PREDICTING THE LONG‐TERM PERFORMANCE IN COLLEGE OF MINORITY AND NONMINORITY STUDENTS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS IN TWO COLLEGIATE SETTINGS1
Authors: Wilson Kenneth M. 
Published: August 2014

In two undergraduate settings, data reflecting the cumulative records of cohorts of minority and nonminority students over from four to seven years following matriculation were analyzed to determine the correlational validity of admissions tests and school rank for predicting long‐term cumulative GPA and nonGPA criteria (e.g., degree attainment), as well as short‐term, first‐year GPA, the criterion most often used in comparative validity studies. An analysis of trends in mean GPA from the first through the eighth semester and cumulatively was undertaken to explore the possibility of “late blooming” tendencies among minority students—i.e., the possibility that minority students may show relatively greater improvement in academic performance following the first year than their nonminority classmates.

The late bloomer hypothesis derives from the plausible argument that minority students face special problems of school‐to‐college transition that adversely affect their first year performance. After a period of adjustment, the argument continues, tendencies to perform at a first‐year level no higher and frequently lower than expected from test scores may be halted or even reversed.

Data employed in the study were from two quite different settings, namely, Main Campus (of a complex State University System) and College (a selective, liberal arts college for men). Results of correlational analyses in both settings indicated that the admissions variables used were at least as valid for predicting longer term criteria of success (e.g., overall or four‐year cumulative GPA, highest educational level attained) as they were for predicting short‐term first‐year GPA, and that this finding was consistent for minority as well as for nonminority students.

With respect to the novel question of late blooming, GPA trends at Main Campus were not consistent with the late‐bloomer hypothesis—i.e., minority and nonminority students were somewhat more sharply differentiated by later semester and overall cumulative GPA than they were by the first‐year or first‐semester GPA. At College, which provided data for four successive entering classes (cohorts), results of GPA analysis were ambiguous, suggesting the possibility of late‐blooming tendencies in data for later but not for earlier cohorts. Interpretation was complicated by substantial across‐cohort (across Class) increases in average grades, greater for minority than for nonminority students, that could not be explained by increases in ability levels (test‐score averages did not increase across classes). “Inflationary” and “emergent late blooming” rationales were offered for these findings, but they could not be rigorously evaluated due to lack of needed data.

According to the inflationary rationale, the extra across‐cohort GPA increases for minority students could be accounted for by changes in the comparability of faculty grading standards and performance expectations for minority and nonminority students and shifts among minority students toward “less demanding” courses or curricula, etc. According to an emergent late blooming rationale, the extra minority GPA gains could be due to possible increases across successive entering cohorts, plausibly greater for minority students, in average levels of academic and social sophistication, general coping ability, self‐confidence, etc. Such increases would not necessarily be reflected in test‐score averages, but if present could be conducive to improved levels of academic productivity; improved institutional support systems for minority students could also be involved.

The concept of “emergent late blooming” focuses attention on the possibility of generational, developmental increases among minority students in average levels of academic intellectual and social sophistication, self‐confidence, achievement motivation, and other noncognitive performance‐related characteristics—increases that might reasonably be expected to occur over time as the more obvious barriers to full equality of opportunity for minorities are removed. The unexplained across‐cohort increases in average grades and especially the interpretive problems introduced by differential rates of increase for minority and nonminority students point up limitations of the grade‐point average as an index of academic performance in comparative validity studies generally, that should be given special consideration in future research concerned with across‐cohort developmental trends in the comparative performance of minority and nonminority students.