An Analysis of the Association between College Information Source and Density and the College Attendance Behaviors of Low-Income Students

Abstract

One of the critical issues in higher education policy has been determining how to ensure that students across the socioeconomic spectrum have an equal opportunity to access higher education. In order to determine how to address income-based inequality in college access, it is critical to first examine how low-income students make their decisions to enroll in college. This thesis seeks to examine how various sources of college information and the amount of college information low-income students access impacts their college enrollment and two- or four-year college attendance decisions.

This thesis builds on previous studies that have examined the impact of various sources of social capital for college, including high school counselors, athletic coaches, parents, and friends, on high school students’ college application and attendance behaviors. The current literature finds that high school counselors are the most important institutional source of college information and that siblings are the most important personal connection for increasing the odds that low-income students enroll in college, where an institutional source is an individual that is accessed through a school and a personal connection is an individual accessed outside of a school. This thesis uses the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002) to develop a series of logistic regression models.

This study finds that while high school counselors, athletic coaches, college representatives, parents, siblings, and relatives outside of the nuclear family increase the odds that low-income students enroll in college, teachers and friends decrease the odds that low-income students enroll in college. Of the institutional sources of college information examined, athletic coaches most increase the odds of low-income students’ college enrollment. Of the personal connections examined, parents and relatives outside of the nuclear family increase the odds the most that low-income students enroll in college. Of all of the sources of college information examined in this thesis, athletic coaches increase the odds the most that low-income students enroll in college. While different sources of college information can improve the odds that low-income students enroll in any postsecondary institution, they do not seem to improve the odds that low-income students will enroll in four-year colleges instead of two-year colleges. With regard to college information density, the more sources of college information low-income students access, the greater the odds that they will enroll in college and that they will attend a four-year college instead of a two-year college.

The policy implications of these findings are that low-income students need increased access to sources of college information who can have a direct impact in transforming their college aspirations to reality, such as athletic coaches and college representatives. Furthermore, given the importance of parents to the college enrollment decisions of low-income students, low-income students’ parents need to be better informed about the college admissions process in order to be able to accurately guide their children.