We tested a model that integrates academic delay of gratification with Expectancy Value Theory to predict achievement in an undergraduate psychology and nursing statistics class at a metropolitan university in the southeastern United States. We analyzed measurements (n = 163: 80.4% female) of past performance, academic delay of gratification,…

People participate in vocational education and training (VET) for a variety of reasons and at different stages of their life. Some undertake VET to gain the vocational skills necessary to enter the labour market for the first time, while others enter in order to upgrade existing skills, learn new ones, or simply for personal interest. Successful…

The authors examined the determinants of success on the Educational Testing Service Major Field Test in Business. The authors find that gender, SAT performance, and concentration are significant predictors of performance. Additionally, they derive proxies for student passion and persistence, and find that the greater the student's passion for…

Students' perceptions of competence and relatedness are known to influence learning processes and achievement, and may have particular import for underrepresented science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learners. Sources of social support that contribute to undergraduate life science learners' perceived competence and relatedness…

Despite considerable research on student retention and persistence, college graduation rates remain modest. This article proposes the concept of student identity centrality, which is defined as the extent to which being a student is important to one's self-image or identity. This study found student identity centrality was positively related to…

Urban public universities play a critical role in the higher education enterprise. In this article, Strayhorn draws on Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and semi-structured interview data to provide a national portrait comparing predominantly White and historically Black public universities, as well as identifying factors that…

The need for cognition and motivation are related to performance in school and standardized tests. In this study, 422 students completed a battery of individual difference measures and reported their scores on the American College Testing (ACT) exam, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), high school grade point average (GPA), major GPA, and overall…

One of the most important issues in any educational environment is identifying factors that promote academic success. A plethora of research on such factors exists across most academic fields, involving a wide range of student demographics, and the definition of student success varies across the range of studies published. The analysis in this…

The authors report the results of a three-year longitudinal study of retention among undergraduate engineering students enrolled at four major universities. The study demonstrates that self-efficacy can be a critical factor in student persistence and can be broken down into three components: work, career, and academic self-efficacy. The authors…

The number of undergraduate students completing degrees in STEM disciplines has been declining over the last few decades. With a growing body of research considering what predicts persistence in STEM fields, one approach is to consider individual differences as predictors of attrition in the major. The current study utilized a variety of…

Grateful people experience more psychological well-being, social connectedness, and feelings of personal accomplishment, along with less burnout. They also use more adaptive approach-oriented coping strategies. Thus, we hypothesized that trait gratitude and grateful coping strategies would be associated with various indicators/predictors of…

Transfer students make up a significant portion of the student body in higher education today; yet, representation of their college experiences and outcomes in the literature seems sparse. This study explored transfer students to determine whether their level of engagement and belonging in college was related to their academic motivation. We…

Universities are facing challenges in the area of student retention and graduation. A critical question is what schools can do to improve undergraduate students' intentions to complete college. Dropout intention has been studied, yet the exploration of college completion intention has not been thoroughly examined. Using structural equation…

The goal of this study was to identify variables related to success and resilience in an undergraduate, high school mathematics teacher education program. Over a five-year period, we tracked the academic performance and achievement motivation goals of multiple cohorts of students. Students who successfully completed their degrees had higher grade…

The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among college students' 2 x 2 goal orientations (mastery-approach [MAp], mastery-avoidance [MAv], performance-approach [PAp], performance-avoidance [PAv]), situational motivation (intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation and amotivation) and effort/persistence in…