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The effects of role models on college graduation rates

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Abstract

Many believe that the presence of role models positively influences the behavior and success of students. We test one aspect of this contention by focusing upon the impact that Black, Asian, Hispanic, White and women role models have upon graduation rates at 176 four-year, public colleges. We find only limited evidence in favor of role model hypotheses as they relate to individual institutional graduation rates. A 1% increase in full-time Black faculty on a campus is associated with a .59% increase in the graduation rate of Black students on that campus, but we do not find strong results for any other student group. This suggests that we should be less sweeping and more evidence-based in our approaches to questions involving campus diversity.

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Notes

  1. We use the term Black because one of our major data sources, the Chronicle of Higher Education, uses the term Black rather than African-American to describe student and faculty in its data sets.

  2. See Jones and Dindia (2004) for a summary of this evidence.

  3. The random assignment of students to classes eliminates the possibility of students self-selecting particular class sections and specific instructors; however, this does not prevent students from dropping a course. It may be, however, that the dropping courses at a military academy occurs less often than on conventional campuses.

  4. A significant literature exists that suggests the degree of involvement of a student on a campus is positively correlated with that student’s academic performance, persistence and graduation.

  5. See S. Kulkarni and J. Rothwell, “Beyond College Rankings: A Value-Added Approach to Assessing Two- and Four-Year Schools,” Brookings Foundation (April 29, 2015), www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-college-rankings-a-value-added-approach-to-assessing-two-and-four-year-schools.

  6. All financial variables are valued in terms of 2016 prices.

  7. Race, Ethnicity, and Gender of Full-time Faculty at More Than 3700 Institutions.” Chronicle of Higher Education,www.chronicle.com/interactives/faculty-diversity.

  8. Data USA, United States Census, State Population Totals and Components of Change: 2010–2017, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/popest/state-total.html. The percentage of the state’s population that is female was not used in modeling female graduation rates.

  9. The Office of Management and Budget of the United State Government defines metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/bulletins/2017/b-17-01.pdf.

  10. It is possible that the inclusion of part-time faculty would change our results. However, racial data on part-time faculty are not widely available on an institutional basis.

  11. Myers (2016), for example, asserts with respect to flagship institutions, that students want the faculties of those institutions to be diverse and that student bodies should reflect the demographics of the areas they serve.

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  1. Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, 23529, USA

    James V. Koch & Ziniya Zahedi

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  1. James V. Koch
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  2. Ziniya Zahedi
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Correspondence to James V. Koch.

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Koch, J.V., Zahedi, Z. The effects of role models on college graduation rates. J Econ Finan 43, 607–617 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12197-018-9450-1

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