| Graduate student persistence has been infrequently studied, yet it is a very important issue for state policymakers and administrators of higher education. This dissertation examined persistence by graduate students in Indiana public institutions.; Logistic regression was used to examine the influence of student aid on within-year persistence, controlling for student background, grades, and graduate institution characteristics. Within-year persisters are students who enrolled in fall and who reenroll in spring term or received graduate degrees.; The study addressed three questions: (1) How do student background characteristics, grades, graduate institution characteristics and financial aid packages influence within-year persistence by graduate students in business? (2) How do student background characteristics, grades, graduate institution characteristics, and financial aid packages influence within-year persistence by graduate students in education? (3) Were there differences between business graduate students and education graduate students in the influence of student background characteristics, graduate experiences, and financial aid packages on persistence?; The first chapter explained the need for this type of research. The second chapter reviewed literature relating to graduate student persistence. This review placed this study in its historical context and the developed the logical model for this study. The development of the logical model coincides with the chronology of theory developed in the literature. The study adapted methods from studies of undergraduate persistence that used national, state and institutional databases.; The third chapter presented the methodology used, including the statistical methods, data sources, and model specifications. Descriptive statistics and cross tabulations were used to identify and compare the characteristics of students from each field.; Chapter four presents the results of analysis of within-year persistence by business graduate students. Chapter five presents the results of analysis of within-year persistence by education graduate students. Finally, chapter six compares and contrasts the results for the business students with the results for education students, and reviewed the implications for national, state and institutional policy.; The study found that the graduate students in education were more responsive to the aid packages available to them than were graduate students in business. Demographic data analysis showed the two student populations were distinct across several of the individual characteristic variables. |
