What sets college thrivers and divers apart? A contrast in study habits, attitudes, and mental health

Abstract

Students from 4-year colleges often arrive having already done very well in high school, but by the end of first term, a wide dispersion of performance emerges, with an especially large lower tail. Students that do well in first year (we call the top 10 percent Thrivers) tend to continue to do well throughout the rest of their time in university. Students that do poorly (we call the bottom 10 percent Divers) greatly struggle and are at risk of not completing their degree. In this paper we use a mandatory survey with open ended questions asking students about their first-year experience. This allows us to explore more closely what sets Thrivers and Divers apart, in terms of study habits, attitudes, and personal experiences. We find that poor time management and lack of study hours are most associated with poor academic performance, and that those who struggle recognize these weaknesses. Divers also report feeling more depressed and unhappy with their lives. We posit an 'academic trap', whereby initial poor performance is related to poor time management which in turn lowers expectations, which in turn leads to lower study time, and so on. Thrivers, in contrast, study significantly more and meet with course instructors.

What Limits College Success? A Review and Further Analysis of Holzer and Baum’s Making College Work

“…This is in line withBeattie (2019), who shows very low-performing students are significantly less likely to access free (but voluntary) college resources than high-performing ones.24 The sample is first-year economics students from the University of Tornto in 2018-19 who completed two required surveys during the course as a grade requirement-one near the end of the fall term, when students were asked about their target weekly study hours the following semester during a typical week (with no immediate midterms or exams); the other done during the middle of the winter semester, asking students about their comparable actual weekly hours of study.…”

“…The sample is all first-year economics students at the University of Toronto who participated in the 2016-17 warm-up exercise' and 'follow-up survey'. SeeOreopoulos and Petronijevic (2019) andBeattie et al (2019) for more details.…”

The benefits and caveats of using clickstream data to understand student self-regulatory behaviors: opening the black box of learning processes

“…Elvers et al 2003;Michinov et al 2011). A nudge to schedule time to do coursework could increase the time that students spend on their coursework, which has been found to be positively related to course outcomes (Beattie, Laliberté, Michaud-Leclerc, and Oreopoulos, 2017). This nudge could also serve to reduce academic anxiety and stress, which could positively affect academic outcomes (e.g., Macan, Shahani, Dipboye, and Phillips, 1990;Misra and McKean, 2000).…”

The Development of an Academic Engagement Intervention for Academically Dismissed Students

“…Using the classroom as an academic group counseling session, the instructor of the course uses their psychological training to begin helping students to address the multifaceted problems they are facing without having them visit the University's counseling center immediately. Students' non-academic concerns, such as mental health, family stressors, financial barriers, and adjustment concerns, can be discussed in the checkins as well as in the assigned readings for the course (Beattie, Laliberté, Michaud-Leclerc, & Oreopoulos, 2019). This counseling group approach reduces the separation of students' academic challenges from the broader issues that they face and allows students' problems to be diagnosed and treated earlier.…”