Abstract
Statement of the Problem
The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that influence first-year dropout students to return to the same institution to complete their degrees. These research questions guided the research:
(RQ1) What factors influence a reentry student to complete their degree?
(RQ2) What societal factors influence a reentry student?
(RQ3) What factors influence a student to come back to the same institution to complete their degrees?
Sources of Data
The data analysis took place after the completion of the questionnaires by the participants. The data analysis included the summarization of the data. Initially, the summary outputs, such as mean values, automatically provided by the online platform were considered. However, the raw data was also downloaded. Any issues, such as the lack of responses to specific questions, were analyzed. The descriptive statistics included frequency count, mean values, and standard error (SE). The frequency distribution and percentage were used to determine the number of respondents in association with different questions. The mean values were used to know the average influence of the factors under study. The data was also analyzed according to the participant subgroups based on characteristics obtained through the demographics-related information. In this regard, differences in the subgroups based on gender; different ages, including the age groups 18-28, 29-39, 40-49, and 50+ years of age, and different racial or ethnic groups, including Black/African American, Asian/Pacific Islanders, White/Caucasian, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, and Other, were analyzed.
Conclusions Reached
The study's findings showed that an educational institution, such as UC Davis, needs to work on the academic prestige and value of the degree, as Campbell et al. (2018) noted. Even though it already has a high level of reputation, it can take the reviews of the students and researchers to make further improvements. Along with the academic prestige, UCD may also work on the motivation of the students to complete the degree. In this regard, these students can help teachers improve other students’ competence and interest in the subject (Johnson, 2017).