Success in higher education and psychological and behavioural economic factors related to self-regulation

Abstract

The aim of this study is to identify factors related to student self-regulation predicting higher education success. Based on a cross-sectional sample of voluntary surveys at one of Hungary’s leading universities, we compare students’ conscientiousness, time management, procrastination, patience, and present bias with their academic success, as indicated by their GPA, controlling for various demographic and academic variables. According to the results, time management and conscientiousness are robustly and significantly associated with indicators of higher education success. Procrastination was not found to be a decisive factor in higher education success when integrating the effects of other self-regulation factors into the model. Time preference indicators, mainly used by economists, did not show a significant relationship with success in most estimated models. These differences in predictive power are partly explained by the fact that the tests measuring time management and efficiency were designed to directly map characteristics that support learning, while preference measures monitor broader individual characteristics that influence behaviour in general.