Abstract
Distance education has historically had lower completion rates. Several models of persistence, for on-campus students, indicate that students’ financial status affects their decision to persist. This study involved providing distance education students’ financial aid in the form of institutional scholarships (N = 545) at Penn State University in the United States. The recipients were students who were not overachievers and not at-risk of failing, but somewhere in the middle. The purpose of the study was to test if receiving financial aid was related to students’ persistence. Using logistic regression and Chi-square analysis, this study found that scholarship-receiving students with higher financial need were two times more likely to persist in their studies than those with lower financial need. Results suggest that there is a positive relationship between providing even small financial aid to students with high-financial need and their persistence in their studies.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 20-31 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Distance Education |
Volume | 40 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2 Jan. 2019 |
Keywords
- Persistence
- completion
- financial aid
- policy