The Impact of a Kalamazoo College Student's Financial Circumstances on Academic Performance

My study looked at the impact of a Kalamazoo College’s financial circumstances on his or her academic performance. I looked at three main factors – employment, parental financial support, and financial aid – and their effects on a Kalamazoo student’s academic performance, measured in terms of the student’s GPA. I sent a link to my online survey to 141 students, of which 40 completed the entire survey.

Of those surveyed:

·         65% were employed

·         73% work on campus

·         50% had a work-study job

·         80% percent were female, 20% were male

·         Employed students work about 10.5 hours per week on average

·         Students spend about 19 hours per week on average studying and/or doing homework

·         On average, students said they could do homework or study at work 23% of the time

·         On average, students said that their job had no effect on their academic performance

·         The average amount that parents pay for tuition is $15,921 per year

·         The average amount that parents pay for tuition is $3,003 per year

·         The average financial aid award was $18,779 per year

·         The average amount of merit-based aid received was $14,655 per year

·         The average amount of need-based aid received was $4,068 per year

After analyzing the data collected in the survey, I found the following evidence to support my three original research questions:

·         Does a student’s employment status affect his or her GPA?

o   Spending more time studying per week increases GPA

o   Spending more time working per week decreases GPA

o   Having a job decreases GPA, compared with a similar unemployed student

o   Working on campus increases GPA

o   Having a more flexible job increases GPA

·         Does the amount a student’s parents contribute toward tuition affect his or her GPA?

o   The higher a student’s family income, the lower his or her GPA tends to be

o   The more a student’s parents contribute toward tuition, the lower his or her GPA tends to be

o   The more a student contributes toward his or her own tuition, the higher his or her GPA tends to be

·         Does the amount of financial aid a student receives affect his or her GPA?

o   The more merit-based aid a student receives, the higher his or her GPA tends to be

o   The more need-based aid a student receives, the higher his or her GPA tends to be

The fact that I found statistically significant relations between these factors led me to conclude that a Kalamazoo College student’s financial circumstances do in fact impact his or her GPA.

Athletes, specifically field athletes find

Students and Textbook Spending

Recently, an interesting study was performed with students Kalamazoo College in regards to textbooks, and textbook spending. The focus points of the study included how much students spent on their textbooks for one quarter, different markets from which students purchased their books, and satisfaction with these markets. The researchers studied a random sample of students from every grade at the school. 

Results of this study were quite interesting: 91.18% of students spent money on books in some way. Of the 91.18% that spent money on books, 83.87% purchased at least one book from the Kalamazoo College Bookstore. Here, students spent an average of $131.37. Also, 70.97% of those who spent money on books also used an online retailer. Students who used the internet to purchase books only spent $98.95 on books. That is an average savings of $32.72. Students were also asked to rank their satisfaction with the markets that they purchased from on a 1-10 scale, 1 being the lowest, and 10 being the highest. For students who used the K College Bookstore, the average satisfaction was a lousy 6.17, whereas the online retailers received a higher score of 7.92. 

Essentially, the simple conclusion that can be drawn from this study is that students, now more than ever, are using the internet to purchase textbooks for school. Using the internet has no doubt saved countless students money, and with the ever-rising tuition costs, students are looking to save every penny that they can. 

Opinions on The Kalamazoo College Fields Project

Have you wondered what Kalamazoo College students think about the new fields used by some of our fall and spring sports teams? A survey conducted by 2 Kalamazoo College students shows how different groups feel about the fields project. The different groups compared included: athletes vs. non-athletes, field sport athletes vs. non-field sport athletes, men vs. women, and underclassmen vs. upperclassmen. There were both expected and unexpected results from this survey.

Firstly, as you might expect, after compiling the results of 62 surveys, it was found that athletes feel more positively about the project than non-athletes. Also, field sport athletes viewed the project much more positively than non-field sport athletes. This particular result is interesting, yet not completely unexpected as these are the athletes who are directly receiving the benefit of the new fields complex.

 It was also found that there was no statistical significance between being a male or female and being in support of the fields project. The same was found for underclassmen and upperclassmen, meaning that these groups viewed the project relatively similarly.

Overall, the results of this survey were fairly expected, as athletes supported the construction of new athletic facilities at a higher rate than non-athletes.

Streaming Video Service Usage by Kalamazoo College Students

A recent study of 100 Kalamazoo College students examined their use of streaming video services.  Many aspects were studied with the survey including which services were used, how much they were used and customer satisfaction with the services.  YouTube was the most widely used services by students, with 91% of respondents reporting having used it within a week of taking the survey.  Following closely was Netflix with 58% of respondents reporting having used it within a week.  Remaining services such as Hulu/HuluPlus, HBO Go and others were reported to be used much less.

One very interesting finding of this study was the amount of people who actually paid to use Netflix.  Netflix is a monthly subscription-based service that requires an account to have access.  Of the 58 respondents that reported having used Netflix only 11 reported that they were paying for the service themselves.  This coincides with findings by a Nielsen survey of Netflix users that reported only 28% of those using Netflix paid themselves.  Perhaps Netflix ought to look into this issue and find ways to increase this lost revenue.

Another major aspect studied through this survey was satisfaction ratings of the streaming services that were used.  The graph below shows the four satisfaction categories that were studied and the results for each of those categories.

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Although Netflix was the most popular paid service, it returned some of the lowest satisfaction ratings of any service.  It ranked in the bottom two of every category except the quality of the video that was streamed.  This was surprising and seems not to backup the usage statistics. This study returned findings similar to other studies of its nature, with some small differences most likely due to the fact that this was a study solely of Kalamazoo College students and not the general population.

Does gender or age affect on college students' spending?

Debt on a National Level

In the survey conducted by Kalamazoo students, it was found that after 60 surveys had been answered some questions about the national debt was clear. According to the study, it can be seen that the average college student does not know the fundamentals about the United States economy and how the debt affects us all.  Most students did not even know that the national debt is 16.7 trillion dollars; the survey had an average national debt of $6.93 trillion. Also it was found that Kalamazoo college students on average only read any type of news 2.54 days out of the entire week. Then it shows that college students at Kalamazoo College are going to be ignorant when making decisions about the United States economy, not only today but for the future as well. Which means the decisions they are making will be poor ones and not be useful or helpful to our economy. Another thing to look at is how many economics courses had students in the survey taken. The average amount of economics classes taken was 0.78. Meaning there is a lack of understanding because a lot of knowledge is not being transferred into the younger generations through news or the class rooms.