Greatest Obstacle to Reaching Educational Goals
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Students were asked to mark one item from a list of obstacles that might prevent them from reaching their educational goals. Although there are marked differences between lower division, upper division, and post-baccalaureate respondents, the overall results indicate that the greatest obstacles that might prevent these students from reaching their educational goals have more to do with financial and personal factors than campus related or academic factors. Financial factors are cited slightly more by responses from undergraduates (31.8%) than by post-baccalaureates (25.4%), whereas personal factors are cited slightly more by post-baccalaureates (24.3%) than by undergraduates (19.9%). Fortunately, many respondents indicated that they do not see any obstacles to reaching their educational goals (LD, 26.4%; UD, 18.5%; PB 29.5%).
Campus related factors seem to be somewhat more of an obstacle for upper division respondents (22.5%) than lower division respondents (15.2%). For post-baccalaureates, 18.5% indicated that this is their greatest obstacle.
Although a relatively minor concern for most, Academic and Educational Factors is more of an obstacle for lower division respondents (10.7%) than for those in the upper divisions (5.9%). It is not much of an obstacle for post-baccalaureate respondents (2.1%). What is interesting about this is that most lower division respondents do not seem to view Academic and Educational Factors as an obstacle to reaching their educational goals, even though about 80% of incoming freshmen are in need of both English and Math remediation. Perhaps these students are unaware of the degree that this factor can affect their success. For details on remediation, see the Factbook tables at: First-Time Freshmen Remediation
When broken down by ethnicity or sex, most responses are fairly similar, with the largest difference seen in financial factors by ethnicity: African American (31.5%), White (24.8%), Hispanic (34.0%) and Asian (25.6%). Also, many more Asians (12.8%) report academic and educational factors as an obstacle than is reported by the other ethnic groups: African American (5.5%), White (4.7%), and Hispanic (5.4%).