Adjustment to College in an Urban Commuter Setting

Abstract

College student adjustment, success, and retention have been a focus of college administrators and student development professionals for decades. However, national college retention and graduation statistics are typically focused on traditional, residential, full-time, college populations. The purpose of the current study was to examine more closely the impact of race/ethnicity, gender, and athletic participation on the adjustment to college of 162 college freshman attending a diverse urban commuter institution. The Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ) was employed to test the impact of the three independent variables (race/ethnicity, gender, athletic participation) on the four SACQ subscales (dependent variables). Findings revealed significant Pearson correlations and multivariate analysis of variance main effects among the variables of gender and athletic participation on certain SACQ subscales. More specifically, multivariate analysis of variance main effect findings were revealed for the variables of gender on the academic adjustment and institution attachment subscales of the SACQ and for athletic participation on the social adjustment subscale of the SACQ. Implications of these findings for student services and athletics programming are discussed.