The college destinations of black students : the influence of college-going culture in secondary schools

Abstract

Black students' college enrollment has increased considerably over the past few decades. Higher enrollment has not translated into an increased representation of Black students across all institutional types as community colleges, and less-selective 4-year institutions experienced the most growth. This dissertation drew on Hossler and Gallagher's (1987) three-stage model of the college choice process by focusing on the model's final stage, choice, where students select the college they will attend. Perna's (2006) conceptualization of the multiple and overlapping contexts within which the college choice process takes place was also used to conceptualize secondary schools' influence as an essential context influencing the choice stage. Lastly, this dissertation utilized Kasse Freeman's (2005) categorization of Black students' college aspiration typology to examine the influence of aspiration type on Black students' college destinations. Utilizing the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, this dissertation investigated the influence of secondary schools on Black students' college destinations. Specifically, this study used multinominal logistic regression to model the influence of college-going culture in secondary schools on Black students' college destinations as moderated by aspiration type (i.e., knowers and seekers), geographical location, and bounded aspiration. I used confirmatory factor analysis to identify college-promoting resources and norms and latent profile analysis to create a typology of high school college-going cultures. Findings suggest that schools with high college-going culture have Black students that are less likely to attend two-year institutions but did not significantly affect the likelihood of Black knowers and seekers attending highly selective versus moderately selective four-year institutions. Additionally, results indicatethat being a rural student does not influence the relationship between the college-going culture of secondary schools and Black students' college destinations. Finally, it appeared that the desire to remain close to family and community did not affect the relationship between the secondary school's college-going culture and the type of college Black students attend immediately after high school. Results suggest that Black students who aspire to attend a four-year institution achieve their goal irrespective of their high schools' college-going culture, geographical location, or possessing a bounded aspiration. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.