Individuals
in Institutional Contexts:
A Reexamination of Factors Influencing Degree Attainment
James
C. Witte and Curtis Askew
Abstract
The recent controversy surrounding the confluence of measured intelligence,
socioeconomic status and race has focused on establishing and denying
causal links between individual attributes. Far less attention has
been paid to the institutional structures where the relationships
between individual attributes are situated. By contrast, this paper
looks at the probability of obtaining a bachelor's degree as a function
of institutional as well as individual factors. Based on ten years
of longitudinal data collected on the high school class of 1982,
we estimate base models that establish links between the probability
of degree completion and measured intelligence, socioeconomic status,
and race. The base models are then extended so as to locate the
degree-attainment process in an institutional context: individual
level data are matched with institutional data, including enrollment
history, institutional availability of financial aid, and race-specific
student enrollment and retention rates. The results indicate significant
interaction effects between individual and institutional attributes.
We find, for example, that the influence of financial aid varies
across racial and ethnic groups, even after controlling for measured
intelligence and socioeconomic status. Surprisingly, the strongest
relationship between degree attainment and race-specific retention
rates are found for white students, suggesting that in our models,
race-specific retention rates may serve as a proxy for unmeasured
variables, such as institutional quality.
James C. Witte,
Department of Sociology, Northwestern University Curtis Askew, Department of
Sociology, Northwestern University
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