Does Student Engagement Increase Post-College Earnings for All Students?

College Student Engagement and Early Career Earnings:  Differences by Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Academic Preparation

In this study which appeared in The Review of Higher Education scholars Hu and Wolniak (2013) study the linkages between student engagement and early career earnings among college students from different gender, race/ethnicity, and academic backgrounds.  The researchers reference foundational work done by a variety of scholars which suggests high levels of student engagement in educationally purposeful activity leads to increased learning and success in college.  Despite the wealth of literature exploring the connection between student engagement and college success, little is known about the effect of student engagement on career outcomes post-college.  Student engagement scholars have suggested engagement has conditional effects on students from different backgrounds.  This work highlights the importance of examining the effects of student engagement on different student populations to understand the differences that exist and improve intervention.

The stated research question studied by Hu and Wolniak (2013) is: “Are the relationships between measures of student engagement and earnings moderated by students’ gender, race/ethnicity, and academic preparation?” (p. 215).  The researchers utilize data gathered from a series of surveys administered to a cohort of students three years after entering their first year of college.  The first survey asked questions about student engagement behaviors in college.  The second survey, administered two years later, asked the sample about their career earnings.  Academic engagement and social engagement behaviors were analyzed separately using two separate scales both of which were found to have acceptable levels of reliability (.75 for academic engagement scale and .78 for social engagement scale).

The data analysis suggests statistically significant differences in academic and social student engagement between gender, race/ethnicity, and academic preparation (which is defined by SAT/ACT scores) as well as early career earnings.  An example of a difference found is that male students in the sample were more engaged academically and had higher levels of annual earnings.  Differences between engagement behaviors were significant between different racial and ethnic groups; however, these differences effected early career earnings differently.  The same was true for students with various levels of academic preparation.  An example of this difference is that both types of engagement were positively associated with early career earnings for the middle SAT/ACT group; however, academic engagement was negatively associated with early career earnings for the low SAT/ACT group.

Limitations in this study include the exclusion of later earnings which could change from the early career earnings and would change the conclusions drawn from this study significantly.  The results of this study suggest both academic and social engagement effect early career earnings differently among student from different gender, race/ethnicity, and academic backgrounds.  These differences provide further support to the notion that higher education faculty and administrators must examine the different experiences students from diverse background have on college campuses.  Interventions designed to increase student success and/or social capital to increase career earnings must take differences into account in order to maximize benefit.  An example of this is the finding that students with the lowest levels of academic preparation did not benefit in early career earnings from student engagement behaviors in college.  This finding suggests improvements should be made to engagement experiences in order to provide different populations the knowledge and skills necessary to maximize career earnings.

Reference

Hu, S., & Wolniak, G.C. (2013). College student engagement and early career earnings: Differences by gender, race/ethnicity, and academic preparation. The Review of Higher Education (36)2, 211-233.