| Description |
Amid growing concern over the campus racial climate for historically marginalized populations on historically White college campuses, the current study examined how a student's institutional fit and sense of belonging is affected by stress. Secondary data from a section of the Survey of College Adjustment and Cultural Diversity Issues in Higher Education that focused on issues of satisfaction with the university were obtained from 267 White, 287 African American, 230 Asian American, and 171 Latina/o junior year students. Five components of the university environment and the student's self-reported opinion on issues surrounding their experience â€" academic sense of belonging, social sense of belonging, discrimination, stress, and institutional fit â€" were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings suggest that students from all of racial/ethnic groups sampled demonstrated that stress predicted their fit to the institution. For African American and Asian American students, experiences with discrimination were additional predictors of their institutional fit. Compared to White students, the academic sense of belonging for all groups of students of color more significantly predicted stress than the social sense of belonging. This finding suggests that there is something within the academic setting of universities that explains the stress that students of color experience. In turn, the stressors that students of color experience affect their institutional fit. Therefore, this finding along with others should be a calling to university administrators, faculty, and peer students that the academic setting needs to be a place of focus to increase institutional fit for students of color. A full hearted, concentrated effort on behalf of campus leaders may help reduce the race-related stressors and discrimination that can lead to attrition, or even worse, detrimental health outcomes of historically marginalized groups. |
