Forecasting the Academic Performance of Freshmen College of Agriculture Students: Using Goal Orientations and Academic Efficacy as Predictors

In 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that agriculture baccalaureate graduates were only expected to fill two-thirds of the available job openings. To address this need, it has become critical for colleges of agriculture to retain high-quality students. In response, universities have attempted to determine the practices to foster student success. Therefore, in this study we aimed to investigate how goal orientation factors (i.e., mastery goal orientation and academic efficacy) may influence the academic success (i.e., first semester GPA, second semester GPA) of College of Agriculture (COA) freshmen. The current investigation was grounded in goal orientation and social self-efficacy theory, which allowed us to understand self-efficacy’s influence on students’ academic performance. The findings from this study suggested that social and academic efficacy influenced the student academic achievement of COA freshmen. Therefore, it is recommended that university leaders foster self-efficacy for university agricultural students and that future research be conducted to determine the variables that describe the variance in first semester GPA and retention best.