The Impact of COVID-19 on Students’ Perceived Justice, University Support, Professor Support, and Intentions to Drop Out

Abstract

Postsecondary education significantly contributes to individuals’ career opportunities, lifetime earnings, and social mobility; therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to student retention in higher education has positive economic and societal implications. In this study, with the purpose of contributing to student retention with actionable findings, we focus on factors over which universities exercise reasonable control. We collected data from 430 students in the college of business of a southwestern public university in the U.S. before and during the remote instruction period of the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit the natural experiment created by COVID-19 to examine group differences in the relationships of perceived organizational support, professor support, fairness of treatment, fairness of outcome, and intentions to drop out. After conducting measurement invariance tests, both samples were fitted to a multi-group structural equation model. Our data revealed that in contrast to the before-COVID sample, during COVID-19, students’ perceptions of professor support uniquely and strongly influenced their intentions of dropping out of their studies. Our findings have important implications for student retention.