Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Education

Committee Chair

Yonghong Xu

Committee Member

William Akey

Committee Member

Ernest Rakow

Committee Member

Leigh Harrell-Williams

Abstract

Federal student loan debt is an issue that affects a large swath of American society. This study analyzes the acquisition of federal student loans for transfer students who begin at a community college and transferred to obtain a baccalaureate degree. Not much is known about the dynamics of this frequently occurring combination of educational path and loan-taking experience. Using data from a medium-sized, public, urban institution in the southern portion of the United States, this study used multiple regression to examine the differences in the federal student loan debt at graduation between transfer and non-transfer students. While the descriptive data showed that students who started at a community college and took loans had a mean debt at graduation of $23,710 while native students had a mean $546 less ($23,160), this face-value result did not hold true when pertinent variables were added and the FAFSA division of dependent or independent student was considered. Independent native students took more loan debt, on average, than transfer students who took loans. Independent native students had an average debt of $5,063 higher loan debt than the average debt of in independent transfer students and dependent native students took an average of $1,464 more in debt than dependent transfer students. However, the R2 of the full regression indicated that only 15 percent of the variance in student debt at graduation is due to the variables in the model.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

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