Parental Divorce and First-Year College Students' Persistence and Academic Achievement

The purpose of this article was to examine the relationships between parental divorce and first-year college students' persistence and academic achievement at a large public university. Using data from the 2007-2008 Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey of first-year students, the results of a logistic regression analysis suggest that students whose parents were divorced were significantly less likely to persist into their second year of study than their peers. Students whose parents were divorced also had significantly lower cumulative grade point averages. These findings held when controlling for demographic variables, precollege academic indicators, college experiences, and academic motivation.