Designing a model to improve first year student adjustment to university

The increase in the number of universities for the last decade in Iran increases the need for higher education institutions to manage their enrollment, more effectively. The purpose of this study is to design a model to improve the first year university student adjustment by examining the effects of academic self-efficacy, academic motivation, satisfaction, high school GPA and demographic variables on student’s adjustment to university. The study selects a sample of 357 students out of 4585 bachelor first year student who were enrolled in different programs. Three questionnaires were used for collection of data for this study, namely academic self-efficacy, academic motivation and student satisfaction with university. Structural equation modeling was employed using AMOS version7.16 to test the adequacy of the hypothesized model. Inclusion of additional relationship in the initial model improved the goodness indices considerably. The results suggest that academic self-efficacy were related positively to adjustment, both directly (B=0.35) and indirectly through student satisfaction (B=0.14) and academic motivation (B=0.9). The results indicate a need to develop programs that effectively promote the self-efficacy of first year student of student to increase college adjustment and consequently retention rate.