Graduation Term

Spring 2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Educational Administration and Foundations: Educational Administration

Committee Chair

Lydia Kyei-Blankson

Committee Member

Mohamed Nur-Awaleh

Committee Member

John Rugutt

Abstract

This study examined whether student success outcomes and their trajectories over time differed across higher education institutions before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic based on prior experience with online education. Guided by Astin’s (1993) Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) framework, pre-pandemic participation in online coursework was conceptualized as an institutional-level environmental condition. A quantitative, causal-comparative research design was employed, using secondary data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), to examine longitudinal differences in institutional retention and graduation rates across institutions classified by their pre-pandemic participation in online education. The sample included 528 Title IV-eligible, degree-granting, four-year institutions observed across five academic years (2018–2022). Institutions were classified as Online Experienced (OE) or Online Inexperienced (OI) based on whether at least 50% of students had enrolled in at least one distance education course prior to the pandemic. Repeated measures analyses of variance were performed to examine longitudinal differences in six-year bachelor’s degree graduation rates and full-time, first-time retention rates. Results indicated statistically significant differences between institutional groups for both outcomes, with OI institutions consistently reporting higher retention and graduation rates across all years examined. Although both outcomes changed significantly over time at the sector level, the interaction between time and institutional classification was not statistically significant, indicating largely parallel trajectories for OE and OI institutions throughout the pandemic period. These findings suggest that long-standing institutional contexts, rather than pandemic-era shifts in instructional modality alone, played a primary role in shaping student success outcomes during the COVID-19 disruption. The study contributes longitudinal, institutional-level evidence demonstrating that structural conditions continued to exert a dominant influence on patterns of persistence and completion during a period of unprecedented change in higher education.

Access Type

Dissertation-Open Access

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