| dc.description.abstract | Nobody wins when a student drops out of college. Colleges lose revenue and students accumulate debt and experience lower lifetime earnings if they never finish college. Colleges and universities have spent an enormous amount of resources to solve the retention problem by focusing on data they have at their disposal (e.g., socioeconomic status, GPA) with some success. I take a different approach and examine the psychological variables most likely to explain why someone may leave college. Specifically, I examine how honesty-humility (the H-Factor), a personality variable, and psychological capital influence student retention. The H-Factor may be important to retention because those high in the H-Factor are ethical, unpretentious, self-aware, able to adjust both academically and socially, and have realistic expectations about college. Psychological capital may be important to retention because those who are high in psychological capital have a more positive outlook on life, believe in themselves, and are resilient. I collect data on honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to new experiences; (Ashton & Lee, 2004), psychological capital (Luthans et al., 2007), and retention from 455 freshman college business students at a midwestern university. The results show that the direct relationship between the H-Factor and retention is not statistically significant and neither was psychological capital a statistically significant moderator; therefore, my hypotheses were not supported. | |
