College persistence and student attitudes toward financial success

College Student Journal, June, 2005 by Karen Leppel

Students were also asked "compared with the average person of your age would you rate yourself as above average, average, or below average" in "drive to achieve". A two-category DRIVE variable for above average versus not above average was included as a general measure of motivation. This variable makes it possible to hold constant overall level of motivation while exploring the effects of differences in attitudes regarding the importance of financial success.

The BPS data asked two questions that could be used to indicate the student's attitude regarding financial success. One question asked the student to state the importance of being very well off financially to him/her personally. Is it very important, somewhat important or not important? The other question was whether the student considered a "good income to start or within a few years" "very important, somewhat important or not important in determining the kind of work you plan to be doing for most of your life?" Each of these questions was used individually as the financial attitude variable (FINATT). Most of the students responded very important or somewhat important. Hence, FINATT was divided into two-categories: (1) very important and (2) somewhat important/not important.

The means and standard deviations of the independent variables are presented in Table 2. In the interest of brevity, only the financial attitude variables are discussed. The proportion of students who stated that it was very important to be very well off financially was greater for males than for females. The same was true for the proportion of students who considered a good income to start or within a few years very important. Statistical tests indicated that the difference was significant at the one percent level. This is consistent with Green's (1992, p. 48) speculation that men are more motivated by money and status than women are.

IV. Implications of Estimation Results.

Using the data described above, performance and persistence equations were estimated. (See Appendix for procedural details and results.) Table 3 shows predicted absolute probabilities using some typical values of the independent variables. These values were computed for a student who is white, non-Hispanic, 18-years-old, unmarried, has no children, is working 20 hours per week, perceives him/herself as not above average in drive nor academic ability, has integration level 2.8, and has a parent who has some college education. Table 3 presents the predicted probabilities of the various persistence behaviors based on the students' financial attitudes. Both men and women were less likely to remain at the same institution if they considered being financially very well off very important. These men and women were also more likely to drop out of college altogether. The effects of the attitudes on the probabilities of changing institutions tended to be smaller and less consistent. Men who considered being financially very well off very important and women who did not consider being financially very well off very important were more inclined to change institutions than their counterparts.