Exploring Race Differences in Correlates of Seniors’ Satisfaction with Undergraduate Education

Sense of Belonging and Persistence in White and African American First-Year Students

“…In doing so, we found that sense of belonging had a direct, positive effect on students' institutional commitment, and significant indirect effects on intentions to persist and actual persistence. Our findings are consistent with considerable existing evidence that factors presumed to be similar or related to students' subjective sense of belonging are related to positive educational outcomes such as GPA, satisfaction, commitment, and persistence (e.g., Bean 1980Bean , 1985Bennett and Okinaka 1990;Berger and Milem 1999;Eimers and Pike 1997;Einarson and Matier 2005;Fischer 2007;Mayo et al 1995;Nettles et al 1986;Suen 1983;Zea et al 1997). However, as Hurtado and Carter (1997) have pointed out, the impact of students' subjective sense of belonging on their college persistence has not often been directly examined empirically, although its potential importance has been noted in theories of student persistence (Bean 1985;Spady 1971).…”

Life on Social Housing Estates: Studying Housing Quality with an Ethnographic Approach

“…It would thus seem that although we still observe wellbeing differences in the wider South African society between sex and race groups, such differences do not exist within the university environment under investigation (at least in terms of satisfaction with campus residence life). The findings from the present study regarding the absence of significant well-being differences between gender as well as racial groups are in accordance with research at US universities (Einarson and Matier 2005;Zullig et al 2009). …”

“…Similarly, a study of senior students from 17 research universities in the USA, with more than 14,000 responses, found that, overall, gender and race were not significant determinants of satisfaction. However, some differences across and between race groups were found: for example, Asian American women reported higher levels of satisfaction than did men from the same race group (Einarson and Matier 2005). Also, while the Miller and Sujitparapitaya (2010) study did find evidence of a "chillier" campus climate for some groups, they did not find evidence that lower perceptions of campus climate were statistically significantly related to student performance or persistence.…”

The Contribution of Student Satisfaction to Persistence

“…When an institution has specific information at hand about levels of students' satisfaction with instruction, advising, campus climate, student services, finances, and service excellence, it can tailor its decision-making toward those aspects of satisfaction that can be most effectively leveraged to affect persistence decisions. Differentiating the effects of various aspects of satisfaction across types of students can make student satisfaction assessment even more powerful, whether the analysis disaggregates the data by race/ethnicity (Einarson & Matier, 2005;Fischer, 2007), by level of satisfaction and academic engagement (Thomas & Galambos, 2004), or by class level, as in the current study.…”

“…Students who self-identified as African American were significantly less likely to report that their college experiences were worth repeating, perhaps because most of the participating institutions were primarily white institutions (PWIs). Einarson and Matier (2005) explain that the campus experiences of students who are in the ethnic minority are often filled with instances of racial tension, discrimination, and boundary crossing that take their toll on students. Asian students in this study also were less likely to report wishing to enroll in the same institution again, but only when they were sophomores and juniors.…”