The effect of volunteering and voluntary group membership on student's persistence

In the literature on higher education, civic involvement is discussed in connection with civic education or as a protective factor against attrition. In a series of surveys, we have followed higher education students' volunteering at several higher education institutions of Central and Eastern Europe since 2005. Based on Wilson (2000), we distinguish between formal volunteering and volunteer work which does not require organizational membership. Among young people, volunteer work is rather a program-centered, personally motivated, and individual activity (Inglehart 2003). In this study, however, we also examine students' voluntary group membership, which could provide a potential framework for volunteer work. Through a stepwise linear regression model, we analyze the effect of volunteering and voluntary group membership on students' higher education persistence. The analysis is carried out on data from the PERSIST 2019 survey (N = 2199). We find that persistent academic progress is more common among women, individually well-off students from objectively less affluent families, those who pray regularly, those who have a close relationship with their parents, professors, and peers, and those have done volunteer work during their higher education studies.