Delayed Enrollment and Student Involvement: Linkages to College Degree Attainment

ABSTRACT

Students who delay college enrollment after they graduate from high school have a lower chance of completing a college degree compared to students who enroll in college immediately after high school. This article explores delayers’ involvement in high-impact postsecondary campus activities to understand whether participation in high-impact activities is associated with bachelor’s degree attainment for students who delay enrollment. This study found that overall involvement in high-impact activities was associated with greater odds of bachelor’s degree attainment for all students, but students who delay entry into college do not benefit any differently than immediate-enrollment students from involvement in these activities. Participation in high-impact activities is only related to bachelor’s degree attainment in a minor way compared to other variables like students’ socioeconomic background and high school grade point average. This finding suggests that although high-impact practices may play a role in promoting student success in college, they are not as important as other social background and precollege student characteristics.

KEYWORDS:

• College completion
• delayed college enrollment
• high-impact practices

Notes

1. Trowler (2010) documented the varying definitions of student engagement in her review of the literature. Ultimately, despite numerous definitions of the word, student engagement typically refers to two things: (a) student involvement in campus activities and (b) students’ emotional connection to the university environment through these activities. With regard to the current study, ELS data have markers of the first characteristic of student engagement but not the second—hence the use of involvement instead of engagement.

2. While standardizing the window for degree attainment across the sample was a strength of this study in the sense that immediate enrollees did not have more time than delayers to complete their degrees, it also limited the number of students who qualified as delayers. This sample included students who delayed postsecondary education 6 months to 2 years after high school graduation, but many students delay longer than 2 years after high school graduation (Horn et al., 2005).

3. The sample was restricted to students who first enrolled in a 4-year institution for simplicity and clarity, but this restriction impacted how many students delayed entry into college. Delayed entry is much more common among students who first attend institutions that offer less than 4-year degrees.

4. Though varied, all these activities provided students with opportunities to work in professional settings within their respective fields of research. While co-ops, student teaching, and clinical assignments are often limited to certain disciplines, internships and field experiences extend to a broader population of students.