How reasons for entering higher education shape academic and extra-curricular engagement: the case of Russian highly selective universities

ABSTRACTStudent engagement is a widely used approach for evaluation of the quality of higher education in many countries, because it is considered as a proxy for student learning and academic outcomes, especially when direct measures are unavailable. Pre-college characteristics can affect student engagement and should be taken into account when this approach is employed. However, little is known about how such pre-college characteristics, like reasons to enter higher education, affect student engagement at university. The article is aimed to explore the links between reasons for university enrolment and two types of academic engagement (class engagement and disengagement), and two types of extra-curricular engagement (organisational work and research engagement). The data of an undergraduate survey conducted at eight highly selective Russian universities (n = 4926) is utilised. Our research found that reasons related to job placement and becoming a professional positively correlate with a student’s commitment to academic work, while extracurricular engagement is associated with intrinsic motives, social reasons, and desire for career promotion. Educational policy for enhancing student engagement should meet the students’ diverse goals at university and provide them with the intrinsic value of extracurricular experience, particularly when curricular activities are limited to preparation for narrow specialisation.KEYWORDS: Student engagementclass engagementdisengagementextra-curricular engagementreasons for entering higher educationintrinsic and extrinsic motives AcknowledgementsThe data were collected in the study ‘Monitoring of Student Experience’ of the Consortium ‘Evidence-based digitalization for student success’ (https://en.edtechdata.ru/conso). We express our special gratitude to the coordinators of the universities participating in this study: Tatyana Apollonova (Yaroslavl State Technical University), Yulia Tsofina (Yaroslavl State University named after P.G.Demidov), Ksenia Lyakh (Novosibirsk State Technical University), Ksenia Mertins (Tomsk Polytechnic University), Olesya Shulezhko (Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov), Kirill Zakharyin (Siberian Federal University), Natalia Zagritsenko (Southern Federal University), Evgeny Ledkov and Nikita Tutykhin (Far Eastern Federal University).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The academic year in Russia starts on the 1st of September and ends at the end of June. In most higher education institutions, it is splitted into two semesters that end with two examination sessions: the first semester ends in January, and the second semester ends in June.2 https://priority2030.ru/en3 https://memo.hse.ru/en/4 https://memo.hse.ru/met5 https://cshe.berkeley.edu/seruAdditional informationFundingSupport from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) is gratefully acknowledged.Notes on contributorsNatalia MaloshonokNatalia Maloshonok is a senior research fellow at the Center for Sociology of Higher Education, HSE University in Moscow. She earned the PhD in Sociology in 2014. Her focus lies on student experience at a university, undergraduate and doctoral studies, gender stereotypes in education and Web survey methodology.