Latino Community College Students: Student Engagement and their Academic Outcomes

Latino students are the fastest growing racial/ethnic in the United States. Additionally, they are the fastest growing demographic enrolling in higher education, but unfortunately, they are still last when it comes to college completion. The theories of engagement and I-E-O are recognized as ways to describe academic performance in addition to persistence and completion. The Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) has been used by community colleges to measure the engagement behaviors of students. The results of the study provide evidence in order to develop policies and procedures to aid in completion and academic success for Latino students. The purpose of this study was to understand the engagement behaviors of Latino community college students to determine what demographic characteristics predict student engagement as measured by the five benchmarks of engagement from the CCSSE: level of academic challenge, active and collaborative learning, student-faculty interaction, student effort, and support for learning. Next, the study looked at how the demographic characteristics and student engagement benchmarks related to the academic outcomes of GPA, solving numerical problems, and academic skills. The benchmarks and demographic characteristics were regressed against the self-reported outcomes of GPA, solving numerical problems, and the composite score of academic skills. Results indicated that student engagement benchmarks instead of student demographic characteristics had a stronger relationship of predicting academic outcomes.