Leadership Education and First-Generation Students’ Social Capital Development

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to discover if leadership education has an effect on first-generation students’ social capital development. We used a propensity score analysis on a multi-institutional sample of students enrolled at 69 colleges and universities in spring 2021 to construct matched pairs of students who did and did not participate in leadership education (n = 2,560). The results of ordinary least squares regression suggest that leadership education has a significant and positive effect on first-generation students’ social capital development controlling for pre-college, demographic, collegiate, and institutional variables.