Why do students pick various courses? Interdisciplinary research has highlighted the role of structural constraints, normative expectations, and individual motivation as the joint influences of ...agency and structure in the service of life goals. Here, we examined undergraduates’ reasons for course choices for their most difficult and most important courses. We compared the reasons for non-major vs. major courses, for freshman vs. juniors, and across different disciplines. College students selected courses that fulfilled their major or breadth requirements, particularly in their freshman year. STEM courses were taken more for career development reasons than other disciplines, particularly humanities courses; social sciences courses were taken more for interest than STEM courses; and humanities courses were taken more for intellectual broadening than STEM courses.
Using data from the state evaluation of Michigan 21st Century Community Learning Centers, this study employed multilevel modeling to examine racial/ethnic and programmatic factors relevant to two ...aspects of after-school program participation: youths' voluntary participation and parents' reasons for enrollment. The samples consisted of 2,256 fourth- to twelfth-grade youth from 117 programs and 1,849 parents of kindergarten to twelfth-grade participants from 99 programs. Middle Eastern youth reported the lowest voluntary participation rates, while their parents were most likely to enroll them for academics. African- American parents were more concerned about enrolling for academics and childcare than were white parents. After controlling for program quality, the proportion of same-race peers, programs' cultural responsiveness, and attendance policies were also factors in participation.
There has been a substantial rise in the number of students enrolling in part-time taught postgraduate awards. This study investigates the reasons or motivation for students to spend significant ...amounts on tutorial fees and find time alongside work, family and social commitments to take a taught postgraduate award. Data were gathered through interviews with 21 part-time students in taught postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong. Students all held several motives for studying, so the outcome was a framework for explaining multiple interacting motives. Main categories of motivation were related to qualifications, current career, potential future career, interest, perpetual students and professional and social networks. Individual students displayed varying degrees of these motivations and the sub-categories of them. Students were able to specify their needs in terms of advanced specialised study, so enrolment satisfied a need for continuing professional development. The rise in taught postgraduate enrolments, in search of advanced specialised knowledge, seems set to continue as undergraduate degrees become broader and more attribute-oriented and the knowledge explosion makes it harder to reach the frontiers of knowledge.
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