Predictors of student engagement: the role of universities’ or importance of students’ background?

ABSTRACT

The study aims to disclose the role of the universities and students’ backgrounds in predicting student engagement. The study uses Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations (MEMO) of 2015 and 2017, which is hierarchical nationally representative data set of 5,251 undergraduate students nested into 135 universities in Russia. Four indices were developed to measure student engagement based on behavioural approach, namely, class engagement, learning engagement, research engagement, and extracurricular engagement. The mixed-effects multilevel modelling was used to test the hypotheses on university roles and students’ background characteristics. Students’ parental family characteristics did not appear to have a strong influence on student engagement except mothers’ higher education. High school achievements are very important for further student engagement. The findings highlight the importance of motivation and career ambitions of students. Plans to work within the field of study or to pursue further studies to obtain a MA or Ph.D. degree positively associated with student engagement. The results confirmed that the academic environment is the strongest predictor of student engagement. Universities need to develop active teaching practices to improve the academic environment and increase student engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Student engagement
• Learning engagement
• Research engagement
• Academic environment
• Higher education

Data availability statement

The data set of Monitoring of education markets and organizations, MEMO (2015 and 2017), used here for the empirical estimations, could be obtained through Joint Economic and Social Data Archive (at Higher School of Economics) upon request http://sophist.hse.ru/db/oprosy.shtml?ts=88&en=0.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 https://minobrnauki.gov.ru/action/stat/highed/

2 http://www.edu.ru/abitur/act.72/index.php

3 http://www.edu.ru/ratings/reyting-vuzov-rossii-2016/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tatiana Karabchuk

Tatiana Karabchuk (Ph.D.) is an associate professor of economic sociology, Department of Government and Society, CHSS, UAE University, and Council Member and Conference Chair for World Association for Public Opinion Research. Tatiana completed more than 25 research projects and authored more than 35 academic articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research interests include cross-national comparative surveys, higher education studies, happiness, and subjective well-being studies, studies of the labour market, social media, youth studies, family and fertility, values, and gender equality attitudes. Previously Tatiana worked at the National Research University Higher School of Economics as deputy head of the international research centre and associate professor. Tatiana was a visiting researcher at IOS Regensburg (Germany), GESIS EUROLAB (Germany), Population Centre of the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA), at Institute for Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo, Japan), and the Institute for Survey Research at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA).

Yana Roshchina

Yana Roshchina (Ph.D.) is an associate professor and senior research fellow at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Yana is extensively publishing on higher education, student engagement, student mobility, household behaviour, and consumption studies. She has great experience in working with longitudinal survey data being a top expert on Monitoring of education markets and organizations, the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, and more.