Abstract
The current studies test the hypothesis that the financial burden of college can initiate a psychological process that has a negative influence on academic performance for students at selective colleges and universities. Prior studies linking high college costs and student loans to academic outcomes have not been grounded within relevant social psychological theory regarding how and when the financial burden of college can influence students’ psychological and cognitive processes. We test the hypothesis that the salient financial burden of college impairs students’ cognitive functioning, especially when it creates an identity conflict or perceived barrier to reaching a student’s desired financially successful future. First, we use longitudinal data from 28 selective colleges and universities to establish that students who accumulate student loan debt within these contexts are less likely to graduate from college because student loan debt predicts a decline in grades over time, even when controlling for factors related to socioeconomic status and prior achievement. Then, in an experiment, we advance research in this area with a direct, causal test of the proposed psychological process. An experimental manipulation that brings high college costs to mind impairs students’ cognitive functioning, but only when those thoughts create an identity conflict or a perceived barrier to reaching a student’s desired financially successful future.
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Notes
We also estimated a structural equation model that takes into account the categorical nature of graduation and the clustering of data at 28 schools by using full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation method with robust standard errors which handles non-normality and non-independence of observations (in Mplus, ESTIMATOR = MLR; (Muthén and Muthén 1998). The standard errors were clustered at the school level and computed using a sandwich estimator (Asparouhov and Muthén 2006). Finally, a Monte Carlo method was used for assessing mediation between a binary dependent variable and a continuous mediating variable with missing data (in Mplus, INTEGRATION = MONTECARLO; MacKinnon et al. 2004). Our final model excluded paths between work for pay and grades at Time 4 as well as paths for work for pay, test score, and STEM major with graduation because they were non-significant. The model explained 8.50% of the variance in graduation and 28% of the variance in grades at Time 4. The direct effects of student loans to grades at Time 4 (b = −0.09, β = −0.04, p = 0.020) and grades at Time 4 to graduation (b = 0.50, β = 0.15, p < 0.001) were still significant. The indirect effect of loans at Time 2 to graduation through grades at Time 4 was also still significant (b = −0.004, β = −0.006, p = 0.048). However, the 95% confidence interval included zero, [−0.009, 0.000], suggesting that the relationship between any amount of student loan debt and graduation was not fully mediated by the change in grades over time in college. Because the results were similar, we report the basic structural equation model in the text.
If participants planned to attend graduate or professional school, they were coded based upon whatever expected income they provided (either as a graduate/professional student or as they began their career), which reflected the nature of the identity that came to mind as a result of the prompt (desired successful future identity or not).
Family household income was not significantly correlated with whether or not participants reported a successful future identity, p = 0.544.
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The authors thank Claudia M. Haase, Simone Ispa-Landa, Terri J. Sabol, and Heather Schoenfeld for their helpful comments.
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Destin, M., Svoboda, R.C. Costs on the Mind: The Influence of the Financial Burden of College on Academic Performance and Cognitive Functioning. Res High Educ 59, 302–324 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9469-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9469-8