Black Male Baccalaureate Degree Attainment: The relationship between Single- Mother status, family background factors, high school GPA and college engagement

Abstract

**Please note that the full text is embargoed until 5/17/2024** ABSTRACT: Low bachelor’s degree attainment rates for Black males is a multiplex problem due to the array of academic and non-academic factors affecting student experiences. Among these factors, family factors play an important role in students’ development and educational success, particularly for Black students. While previous research has explored some contributing factors to the low degree completion rate of Black males, there is a paucity of research specific to how the status of the single-mother household impacts Black males’ degree completion. Therefore, this study sought to examine the relationship between household status and Black male college engagement and degree attainment. Furthermore, the study included other family background factors (i.e., family income, mother’s highest degree), students’ college preparation (i.e., high school GPA), and college engagement (i.e., research with faculty members beyond curriculum requirements, mentoring, study abroad, internship or related experience, community-based project as part of a class, and culminating senior project) to investigate the extent to which they impact Black male’s degree attainment. This dissertation used the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 dataset, a nationally-representative, longitudinal study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The theoretical framework that was used to guide this study is Alexander Astin’s Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) model. The results of the study reveal that there is a direct relationship between family structure and bachelor’s degree attainment and specifically that Black males from single-mother households are less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree in comparison to Black males from two-parent households.