Piepenburg, Joachim Gottfried
(2021).
Decision-Making in Higher Education. The Impact of Information and How It Relates to Dropout.
PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.
Abstract
Within this dissertation I present three papers that deal with two significant educational decisions, namely the study program decision and the dropout decision. The decision-making framework underlying this dissertation is anchored in rational choice theory, which provides interesting implications and hypotheses when applied to the choice of study program and the dropout decision. The first paper of my dissertation presents experimental evidence on the effect of a high school student counseling workshop, i.e., an information treatment, on students’ consideration of less well-known and gender-atypical study programs. Results reveal that the information treatment increased the consideration of gender-atypical and less well-known study programs and that the effect of the information treatment on considering less well-known study programs was moderated by how informed student were prior to the treatment. The second paper of my dissertation illustrates how the information treatment affects both the composition of study program considerations and choices within the close friend network of participants (measured via egocentric networks). Analyses reveal that the treatment reduced homogeneity pertaining to considered study programs within the close friend network, i.e., the amount of overlap between the study program considered by ego (student participating in the study) and alters (ego’s close friends). However, the treatment did not influence homogeneity pertaining to the chosen study program within the close friend network. Furthermore, the effect of the information treatment on study program homogeneity did not depend on the degree of pre-treatment homogeneity within the close friend network. The first two papers of my dissertation show that the information treatment influences study program considerations, but not study program choices. In other words, the effect of the information treatment is short-lived. The last paper of my dissertation carefully examines the dropout decision, particularly focusing on the factors that influence dropout propensity within higher education, thus contrasting and extending the previous two papers which look at decision making before enrollment into higher education. The results of a factorial-survey, where social and academic integration according to Tinto’s integration model are varied within vignettes, demonstrate that both academic and social integration into the higher education environment affect dropout propensity, with academic interest being the strongest predictor. The paper further illustrates that the effect of academic and social integration is, for the most part, not moderated by academic family background.
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