Factors affecting student pilot’s persistenceAli Ousmane Mahamane

AVN 3700- Transportation AnalysisFall 2014

ABSTRACT

This research is to study the University of Nebraska at Omaha professional flight

students’ economic, academic and non-academic factors and how they relate to the

students’ persistence level. This research proposal, introduces the theoretical and applied

literature regarding student graduation rate and students’ persistence level. We have

knowledge of the difference in graduation rate among ethnicities, gender and other areas.

How the educational institutions affect their students persistence level is covered as well.

The research will evaluate the flying students’ finances, flying hours, attendance, gender

and race as independent variables. The variation in the previous variables should affect the

dependent variables that are the students’ graduation time and the completion rate of a

pilot certificate. A method will be established that consists of the multiplication of the

different values of each independent variable. This multiplication should provide with the

student’s level of persistence.

INTRODUCTION

Student pilots all over the country have set goals of becoming pilots; it could be a

private pilot, commercial pilot or airline transport pilot. Academic success is to me the

student ability to persist in a course of study until completion of a goal. A successful

student pilot is a student who has faced and overcame the different hardship to earn the

Federal Aviation Administration pilot certificate. The path to success is an adventure to

every student, because to get to this dream, most students have to go through unexpected

change at some point of their studies. Factors leading to such change are related to the

student finance, family life, the student attendance and etc...My interest is regarding those

disturbing factors in flying students’ lives that affects their likelihood to stay in the

program to achieve their goals.

I will define persistence as the degree to which a student can complete the program

in which the said student is enrolled. My research question is what variables affect flying

students’ persistence? This question matters to me as I did not persist in the flight

program. I have had two events that have changed my undergraduate goals.

First, my intentions of becoming a professional pilot had led to my relocation from the

University of Central Oklahoma where I was enrolled in the Engineering Physics program,

to the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) as an Aviation major.

Second, as a UNO student I have started as a Professional Flight major at the university in

the Fall of 2011. But, I have soon changed my major the following semester to the Air

Transport Administration concentration. The lack of knowledge prior to my admission

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about the attendance of a flight school contributed to my attrition from the Professional

Flight program.

I do relate to this research topic as I did not persist in two undergraduate programs

because of two events happening in my student life, for those reasons this research topic is

of particular interest to me. Also, I believe that this research can be helpful to other

upcoming flying students to assess their chances of persisting in a given program.

The research can also help institutions providing flying education such as non-

collegiate flight instructors-based schools, non-collegiate vocational pilot schools and

collegiate aviation school tailor their curriculum to lower the attrition rates. If institutions

have knowledge of the variable affecting flying students’ attrition, they can establish

academic policies to better accommodate and maintain students in the program. It will

subsequently contribute to the institution’s growth and on the other hand, the flight

students will be less likely to leave the program. Institutions will take adequate measure to

mitigate the factors leading to student attrition from the program. It will eventually result

in a gain in the revenue for the organization. Also a possible repercussion will be an

increase in the students’ grades. Institutions could implement policies that would help

minorities and immigrants be comfortable and have the same chances as the other

ethnicities or groups. Minority in aviation refers to woman, Hispanic and African-American.

At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, we can see the ethnical disproportion among the

student.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) aims to bring the opportunity to

students coming from low-income families, adults, minorities and immigrants to attend

college. The organization is composed of over 125,000 college and university professionals.

In their report, Students Persistence in College: More than counting cap and gowns, a

connection was made with the students likelihood to persist in college and the application

of national policies regarding the education system. We have knowledge that financial aid

for students increases the chance of a student to suffer from financial difficulty. This

national policy, established by the Congress in 1965, ensures no student will be denied the

opportunity to attend college because of funding issue was.

Also, the access to educational assistance matter as financial funding is far from

being sufficient for students to succeed (American Federation of Teachers, 2003). The lack

of educational preparation at home or at school will make the studies more difficult for the

students. Educational assistance on the campus are programs within a particular

department such as the Mathematic Laboratory known as the Math Lab, the Speech and

Writing Center to help student in difficulties or the Aviation Resource Center at the

University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO). I personally agree that educational supports are

helpful in persisting because I also take advantage of the university Writing Center for my

assignments.

The manner an institution manages the federal funds can have a repercussion on its

students persistence to remain enrolled. When the federal money is being misspent, the

programs that were supposed to be financed will not run as planned because of the lack of

money from the poor management. As programs do not run properly student will not

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benefits completely from them. To mitigate this issue the government periodically reviews

institutions to ensure about their reliability.

Economic incentives play a role in pursuing higher education. The more educated

individual are, the more income this individual will make. 15 million students were

enrolled in four years institutions in 1998, which is 2.5 times more than the number of

enrollment in 1965. Twenty five percent of the population nowadays over the age of 25 has

completed a Bachelor’s degree or higher compared to five percent in 1940. Besides

economy, rigorous pre-secondary education curriculum for example high schools affects

the student success. The more knowledgeable the student is after graduating from high

school, the less difficulty the student will have in post-secondary education because the

student will have a solid background on the different subject like science, literature, art and

others(American Federation of Teachers, 2003).

Also, a graph from the U.S. Department of Education, present the students’

graduation rates by family income, and on the table we can see that the wealthier the

family, the higher the student’s chances of graduating. Families earning less than $25,000

have 53.7 percent of their family member who persisted in the program. Families earning

between $25,000 and $44,999 have 59.1 percent of their member who persisted in the

program. Families earning between $45,000 and $69,999 and families making more than

$70,000 have a graduation rate of 76.6 percent. For low income families with unmet

financial need, the students have to make more effort to earn more money to stay in the

program. Those efforts are switching to part time attendance at school to have enough time

to work long hours, or living off the campus etc…And their probability of completing the

degree declines as more and more effort of being taken away from school to compensate

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for the financial gap. Even with financial aid, students have to work hard to pay off the debt

and this might not be academically in their favor as working long hours lengthens the

graduation time.

Another graph by the Department of Education presents the graduation rate by ethnicity.

Asians have the highest graduation rates with 70.5 percent, followed by Whites with a 66.8

percentage of student who persisted and Hispanic are third with a percentage of 47.3 and

finally African-American are last with a graduation rates of 45.7. We can conclude that

minorities that are Hispanic and African-American are below the threshold of the 50

percent graduation rates (American Federation of Teachers, 2003).

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is federal entity for collecting

and analyzing data related to education. The NCES ranks the United States education

system behind other nations in mathematics and science. Hence, the introduction of the

science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields in the education system.

Because of lack of STEM graduates, the Obama Administration is working on policies to

retain those graduates. This initiative lowers the attrition rates the STEM fields and

subsequently increases student persistence to remain in the program especially for

international students and minorities. The article STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths

Into and Out of STEM Fields, provide with information on students attrition is caused the

lack of motivation, confidence, and beliefs about one’s capacity to learn STEM subjects

(“STEM Attrition”, 2014).

The NCES also published an article Higher Education: Gaps in Access and Persistence

Study which introduces parental education as a factor related to the child’s achievement. In

fact, first generation students, students whom neither parent did not attend a post-

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secondary institution, achieve their goals at lower rates than non-first generation students.

Also, a study shows student whose parent where involved by attending school events or

volunteering, presented fewer problem and likely to stay in the program.(“Higher

Education”, 2012).

The article How Colleges Organize Themselves to Increase Student Persistence: Four-

Year Institutions introduces empirical data to measure student persistence as well as how

to increase students’ persistence; the graduation rate is a way to measure students’ success

and the retention rate is measure of the institution’s success. Also, faculty-student

interaction affects student chances of succeeding. Institution that implements a program

where the student and the faculty interact on a regular basis during the student’s first year

in college will have a positive repercussion on the student persistence. Programs that could

be implemented are such: smaller class size for first year students and for faculty teaching

introductory courses, because most students enrolled in introductory courses are

freshmen. An average class size should take 30 first year students and this indicates that

more interaction will take place between faculty and students. This is mainly because it

allows the student to share more information with the teacher and be familiar with each

other. This familiarity becomes useful when the student will need a special treatment, the

teacher can better accommodate the student. Technically, the way institutions implement

their programs can have a positive or negative impact on students’ persistence.

Incorporating academic advising into first year experience can be a source of student

success (College Board Advocacy, 2009).

The publication An integrated model of graduate studies student persistence presents

the graduate student’s previous academic performance, college grade point average and

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college major as important indicators of student persistence. Undergraduate student

persistence is a function of academic and social integration (Olsen, 2005).

To complete the flight training most students have the choice between three

institutions. According to GAO Initial Pilot Training, there are: non-collegiate flight

instructor based school, non-collegiate vocational flights school and collegiate aviation

school. The minimum requirement to complete a pilot certificate depends on the

regulations the institution under. There are two regulations Part 61 and Part 141. Under

Part 61 a student is required to log a minimum of 40 flights hours for the private pilot

certificate and log 250 flights hours for the commercial pilot certificate. While, under Part

141 a student is required to log a minimum of 35 flights hours and for the commercial pilot

certificate the student is requirement to log a minimum of 190 flight hours. (U.S. GAO,

2011)

LOGIC MODEL

The model for analyzing the impact of the economic, academic and non-academic

factors on flying students’ persistence in the professional flight program consists of the

following dependent variables: student’s time to graduation, student’s completion rate of a

pilot’s certificate. The independent variables are: student’s finance, the available

educational assistance, the student’s grades, the student’s experience in the field, gender,

and ethnicity.

Sample

The research sample is the students enrolled in the professional flight program at

the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The sample is mostly composed of White males, few

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White females and very few African-American and Hispanic male and female. The sample

presents a bias as there are more male than female, and more Whites than other ethnicity.

Timeframe

The research analysis timeframe is relative to the type of pilot certificate the student

is pursuing. The logic is the fact that pilot certificates do not require the same time to be

completed depending if the student is attending a Part 141 or Part 61 flight school.

If a research is conducted on flying students’ persistence pursing a private pilot certificate,

the study timeframe will be roughly 90 days or 12 weeks it is the average time to complete

a private pilot certificate. We need to conduct the research for the 12 weeks because we

need data on the students’ attendance, which will be the most accurate at the end of the

training. If we can conduct longitudinal study that provides data at different point in time it

can be misleading as a student can have a perfect attendant for the first 60 days and then

stop showing to the instructor ground class. With this scenario if the data is taken at the

60th day, the student will be given 100 percent for the attendance while if the data was

retrieve at the 90th day the student has attended only two-third of his training which is

66.66 percent. A research conducted on commercial pilot students will take about 200

days, 29 weeks because it requires that much time for an average student to fly the 200

hours required by a Part 141 flight school.

Dependent variables

There are two dependent variables: the student time to graduate and the certificate

completion rate. The unit to measure flying student’s time to graduate from the university

in professional flight concentration is the semester. Student will be classified based on how

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many semester do they have left. To collect this date we need to look at the number of

college courses already taken and the courses that are remaining. We will need the

students’ authorization to access the credentials as well as the academic advisor

involvement. Having knowledge of the student time to graduate I will incorporate the

remaining data to establish how this variable affect the persistence in college. The other

variable is the certificate completion rate, which is measured in percentage. The process of

obtaining the certificate consists of several steps: attending ground class and flight class,

completion of the assessments, medical currency and others. The more steps the flying

student has passed the higher completion rate. The measured percentage will be the ratio

of the accomplished steps to the total steps in the process. To collect the data on the

completion of the pilot certificate I will conduct interview with the students to have the

information on where they are in the path.

Independent variables

The independent variables in my logic model are the following: the student’s funds within

the research timeframe, the student’s average weekly flying hours, the student’s

attendance, gender and race.

The collection of data for the gender and race variable is based on observation. By

analyzing the student’s physiology we should be able to classify the student’s gender and

race.

The financial variable, regarding the student’s funds to be injected during the training can

include funds can be personal, family or financial aid. The most important is to have data of

how much money the student is capable injecting in the training. Because this is more a

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personal topic, collecting the data will require having a meeting with the student. For this

variable we will conduct a cross-sectional study, to gather data at single point in time.

The weekly flying hours variable will consist of having the average number of hours flown

in a week. The unit for this data is hours and the collection will require a longitudinal study

to collect to number of hours flown every week during the research timeframe and

compute the average.

The attendance variable will consist of collecting data on the number of time the student is

going to class. This will require a longitudinal study to have data at different time

throughout the training timeframe. But the most important data will be the collected data

on the student’s attendance when the training is completed. The unit will be in percentage

as it will be the ratio of the number of class attended to the total number of class for the

training period. For the student hours flown per week and the attendance we will refer to

the flight provider to work with the personnel and the student written authorization to

access the credentials.

METHODOLOGY

This research is to establish a model to define a student’s persistence level which

can be measured by the time the student is taking to graduate and by the rate of

completion of the pilot certificate, using the student’s economic, academic and non-

academic variables.

The null hypothesis is that a student is persistent, but since in the real world students drop

out of school and others stay, the null hypothesis must be not be valid. This methodology

will provide tools to determine whether or not we can reject the null hypothesis. For the

sake of simplicity to present my methodology I will focus on flying student persistence to

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obtain the private pilot license and all the values involved are with regards to the private

pilot certificate only. The methodology can be applicable to other types of certificates with

their corresponding values.

I will create variable and assign permanent values to the independent variables based on

the information I have from the literature review. The purpose of assigning those

permanent values is to have a scale that can be utilized to determine a student chance of

completing his flight training in a given time.

The independent variables are: the student’s available funds in a given time, the average

students weekly flying hours, the student’s attendance, gender and race. The variable for

the student’s available fund will be called FND. The variable for the average weekly flying

hours will be called HRS. The variable for the student attendance will be called ATD. The

variable for the gender will be called GDR and the variable for the race will be called RCE.

For the sake of simplicity will not consider other variables and consider that all else are

equal, including the weather. We will take for granted that the weather is perfect

throughout the analysis timeframe. The analysis timeframe will be relative to the average

time to complete a particular pilot certificate.

According to the Students Persistence in College: More than counting cap and gowns, Asians

have the highest chance of succeeding in college followed by Whites, Hispanic and African-

American ethnicity. Hispanic and African-American both ethnicity have graduation rates

below 50 percent (Wrong Turn, 2003). For the racial variable RCE I will use the following

scale.

Race RCE ScaleAsians 2Whites 1

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Hispanics .7African-Americans .5

In the same article male are presented with higher graduation rate than female. The gender

variable GDR will be the following:

Gender GDR ScaleMale 1Female .5 The weekly flying hours variable will be set a follows, student must attend two sessions a

week:

Number of hours per session HRS Scale4 33 22 11 .10 .01

The attendance scale is the following:

For the private pilot certificate the student financial scale will be established based on the

expected expenses related to the related to the private pilot license training. At the

different flight providers the average cost of a student training for a private pilot license is

about $7,500. The financial variable scale is as follows:

Students funds FND Scale$10,000 to $9,000 4$9,000 to $8,000 3$8,000 to $7,000 2$7,000 to $6,000 1

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Attendance in percentage ATD Scale100 175 .7550 .525 .250 0

$6,000 to $5,000 .5$5,000 to $4,000 .25$4,000 to $3,000 .1$3,000 to $0 .01

The coefficients associated with the variables scales are based on my own analysis, a well

conducted research will determine more accurate coefficients for this sample. The

variables FND, ATD, GDR, RCE, HRS scales were extrapolated based on the known

correlation between the graduation rates and the independent variables. The higher, the

graduation rates the independent variable has, the more will be its value on the variable

scale.

The algorithm to determine flying student likelihood to complete the flight training is such:

Persistence: FND*ATD*GDR*RCE*HRS, in fact the logic is such that Scott, a White male

student who has about $7,500 available funds to finance his training who attended all his

lessons and who flies two hours an average per session will have the following profile:

Scott’s persistence: 1*1*1*1*1=100% because Scott’s persistence level is at 100 percent he

is likely to complete his training.

For this model we need to collect data on the student’s race, gender, finance, attendance

and training hours. A student is considered to have high degree of persistence if the

student’s information led to a persistence level of 90 percent and above.

OBSTACLES AND LIMITATIONS

This research proposal presents few obstacles. The research sample is bias and a

good sample should be unbiased.

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Another obstacle is regarding student’s available funds variable. I believe that most

students might be uncomfortable sharing such financial information. This variable is very

important for the research. My strategy for overcoming this obstacle is to have a meeting

with the student and explaining to the student the research project and the variables

involved in the research model. Convince the student that sharing this information will

benefit the educational institution by building a better curriculum and a possible mitigation

plan for situation that could decrease student’s likelihood to complete their program. This

analysis for the student finance is not meant to judge such individual but will be used for

the sake of the research.

Also, for the measurement of the students’ progression in the university curriculum, I will

have to have permission from the student to access his university credential along with the

academic advisor, in accordance with the federal regulation Part 99 family educational

right and privacy act. In its subpart B, the regulation defines the limitations on the right to

inspect and review student’s records. To determine the number of college courses left we

need to look at the student academic. A way to overcome this obstacle is to have a meeting

with the student and ask for the permission with a written authorization to access the

student records.

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RERERENCE

-Wrong Turn: Accountability, Persistence and Graduation Rates (2003, August). In Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. Retrieved December 2, 2014, from http://cpe.ky.gov/NR/rdonlyres/BD71ECAC-7195-4EDA-A994-CB977C94C84C/0/StudentPersistenceinCollegeMoreThanCountingCapsandGowns.pdf- U. S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. (n.d.). STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields. In The National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved December 3, 2014, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014001rev.pdf- U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. (2012, August). Higher Education: Gaps in Access and Persistence Study. In The National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved December 3, 2014, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012046.pdf- College Board Advocacy. (2009, April). How Colleges Organize Themselves to Increase Student Persistence: Four-Year Institutions. In Education Profesionals. Retrieved December 3, 2014, from https://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/college-retention.pdf- Olsen, D. (2005, April 21). More than money matters: An integrated model of graduate studies student persistence. In Digital Library and Archives. Retrieved December 3, 2014, from http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05032005-063502/unrestricted/StrayhornTL2005v4.pdf- United States Government Accountability Office. (2011). Initial Pilot Training: Better Management Controls Are Needed to Improve FAA Oversight (GAO-12-117 ed.).-American Federation of Teachers. (2003). Student Persistence in College (36-0702th ed.).

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