Publication Details

Abstract

Research conducted on transfer student outcomes consistently shows that there is a bachelor’s degree completion gap between transfer students and nontransfer students. Researchers have explored several factors thought to impact bachelor’s degree completion for transfer students, including demographic characteristics, number of credit hours transferred, transfer GPA, transfer institution type, and indicators of academic achievement. The findings from these studies have not always been consistent in whether (or how) these factors influence degree completion. The current study uses survival analysis to better understand college persistence for students transferring to a large, 4-year, public university located in the Southeast United States. Survival analysis, a statistical technique underutilized in higher education research, has several advantages over more traditional methods, such as regression. For example, survival analysis not only has the capacity to examine time-varying predictors, but also can include both uncensored and censored events (i.e., it can handle both students for whom the event of interest occurs during the time frame under investigation and students for whom it does not). In addition to variables explored in previous research, this study investigated aspects of students’ majors (i.e., whether they changed majors after enrollment and whether majors were in STEM fields). Findings indicate that transfer students who are most likely to persist are generally younger, are full-time students, and are in STEM majors; and that they have higher prior academic achievement, a greater numbers of transfer hours, and at least one major change. 

Keywords: survival analysis, transfer students, college students, persistence

Authors:

• Shulin Zhou
• Yihui Li
• Margot Neverett
• Beverly King
• Kyle Chapman
• Sharon McNair

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