Student Engagement and High-Impact Practices: Pathways to Social Reproduction or Social Mobility?

Abstract

The research first seeks to understand among bachelor’s degree recipients the ways student engagement and high-impact practices (HIPs) mediate the relationship between students’ socioeconomic status (SES) and two post-graduation outcomes: early career earnings and graduate degree attainment. Next, the research explores how SES moderates the relationship between engagement experiences and these post-graduation outcomes. Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS) 2002 subsamples are used and analyzed using generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) and multiple-group GSEM techniques. Results indicate that extracurricular involvement, faculty interactions, internships, research with faculty, and community-based projects mediate the relationships between SES and earnings and graduate degree attainment, thereby acting as a sorting mechanism of social inequities. Multiple-group analysis finds effects on post-graduation outcomes of engagement experiences are dependent on student SES quartile. Research with faculty is a positive predictor of graduate degree attainment among the lowest quartile, but no other engagement experience had a significant positive impact on earnings or graduate degree among those from this quartile. Internship experiences elicit positive effects among the middle-SES quartiles when predicting earnings. Extracurricular activities and community-based projects increase one’s odds of graduate degree attainment among the second SES quartile. An exception to these conditional effects for low-to-middle quartiles is interactions with faculty. Students from the highest SES quartile had increased odds of graduate school attainment within this experience while lower quartiles are not. Results provide direction for higher education policy and practice to widen and reroute student engagement and HIPs as pathways for social mobility and not social reproduction.