RB‐62‐2 and RB‐62‐9).

On the basis of the earlier results, a conception of the family's response to the financial stimulus of having to pay for college as the resultant of an interactive process had been developed. Some implications of this conception for student economic behavior were tested against the data obtained from students. For example, it was shown that the amount contributed by the parents toward college expenses depends not only on indicators of the relative economic strength of the family but upon student spending patterns. The way in which student earnings fit into the overall family response was also investigated. Among the findings here were correlations of boys' earnings with their expenditure levels and girls' earnings with family economic status.

Some more purely factual findings are also described. Among these are the prevalence of working (mainly at routine jobs), the more or less comfortable financial status of most of the students, and their feelings about commuting. Other findings include a certain amount of dissatisfaction on the part of the students with the amount of guidance they received on scholarship matters, the values they feel are important in making decisions about college, and their feelings about the National Defense Education Act loan program.

This is the fourth and last report in a series describing the results of a study of family economic behavior in its relation to college‐going. The earlier reports covered family practices in paying for college (Cliff & Ekstrom, 1962), variables determining or associated with amount and manner of paying for college (Cliff, 1962a) and dropout and transfer by scholarship applicants (Cliff, 1962b). These earlier reports were based either on parents' responses to a parents' questionnaire or their responses to items in the Parents' Confidential Statement. The present report describes and analyzes students' responses to a questionnaire inquiring into the financial aspects of their college careers, their feelings about college financing, and a number of related questions.

In two of the earlier reports, a conceptual analysis of the financial behavior of the family in response to the stimulus of having to pay for college was developed. This conceptualization carried, at least loosely, some implications for how students should respond economically to this situation. These implications will be tested, whenever possible, against the data reported here. Also to be presented is descriptive material on such questions as how much of his own college money the student earns, how he earns it, the incidence and correlates of commuting, experience with the Federal loan program and attitudes toward it, reactions to hypothetical changes in level of support, and the student's feelings about current practices in financial aid.