Table of Contents
Abstract
All throughout kindergarten all the way up to your last days of high school you are held by the hand or your parents, leading you every step of the way. Going to college is a total different ball game and is a huge milestone in majority of people’s lives. The future study will analyze the levels of college satisfaction while being involved in on-campus activities and the negative or positive effects of having a job. Research has shown that when a student is more involved with on-campus activities or working an on-campus job the levels of college satisfaction is significantly higher in those students.
Approximately one hundred students will be asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their levels of satisfaction at their university and their level of on-campus involvement that they have previously or currently are partaking in. The results of this study will show that the students who are involved in on-campus or extracurricular activities tend to graduate with an overall higher level of satisfaction, and the students who work an on-campus job will have a much higher level of college satisfaction compared to the students who work off campus.
Concluding the study will also be future research suggestions to contribute to providing significant evidence and implications that are expected to be found while conducting this future study. All throughout kindergarten all the way up to your last days of high school you are held by the hand or your parents, leading you every step of the way. Going to college is a total different ball game and is huge milestone in majority of people’s lives. When going to college the first thought that come across most minds is the freedom they are about to be subjected to.
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They are now allowed to make up their own rules, and their own consequences for their actions rather than their parents or grade school teachers do that for them. Aside from gaining your partial adult wings, some also go to college for the learning experience. College learning is a such a different learning world than it is when you are in grade school, you will not have teachers breathing down your back to do your homework or turn in any other assignment. Joining clubs, Greek life, new friends and even significant others are also some major key points as to why students come to college (Arum and Roska, 2011). Not only do universities want students to be able to balance a healthy social life and academic performance but some elite universities celebrate these accomplishments (Ellis et al., 1971). Thus, leading to why some type of college involvement is vital to one’s college experience.
Astin (1999) defines student involvement as the amount of psychological and physical energy that one puts into their academic experience. Astin also goes about defining a highly devoted student as one who has an abundant amount of energy to study, interacts frequently with faculty, participates actively in organizations, and spends a lot of time on campus. Whereas non-devoted student would be a person who has infrequent contact with faculty, neglects his or her studies, spends little time on campus and does not participate in any extracurricular activities.
Student involvement can take place in many different forms of activities depending on how and where the particular student feels the most comfortable. Research has shown that one specific college involvement club in particular has had a huge impact on academic performances, which is Greek life. It has been studied and corroborated by Pike (2000), that Greek life has a positive effect on students’ lives and contributes to building a sense of belonging on college campuses that will ultimately result in lifelong friendships and a greater attachment to the institution they are involved at. Not only is Greek life giving you that warm sense of belonging but it also allows you to be involved in your community.
Each sorority and fraternity does “good deeds” tied to specific sponsored projects a few times each year (Sacks and Debard, 2012). Thus making Greek life a great starting point for first year students wanting to be involved all throughout their college career, but is not limited to just first year students and can be for any college or graduate student wanting to become a member. Not only is campus involvement a huge deal, but campuses around the world also work with both traditional and non-traditional students who work while attending classes.
The number of students who do work and attend classes is not an easy task by any means but yet statistics on these students has steadily risen since the 1960s (Henke, Lyons, and Krachenburg, 1993; Stern and Nakata, 1991). According to Lang (2012), students that have on-campus jobs tend to spend more time engaging in on-campus extra-curricular activities and often have a more positive college experience in comparison to those who leave campus to work. The students who tend to leave campus for work are often more prone to returning home after a long day rather than going back to campus for a club or meeting. Whereas those that work on campus are more prone to knowing what’s going on, on campus being that they can see while working.
In addition, Kim, Lee, and Skellenger (2012) found that those students who do work on-campus jobs are more likely to graduate with a more positive experience as well. Living on campus plays a major role in forming an environment where student can actively and easily get involved in campus-related and off-campus activities during their undergraduate years (Arboleda, Wang, Shelley, and Whalen, 2003). Compared to commuters, those that live on campus or more likely to go and get involved in the extra-curricular activities promoted throughout their living spaces, in which these activities often promote leadership and athleticism (Astin, 1999). Astin (1999) also goes on to strongly relating athleticism with satisfaction in areas such as newly formed friendships.
When living on campus your not only being exposed to a totally new environment that you are not accustomed to, but your also being subject to establishing new relationships. Those relationships then tend to turn into life long friendships and carry on throughout your adult days. Not only does on-campus living allow for newly friendships to surface but it also allows for the likelihood of students to be more prone to interacting with faculty members and professors (Astin, 1999). Moreover, not only is on-campus living a sense of belonging for these students but it also allows for environmental influences such as friendships and a sense of community, which in fact has a powerful impact over students development and their level of satisfaction (Arboleda, Wang, Shelley, and Whalen, 2003).
Another major aspect that plays a huge role in the students satisfaction level is being involved academically. Students who are involved academically get just as much support from universities, support such as grants, scholarships, academic recognition, and more. Not only does it stop at just an academic stand point, with this comes with the interactions with professors and other campus faculty members. According to Astin (1999), interactions tend to open doors for more newly friendships to be able to be formed and a much higher understanding of knowledge based concepts can be gained from the one-on-one time with professors. Not only will this one-on-one time help you while being in college but can also be a huge help factor when applying to graduate school or even getting a job post undergraduate and graduate school. Having those professors and highly motivated faculty members there to help you find your way, write recommendation letters, tutor, and much more can go a long way in the end.
Past literature done by Martin (2012), states that students that come from a more wealthier or highly educated family tend to transition into the college lifestyle more easily compared to those who do not come from a wealthy or highly educated family. Those that do have that luxury tend to also report a more higher satisfaction level as well. Within this study, Martin (2012) was interested in finding out how the socioeconomic class that students would come from and how it is associated with the friendships they form on campus. To measure the different aspect of the socioeconomic class Martin (2012) split the samples into three groups: the dominant class, middle class, and subordinate class. These classes were separated based upon the latent clustering analysis, which takes a more detailed in-depth look into family background characteristics.
To conduct this study, he used 1,181 college students from Duke University in 4 different semesters: summer and the spring of the first, second, and forth years. From these students he collected information surveys for his data. He also collected data from a national sample of 3,174 students at various private universities. Results from this study indicated that students are more likely to participate in extra-curricular activities such as students clubs and meeting with professors or faculty members in their fourth years. Greek life, service, clubs, intramural sports, and exercising are likely to be done within first year students but are not limited too just these few examples. The results also indicated that those that attend more elite universities tend to report a much higher level of satisfaction than those that from low-income families.
The future study will be an examination of the levels of college satisfaction and involvement on campus within students. Based on the obtained results from Martin (2012), it is hypothesized that students who are more involved with on-campus extra-curricular activities tend to have a much higher level of college satisfaction. Based on the results obtained from Lang (2012), it is also hypothesized that students who work off-campus will have a much lower level of college satisfaction. MethodParticipants In the future study, approximately 100 students from Universities in the local area will be used on a voluntary basis. These students will be recruited via social media and will be concluded once the threshold of 100 participants is met. There will be no limiting factors that will hinder any currently enrolled or previously enrolled student from participating in this research opportunity including age, gender, or race.
Materials
The materials used in this future study will include a questionnaire, provided to the students who choose to participate, and will be produced to finding out what the variant views are of the participants and what specifically effects those views. In 2012, Kim and colleagues used a questionnaire within their study in which this future study will use a revised version of. This will be consisted of a various number of questions ranging from where they attend school at, their academic standing, their college experience and level of satisfaction, their level of involvement on-campus, and their current job status. The questionnaire will be split into sections. The first section will consist of the basic demographic information; age, school currently or previously attend, and academic standing.
The last few questions being there so that the future researchers ultimately will know how and where to group the results. The second section will consist of the participants college experience and level of satisfaction. Within this section the participants will be asked to rate various aspects that would affect college experience on a 1-5 Likert scale, with five being strongly agree and one being strongly disagreeing with the statement provided. The third section will have questions pertaining to their level of involvement on campus or more specifically are they involved in anything on campus?
If so, what exactly is it that they are involved in, etc. Lastly, the third section will consist of the participants current job status. These questions will be steered more specifically to be asking if they have had a job while attending college classes, or have a job, and if this job is an on-campus job or an off-campus job. This section being used so that we can correctly correlate whether having a job has a positive or negative effect on college satisfaction. Procedure To administer these questionnaire researchers will recruit their participants via social media. Posting links to their survey own various social media sites so that they are able to get a very diverse population within the local area.
Once the participant clicks on the link provided a brief explanation of the study is provided. The explanation will also go on to allow the participants to know that the questionnaire is provided on a volunteer basis and is strictly anonymous. After this screen the questionnaire will then be administered with instruction on top of every section, this questionnaire will not be time allotted and will give each participant as much time needed to complete. Once the participants is finished with the questionnaire they will submit their results and a thank you message will immediately be prompted. After all 100 participants data have been submitted, the results will then be entered into SPSS for further analysis.
Results
To show the mean and standard deviation of the levels of college satisfaction of college students, a strategic table will be used to illustrate these findings. To illustrate the correlation between campus involvement and the level of college satisfaction will also be provided with a Pearson correlation model. Within this future study, it is with hope that the correlation is expected to show a positive, and at least a moderate, correlation with the involvement and level of college satisfaction.
Within the results from working on-campus or working off-campus an independent t-test will be used. These results will be split into two sections of working students versus not working student, and then the working students will have a subsection reading where the student either works an on-campus job or an off-campus job. It is to be expected that a student who works an off-campus job will have a much lower level of overall college satisfaction and a much less satisfying college experience. It is also to be expected that those who do work an on-campus job will have a much higher level of overall college satisfaction and a much more satisfying college experience.
Discussion
The future study will be an examination of the levels of college satisfaction while being involved in on-campus activities and the negative or positive effects of having a job. As previous evidence has been found, the level of college satisfaction among students was reported to be significantly higher in all areas. The future study is intended to show supportive evidence that there will be positive and moderate correlations between the level of college satisfaction among students and student involvement in on-campus extra-curricular activities. Within the study of Martin (2012), it was found that on-campus extra-curricular involvement in elite universities was shown to have a much higher reported significant impact of the level of college satisfaction. Like the evidence found from the first hypothesis, the second hypotheses will also be greatly supported. The students who work an on-campus job will have a much higher level of college satisfaction compared to the students who work off campus.
Within the study of Lang (2012), it was found that students who have jobs on-campus have a much higher overall college experience and tend to spend much more time in on-campus activities. In addition, Kim, Lee, and Skellenger (2012) found that those students who do work on-campus jobs are more likely to graduate with a more positive experience as well. The futures study will not only provide the supporting evidence for the predicted hypothesis but will also contribute the additional evidence showing where the amount of student involvement will also play a major role in the levels of college satisfaction.
Though both of the intended predictions will hopefully be greatly supported there will be a few limitations to this future study. Firstly, a limitation to this study would be that some parents would rather their child focus solely on academics and not with the extra-curricular activities that will not contribute to their degree. Having this pressure from their parents could make it nearly impossible to partake in anything other than studying. Going to campus parties or the big basketball game would be nowhere on their priority lists but would be study tables, SI sessions, or tutoring in its place. A second limitation to this study would be that with college comes a very diverse population of students. Being that universities have this diverse population will come with some students not being comfortable with stepping out of their comfort zone and participating in the various on-campus activities. These students sometime would rather spend time alone, or even just in their dorm room with their roommates.
A third and final limitation for this future study would be that some students that may come from low-income families cannot afford to participate in on-campus activities. These students sometime cannot afford to be distracted from their studies and would not participate in on-campus activities if not at all, as much as they would like to. They are aware that they do not have as many chances to get it right as wealthy students would. Being that these students cannot afford it does not mean that their level of college satisfaction would be any lower compared to these students it would just mean their satisfaction level came from the sources that works best for them. For future research of this study, researchers should consider the financial situations for all the different types of families within each campus.
Some students cannot afford to participate in extra-curricular activities let alone have means to transportation to attend meetings and club functions. Making the amount of student involvement, a specific aspect of the study will contribute to tend to the different types of families within each campus. Allowing for more aspects for those who do not work and do not participate in on-campus extra-curricular activities and how they obtain their level of college satisfaction, if having any, could also contribute to making this research a little better. Doing so would give the researchers two perimeters to go off of one being the students who work on-campus and are still involved in on-campus activities and then having those who work off campus and do not participate in on-campus activities. Combining both of these research results will allow to see who has the higher level of satisfaction.
