LINKING STUDY BEHAVIORS AND STUDENT CULTURE TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS AMONG HISPANIC STUDENTS

Abstract

Hispanic students are less likely to persist at community colleges than white students. The study reported in this article suggests that students with appropriate study behaviors are more likely to persist. The study investigated the study behaviors of Spanish-speaking Hispanic students at one Hispanic-serving community college using the Inventario de Comportamiento de Estudio and at two Mexican universities. Community college students' response patterns were more like those of Mexican public university students and unlike Mexican private university students. This suggests that student culture, rather than institutional culture, determines students' study behaviors.

Notes

¹La Universidad de las Américas, an elite Mexican university was used in this study because it represented an institution with an institutional culture similar to that of schools in the United States and it enrolled students whose culture was Hispanic. This was done to contrast it with La Universidad de Puebla, an institution with an institutional culture that was different from that of U.S. institutions, such as MDCC, but whose student culture also was Hispanic.

²The authors acknowledge the small size of this sample and the threat it represents to the external validity of our findings. It represents a convenience subsample of data from a larger study where instructors identified Spanish-speaking students (see Bliss & Sandiford, 2003).