Language Minority Students in Community Colleges: An SEM Model Exploring Socio-Academic Variables Related to Persistence Pertaining to Re-Enrollment

Community colleges are increasingly important places for language minority students to access higher education. Unfortunately, this group of students is the least likely to persist in terms of re-enrollment, degree completion, or transfer to four-year institutions. In this study, we used structured equation modeling with a sample of 10,637 language minority students’ responses from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement to build a persistence model based on theoretical and empirically based variables. We found students’ perceived relationships with others on the community college campus to be critical to their intent to re-enroll in the community college (i.e., persistence pertaining to re-enrollment). Moreover, students’ involvement in learning communities had a direct, significant, and positive effect on language minority students’ persistence as well as on their perceived relationships. ESL and developmental English courses, on the other hand, did not have a significant effect on language minority students’ persistence. We explore our findings with respect to previous research and discuss implications for future research and practice.