Running head: The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College Christina M. Mazuca Michigan State University

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College Introduction In current economic times, now more than ever there is a demand for skilled and educated workers. The job market is extremely competitive and there is a need for the United States to complete globally. President Obama has made it part of his plan to increase college going rates by sixty percent in the next ten years, adding at least 8 million graduates (de Nies, 2010). During a talk that he gave to a group of college students at University of Texas he stated that America has failed its youth. He said, In a single generation, weve fallen from first place to twelfth place in college graduation rates for young adults. High Schools are increasingly expected to act as link to adults opportunities by preparing a larger, more racial/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, population of students to transition from high school to college (National Center for Education Statistics, NCES, 2005). There are many programs across the United States that are aimed at helping high school students on their path to college and aimed at getting more students to enroll in college upon

high school graduation. Several of these programs in high schools are established to increase the likeliness of high school students pursuing college degrees. For example the Gear Up Program which aims to (1) Increase the academic performance and preparation for post-secondary education, (2) Increase the rate of high school graduation and participation in post-secondary education and (3) Increase 10,295 Gear Up students and their families knowledge of postsecondary education options, preparation, and financing (www.gearupchicago.org/main/about.html). Typically, there are many components that make up these kinds of programs such as mentoring, tutoring, course counseling, course sequencing, financial aid nights, and ACT/SAT preparation activities. Several programs have proven to be successful in helping students and

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College their quest for a college education. The National College Access Network (NCAN) is currently researching, identifying and promoting the use of researched based best practices for college access programs (NCAN, 2011). In order to increase college-going rates in the U.S. we must figure out exactly which components of these programs are most effective. Through working with the College Ambition Program (CAP) as Research Project Coordinator keeping track of all the activities that we do with the high school students and keeping documentation of all of the ways in which we work with the students toward promoting a college going culture in the schools has become an important task. Documentation of these activities is part of the funding requirements set by the National Science Foundation which supports this project financially so that we may analyze the effectiveness of the program as a whole. Through CAP there are several activities that are being offered to the students to help them be better prepared for college. These activities like the ones mentioned above include, tutoring services, mentoring services, financial aid nights, providing opportunities for assistance with college applications, high school course advising services, and making it possible for student to take college campus visits. It is these visits, which I am particularly interested in

focusing on. High school juniors have been the primary focus for these college campus tours but we have allowed seniors to participate as well. Juniors and seniors in high school are at a critical point where they are starting to think about college more seriously and are making or about to make decisions about applying to college and/or choosing the college they want to attend. CAP focuses on all of these activities combined. What Im wondering is if there is a part of this project and others that are similar in nature that is sort of a key ingredient. If there was just one of the components that we had to choose, what would be the most important program element that we could implement that perhaps makes all the difference in whether or not students see

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College

themselves attending college that also makes them want to attend? More to the point, do students who participate in college visits matriculate more than kids who don't? This study will analyze the effects of college campus visits/tours on students decisions to apply to and attend college. Why We Should Care The issue of college transition and attendance is significant because a college education is a requirement of many professional jobs. A bachelor's degree is a minimum credential for teachers, engineers, commissioned officers in the military, and many salaried jobs in large corporations with a formal hiring process. A bachelor's degree is required for admission to law school or medical school, which in turn is a prerequisite to becoming an attorney or physician (Standler, 2001). It is not likely that students will be able to get jobs if they arent educated beyond a high school diploma. Higher education is a must. No longer are the days when you can graduate high school and secure a decent wage and earn a sufficient living without obtaining a college degree. Additionally, policy makers, institutes of higher education, high schools, and parents care about this issue. In order to stay competitive as a nation we need people with higher education degrees. Higher education is recognized both as an engine of economic growth and as a gatekeeper of individual positions of high remuneration and status. Within the economic context, higher education is believed to make individuals more productive and screen for different kinds of characteristics. In short, higher education is essential for most good jobs, and the absence of education beyond high school will be an increasingly formidable barrier to obtaining them; but even the possession of an advanced degree will neither guarantee good, nor lasting, employment (Johnstone, 2005). Doesnt it make sense that if schools are spending money on programs like the College Ambition Program or similar programs that they also investigate which parts of these programs are most effective?

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College Whats in the Literature The majority of information that I was able to find related to college visits was aimed at students. Typically these sites offered information for preparing students for college visits and informing of the importance of college visits in deciding which school to attend. Many of the

sites had checklists for students and parents to follow while on a college campus visit. Several of the web sites that I visited also talked about how taking a college visit helps institutions to get a sense of a students genuine interest and seriousness about attending that school and the impact that it have on admissions officers. On the College Planning and Consultants web site they suggest that college visits can be motivators for students to do well academically and in extracurricular activities, while also providing a clearer picture about college environments and may lead to a great opportunity for parents and students to talk about college opportunities (Christie, 2011). While there seemed to be an abundance of this sort of information, there wasnt a lot of research on the actual effectiveness or impact of the college visit on a students decision to attend college. However, there were a few studies that were headed in the right direction as far as analyzing the impacts of college-aimed activities through schools and so on. For example, in a study recently conducted by Lori Diane Hill (2008) at the University of Michigan published in Sociology of Education, school effects on college enrollment were studied by focusing on strategies that schools use to help students in their transition to college. She also pointed out that few studies have analyzed school effects on college enrollment in terms of the mechanisms (i.e. strategies for example college visits) that help particular groups of students and families navigate the college-transition process. What little research that has been done has been very limited and has raised questions about the nature of school strategies and their relationship to student outcomes that have yet to be analyzed.

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College In her study, Professor Hill looked at weather these efforts had an impact on different outcomes for students from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. She used data from the High School Effectiveness Study. Her school measures included four school practices that facilitate college going: (1) encourage college visits, (2) assist with college applications, (3) assist with financial aid applications, and (4) contact college representatives on behalf of students. Her school sample included 188 urban and suburban high schools. She characterized three basic types of strategies that schools use to facilitate the college-linking process that she labeled traditional, clearing house, and brokering. Traditional activities are activities that schools traditionally do to prepare students for college and the labor market. Clearinghouse is characterized by schools that offer substantial resources for college planning, but assume a

limited role in channeling these resources to students and families, operating mostly as a clearing house for resources. Lastly, Brokering is classified as schools offer a substantial supply of resources that are related to college going, but it also operates as a broker between the student and the resources and heightens its potential as an influential agent in the college-linking process. However, she did find that the brokering strategy was show to be statistically significant for those schools who applied that strategy on enrollment in two-year (vs. not enrolled) and in four-year (vs. two year) (Hill, 2008). Her findings while very interesting didnt really look at the college visit and its direct impact on students decision to attend or apply. In another study conducted by Michael Yost, Jr. and Stephen L. Tucker (1995) that was published in the Journal of Marketing for Higher Education they looked at the impact of college campus visits as marketing strategies for universities promotional purposes. Whats interesting is that they found that the college visit was advantageous for the student in that (1) it helps a student decide where to apply (a decision made by the applicant), (2) it helps a college decide

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College whether or not to admit an applicant (a decision made by the institution wishing to admit and provide price discounts to those applicants who are likely to attend), and lastly (3) it helps students decide where to attend (choice made by the student) (Yost & Tucker, 1995). The problem is that for Yost and Tucker they were using Trinity University, a private liberal arts institution in San Antonio Texas which has highly-selective admissions process and their analysis did not examine the question of cause and effect. Further, they state that they do not know if students visit the campus because they are very interested in attending the institution or if they are become interested in an institution because they visited the college campus. They do

find that the matriculation experience of those students who visited the campus and those who do not visit the campus makes a convincing case for strongly promoting campus visits (Yost & Tucker, 1995). Lastly I looked at a study done by Brusoski, Golin, Gladis, and Beers (1992) that was published in The High School Journal, which looked at parental encouragement and the decision to attend college. The purpose of their study was to examine specific behaviors of parents that college students indicated encouraged them to go to college. They used a brief questionnaire and collected data from four classes of undergraduate psychology students enrolled in a large eastern university. What they found was that students felt that parents frequently talking to them about college in their junior and senior years of high school as well as talking about the importance of college in securing good employment was highly motivating/encouraging. Much to my surprise the listed parents visiting colleges with them, parents talking to them about college when they were younger, and parents collecting college information for them as items lowest on the list of effectiveness. These findings were based on students reporting these items less frequently and therefore were concluded to be less important (Brusoski et al, 1992).

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College Given the lack of specific research done on the impact of college visits on students decisions to attend college it seems a worthwhile area to explore. In tight economic times like these the amount of money spent each year on programs aimed at promoting college attendance and the growing industry of private college counselors, SAT & ACT coaches, and consortia

offering paid trips for high-school counselors to obscure college campuses (McDonoough, 1994) it seem that more research ought to be conducted on the impact of college visits on students decision to attend. Research Plan and Methodology My plan is to use the College Ambition Program (CAP) as a base for my study. CAP is a research project that was designed originally by Dr. Barbara Schneider at Michigan State University. The underlying purpose of the CAP intervention is to promote a school-wide college-going culture in which all students in a school are encouraged to see themselves as college applicants, with their teachers, administrators, and parents sharing these expectations. CAP activities are designed to: (1) reinforce the message that matriculation to a four-year college is an attainable goal for all students; and (2) foster knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and relationships for attaining that goal; The goals of this research study are twofold: (1) to implement the CAP intervention in eight schools as well as each specific component (e.g., multitiered mentoring, course planning and sequencing, financial aid planning, and creating a schoolwide college-going culture; and (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the structured college visits on the treatment schools. The idea behind the structured college visits is that it provides the students with the tools that they need in order to be better prepared for the college visit. They will be given information about the institution that they visit as well as lists of appropriate questions to ask, and important

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College things to consider while visiting each institution. Additionally, I would survey the students upon completion of each visit to get a sense of how the visit impacted them overall. It would be ideal to be able to take the students to visit a variety of schools (large public four-year, private fouryear, small liberal arts, etc.) so that they get a better sense of the types of schools that exist and demonstrate the opportunities that are available to them. It is imperative that more high school

students see themselves as potential college students. Structured college visits provide them with the opportunity to see other students on campus that they can relate to and may be motivated by this and decide that they too can be a college student. Structured college visits differ from a typical college visit that perhaps parents and students might be taking with their schools, friends, or parents in that it better prepares them for what they can expect and what they should know. Rather than visiting a school blindly they are equipped with the right questions to ask and will be thinking about the aspects at each school that pertain to their area of interest. Structured college visits provide them with a toolset that they might not have otherwise. Additionally, the schools would have communication with the colleges being visited and can make arrangements so that the students might have access to opportunities while visiting that they might not get on their own. For example, they can arrange for the students to have lunch in a dorm cafeteria and to see an actual dorm room. They can also arrange for guided tours and guest speakers that one might not experience just taking a day trip with their parents. Of the eight schools that CAP will be implemented in, these schools include: 4 urban schools with populations of about 1,500 to 1,700 students per school, and the four rural schools with populations of about 550 students per school. It should be noted that all of these schools send some students to college, thus there is the potential to increase college matriculation rates in these schools. CAP has included a focus on rural schools for this intervention because rural

The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College students represent an often forgotten group of students who tend to have solid academic performance but often fail to make a successful transition to postsecondary education, despite appropriate preparation. The sample of students for this study come from high schools selected on criteria that include: high schools with economically disadvantaged population (defined as roughly 30% or

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more of the population eligible for free or reduced lunch); low rates of community college going (defined as roughly 15% of the adults in the community holding a B.A. or higher) and lowerthan-expected college-going rates (information from Common Core of Data [NCES, 2008]) and School Matters Project [Standard and Poors, 2008]). For the purpose of my study four schools (two of the urban schools and two of the rural schools) will be considered the treatment schools, with treatment being the structured college visits in addition to receiving the host of other components of the program. The control group will still receive all of the same college-aimed activities and advice but will not be offered the structured college visits. Of the four treatment schools we will offer the junior and senior classes the option of the college visits.

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The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College Timeline The College Ambition Program is funded to run for three years. My study proposes to follow-up with the students from the College Ambition Program through the third-year project seniors freshman year of college which makes my study a four year project. Each year I will

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follow-up with previous years seniors who would ideally be in their first year of college. I will track the students from the treatment and control schools and randomly find out how many of those students matriculated, and of those how many participated in the college visits compared to those that did not. Of those that matriculate I will then calculate how many of those students belonged to each of the treatment and the control schools in order to determine if the college visits had a significant impact on the number of students who actually went on to college. For additional information of the impact of the college visits, I would survey (using the same instrument that was used while they were still in high school on their college visits) to determine how much of an impact if any the college visit had on their decision to apply and attend college and if it matches how they felt when they originally finished the survey as a junior or senior.

Key Research Questions The key research questions of this study include: How effective are college visits for increasing matriculation of high school juniors and seniors to postsecondary education institutions? Specifically: did the college visits help students in their decision to apply to or

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The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College

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attend college? Did the college visits increase student interest and motivation to attend college? The primary desired outcome of this study is college matriculation. Although this study is largely quantitative in nature there are some qualitative components. The survey, while not yet developed will be mostly Likert-like items based on a scale from a very small extent to a very great extent. For example, on a scale of one to five how much of an impact did college visits have on your decision to attend college? When developing the survey I hope to find questions from other tested instruments that might be appropriate for use in this study. There may be some questions aimed at college visits in the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 data set that would be applicable. In addition, I may have some open-ended questions as well so that the students may describe the impact or talk about specifically which parts of the college visits were most meaningful. However, in order to get completed surveys I dont anticipate for the survey to be very long so that the participants will be willing to commit a few minutes of their time in order to fill it out. Since there is no consistent definition of this measure in the literature, I will measure the college going as the number of students matriculating to postsecondary institutions in the autumn immediately following their senior year. Among those who attend college I will assess whether students in the treatment condition were more likely to matriculate. The quasi-experimental design of the study calls for implementation of the treatment (the college visits) at the school-level (junior and senior classes each year), and results will be measured both at the school level as well as at the individual level. I will have data from four graduating classes. The longitudinal component of the design allows me to examine matriculation rates and patterns to postsecondary education. In successive years, each class of graduating high school seniors will be followed for matriculation. Beginning in the first year, 12th graders will be

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The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College followed into their first year of college. This will allow me to track three years of freshman matriculation. In order to complete the follow-up, I plan to obtain email addresses and use web-based technology, employing methodology similar to that implemented in the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development, in which study participants are contacted yearly to monitor college matriculation, persistence, and degree attainment. I would also work with the Michigan Department of Education as they develop and implement a new K-16 longitudinal tracking system to follow students into their first year of college. Additionally, if need be I could access the National Student Clearinghouse for federal student financial aid to augment information on

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college matriculation. The use of these additional strategies will increase ability to follow study participants and provide confidence in the validity of the information used to document the college visit effectiveness. Conclusion It is my hypothesis that the data will show that structured college visits prove to be effective in increasing the matriculation rates of junior and seniors in the treatment schools. Once I have gathered the data from the surveys I would plan to share this data with the schools, district leaders, state department of education, and policy makers so that they might fund more programs and schools that participate in structured college visits. A limitation of the proposed study is that it could be costly. Funding college visits requires renting buses, providing food, printing materials (surveys and information packets), and providing supervision. Additionally it could be hard to duplicate in other states. Michigan is fortunate because we have several colleges within driving distance of one another. However other states may not be similarly situated.

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The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College However, despite these limitations I believe the impact that college visits can have on a students decision to attend college far out weighs any limitation that might exist. There hasnt

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been enough research done to examine how much of an impact these structured visits could have on students. Therefore it seems that in addition to a program like CAP or Gear Up it is an easy study to add to one of these kinds of already existing programs in order to find out the potential benefits that could be gained. The need for more students to enroll in college is greater than ever. A study like this could help us increase the countrys graduation rates and put us back on top.

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The Impact of Structured College Visits on Students Decision to Attend College References

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Brusoski,G.C., & Golin, A.K., & Gladis, M. & Beers, S.R. (1992). Parental Encouragement and the Decision to Attend College. The High School Journal. Vol. 75, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1992), pp. 225-232. University of North Carolina Press Chicago Gear Up Alliance. (2011). Retrieved on April 30, 2011 from http://www.gearupchicago.org/main/about.html Christie, J. (2011). Do not underestimate the importance of a campus visit. Retrived on April 19, 2011 from http://www.selectingColleges.com/home/col/page_177/ De Nies, Y. (2010). President Obama Outlines Goal to Improve College Graduation Rate in U.S. ABC World News.com Retrieved on April 25, 2011 from http://abcnews.go.com/WN/president-barack-obama-outlines-college-education-goaluniversity/story?id=11359759 Hill, L.D. (2008). School Strategies and the College-Linking Process: Reconsidering the Effects of High Schools on College Enrollment. Sociology of Education. Vol. 81 (January): 53-76. Johnstone, D. B. (2005). Financing higher education: Who should pay? In P. Altbach, R. Berdahl, & P. Gumport (Eds.), American higher education in the twenty-first century: Social, political, and economic challenges (pp. 369-392). Maryland: Johns Hopkins University. McDonough, P.M (1994). Buying and Selling Higher Education: The Social Construction of the College Applicant. The Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jul. - Aug., 1994), pp. 427-446. Ohio State University Press. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2943854

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National Center for Education Statistics (2008). Common Core of Data. Retrieved on April 28, 2011, from www.nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch. Standler, R. (2001). Why attend college? http://www.rbs0.com/edu.htm created 28 Dec 2000, modified 21 August 2004 Yost, M., & Tucker, S.L. (1995). Tangible Evidence in Marketing a Service: The Value of a Campus Visit in Choosing a College. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, v6 n1 p47-67 1995

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