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THE RELATIONSHIP OF FINANCIAL AID AND FINANCIAL AID PACKAGE COMPOSITION TO PERSISTENCE AT A PRIVATE COLLEGE
Abstract
A five-year longitudinal study of attrition was done using as subjects 303 first-time, traditional-age freshmen at a small private college in Western Massachusetts. The relationships of grant aid, preferential aid (provided on the basis of talent or merit), work aid, and loan aid to persistence were examined in a multivariate study which included the variables of socioeconomic status, major field of study, ability measures, high school rank, sex, state of residence, participation in high school athletics or activities, religious preference, date of registration, grade point average, and resident or commuter status. Persisters had higher high school rank, registered earlier, had higher grade point averages, tended to be women, had specific majors at the time of enrollment, and had stated religious preferences. The hypotheses that work assistance and preferential aid are positively related to persistence were supported in a series of discriminant function analyses. The hypothesis that loan aid is negatively related to persistence was partially supported by the multivariate analyses, but this finding may be confounded by changes in Guaranteed Student Loan regulations which occurred 3 years into the study. The hypothesis that grant aid is positively related to persistence was not supported in the mulitvariate analyses. The consistent finding of other studies is that grant assistance is positively related to persistence, but these studies fail to separate grant assistance (based on need) from preferential aid (based on merit). The results of these other studies may be due to the confounding of need-based and merit-based aid. The results of the study are limited to first-time, traditional-age freshmen at the research site. Nevertheless, the current trend toward increasing amounts of loans and proportionately less grant and work assistance should be reexamined in light of the results. Suggestions for future research on the relationship of financial aid variables to persistence include separation of preferential aid into assistance based on academic merit from assistance based on athletic or other talent, and the addition of a variable related to quality of participation in high school activities.
Subject Area
Higher education
Recommended Citation
SIROIS, LEE C, "THE RELATIONSHIP OF FINANCIAL AID AND FINANCIAL AID PACKAGE COMPOSITION TO PERSISTENCE AT A PRIVATE COLLEGE" (1986). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8622719.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8622719