Persistence of underprepared community college students related to learning assistance center use

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between persistence and academic success of underprepared English and math community college students and their use of learning assistance center services. The students were enrolled in a small Arizona community college.; Both correlation and descriptive methodologies were included in the research. The study was longitudinal in nature and involved tracking enrollment and academic performance of developmental cohort members in selected developmental and college level courses from fall 1997 through fall 2000. Data was captured from existing historical academic and learning assistance student use records. The cohort groups included 413 Fundamental Writing students, 962 Beginning Algebra students, and 1,306 Intermediate Algebra students.; The findings indicated small but significant positive biserial correlations between use of learning assistance services and successful completion of initial developmental courses as well as the final college-level courses for all three developmental cohorts. Chi-square analysis results provided supporting evidence of the relationships with initial courses for all but the Beginning Algebra cohort, and confirmed the relationship with final courses for only the Intermediate Algebra cohort.; The most significant results revealed that learning assistance users persisted to subsequent courses at consistently higher rates than nonusers; chi-square results indicated the differences were significant for both algebra cohorts but not for the English cohort. In addition, without exception success rates of underprepared learning assistance users enrolled in college-level courses were comparable to their college-ready counterparts. Intermediate Algebra learning assistance users were nearly twice as likely as Fundamental Writing users to complete the final courses successfully; chi-square results confirmed a significant difference. Beginning Algebra users exhibited the lowest success rates. Mann-Whitney U tests found no significant differences in average learning assistance use for the three developmental groups.; The research suggests that successful completion of both initial and sequential courses was related to underprepared students' utilization of learning assistance services. Underprepared students who took advantage of learning assistance services, in general, exhibited greater persistence and academic success than underprepared students who did not use learning assistance services.