Sociodemographic, Campus Support, and Psychological Factors Predicting Academic Achievement of Community College Athletes

Community college athletes represent an understudied and often marginalized population within higher education. This study investigates the influence of sociodemographic, campus support, and psychological factors on the self-reported grade point average (GPA) of community college athletes. Utilizing the Model for Student Engagement, we categorized items from the 2018 Community College Survey of Student Engagement into three domains: Pre-college, environmental factors, and academic mindset. We performed four hierarchical regressions on a sample of 3,060 athletes across 131 institutions, disaggregated by three racial/ethnic groups: White, Black, and Hispanic college athletes. Our findings indicated self-efficacy and high school GPA positively predicted college GPA across all groups. Although, while not consistently observed, gender, first-generation status, developmental mathematics, developing an academic plan with an advisor, growth mindset, and fixed mindset emerged as significant predictors. We discuss implications for practice and suggestions for future research on community college athletes.