ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
This article is part of the Research TopicPredicting Student Retention and Success in Higher EducationView all articles
College Degree Completion for GEAR UP Students Placed at Risk
Provisionally accepted
- University of Nevada Reno College of Education & Human Development, Reno, United States
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The purpose of this study was to examine academic and personal variables as predictors of 150% of the normal time to degree completion for eligible students within the federally-funded Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) grant. The academic and personal variables included in the study were 12th-grade GPA, 7th-grade college aspirations, cumulative GEAR UP program service hours, gender, middle school setting, and race/ethnicity. A binary logistic regression was conducted, resulting in a model that included 12th-grade GPA and cumulative GEAR UP program service hours served as predictors of college completion. GEAR UP programming that has traditionally supported students who have historically been placed at risk were found to be more likely to have graduated in 150% of normal time when they had higher GPA and higher levels of program participation. A discussion of these findings, their implications, and recommendations for future research are noted.
Keywords: GEAR UP1, quantitative2, college completion3, at risk4, postsecondary5
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sanchez, Hopkinson and Usinger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jafeth E. Sanchez, jesanchez@unr.edu
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