Immigrants and children of immigrants in an urban community college: Persistence and the cooling out process

This exploratory study examined four groups of students in an urban community college: native students born to native parents; native students born to immigrant parents; immigrant students who attended high school in the United States and immigrant students who completed their secondary education outside the United States or earned the GED.; This research examined the relationship between demographic and academic characteristics, and student persistence and educational aspirations. Persistence was measured as the ratio of real credits completed to the number of real credits attempted, and Change in Educational Aspiration, an expansion of Burton Clark's cooling out theory, was defined as changes in declared major while enrolled in an Associates Degree program or withdrawal prior to completion.; The sample group was largely minority, but the composition varied among the four student groups. Natives were more likely to be Black, First Generation Natives and U.S. High Schooled Immigrants were more likely to be Hispanic, and Foreign High Schooled Immigrants were Black and Asian in the greatest proportion. Students were predominately female and attended public high schools. Overall 14% of the sample earned the GED, with almost one-third of the Foreign High Schooled students earning the GED. Eighty percent of the sample needed remediation. Half of the immigrants were ESL speakers, as were 11% of the Natives and 21% of the First Generation.; Step-wise OLS regression was used to explore persistence and logistic regression was used to explore the change in educational aspiration. The research found that Foreign High Schooled Immigrants needed the most developmental assistance upon admission, but ultimately had greater persistence and higher grades than other student groups. Factors contributing positively to persistence for all groups included Never Spending Time on Probation and having a high school diploma. Being female was positively related to persistence for Natives, being Hispanic was negatively related to persistence for First Generation Natives. The majority of students in all four groups were warmed, that is maintained the same aspirations (59-65%) or increased their aspirations (3-6%). The student's planned intent to attain a four year degree was a significant positive variable across all four student groups.