Measuring self-differentiation and academic commitment in University students : a case study of education and engineering students

摘要

More than half of university students in South Africa leave university before they complete theirstudies. Factors associated with student drop out include poor schooling, lack of fluency in thelanguage of instruction, poor financial support, and inadequate student support services. In thepresent study, we focus on the way meaningful commitment influences self-regulation, and wedraw on the investment model of commitment to examine the hypothesis that commitment willbe related to satisfaction, quality of alternatives, and investment size, and that self-differentiationwill provide additional predictive power to commitment. Results indicate that satisfaction andself-differentiation only are significant predictors of level of academic commitment. Meaningfulcommitment is predicted by satisfaction, quality of alternatives, investment, and self-differentiationto a lesser extent. Investment size was associated significantly with self-regulatory behaviourssuch as setting learning goals, managing studies effectively, and spending more time on studies.The results are discussed in terms of the literature on commitment, self-differentiation, andacademic achievement in higher education.