An Application of Tinto's Model at a Commuter Campus

Abstract

Meaningful connections between the disciplines which have been popularized recently, appear in theories of higher education related to student departure. On the one hand, many attempts to explain student departure have relied heavily on psychological models. Models such as those by Rossmann and Kirk (1970), and Waterman and Waterman (1972), emphasize the roles individual personality and disposition play in influencing the student's willingness and ability to meet the academic and social demands of institutions of higher learning. Thus, in this psychological context, student departure becomes a reflection of individual maladjustment. However, a myriad of other models combine sociology with higher education, to present institutions of higher learning as mirocosms of society. Sociological theories account for the influence of an environment on individual behavior that psychological theories fail to examine. Sociological explanations for student departure present student departure not just as the individual student's decision, but as a function of the student body and of the institution of higher learning itself. Thus, student success and failure becomes part of the broader process of social attainment. Pincus (1980) argues that student departure must be understood not as isolated individual events, but as part of the larger process of social stratification, in which race and sex are key players. For theorists, such as Duncan, Featherman (1972), Sewell and Hauser (1975), and Featherman and Hauser (1978), patterns of student departure are further influenced by organizations, such as the institution of higher education, which directly affect the individual student's ability to compete in the academic marketplace. Review of Literature One of the most famous examples of the conflation of sociology and higher education is in Tinto's model of college student attrition, which derives its strength from Durkheim's conception of solidarity. In the context of higher education, social solidarity becomes a state of collective social and intellectual integration. Consequently, Durkheim's conception of anomic suicide is akin to the concept of involuntary student departure. Entrance into institutions of higher education, and therefore entrance into a new society necessitates, to varying degrees, a severance of ties to the individual's past society. This severance of ties catalyzes the creation of anomie, or a state of confusion and insecurity, which can lead to anomic suicide in the form of student departure. The contribution of Durkheim's theories to Tinto's model of college student attrition is twofold. In accordance with the aforementioned sociological models, Tinto adheres to Durkheim's philosophy that solidarity is a collective social, and institutional phenomenon, rather than a psychological phenomenon of the students. In addition, Tinto also adopts Durkheim's conception of solidarity as playing a pivotal role in the academic and social integration that imposes both ideas and values upon individual students. These two aspects of Durkheim's theories do not necessarily indicate that students themselves possess little agency in decisions of departure; rather, these two aspects assist in the systematic examination of the relationship between student departure and institutional ethos. Moreover, approaching student departure from a sociological standpoint allows for examination of certain trends between student departure and subsets of the population. In order to understand student departure in a sociological context, it is necessary to view student departure, not as an individual phenomenon, but as related to the individual's precollege environment, and as the foundation for the individual student's post-college possibilities and opportunities. For this, we turn to Van Gennep and his discussion of the movement of individuals, specifically in rites of passage. Van Gennep (1960) argued that each stage in rites of passage necessitates a change in the patterns of interaction between the individual (in this case, the individual student) and his/her environment. …