The coding categories used in this study may raise questions about the results in terms of validity and reliability. Thus, future studies should test the same categories that this study used and then develop more correct coding categories. Lastly, the time period for this study was between 1995 and 2014. Although marijuana was initially legalized in 2012, the first recreational sales were in 2014. Thus, news stories during 2014 could be quite different than stories from previous years.Substance use among young adults is a major public health concern and is associated with academic problems. The bulk of research in this area has focused on undergraduate students, as alcohol and marijuana use among this population are fairly common.In addition to academic difficulties, alcohol and marijuana use are associated with other negative consequences during the college years, including risky sexual behaviors, social and interpersonal problems, injury, and impaired driving.Longitudinal research has shown that alcohol and marijuana use during college might have long-term consequences after college graduation. Heavy drinking and marijuana use during college are associated with post-college substance abuse and dependence, unemployment, less prestigious employment, and lower income.Marijuana use during college and the immediate post-college years, particularly heavy use, is associated with several negative health outcomes at ages 24 and 27, including emotional problems, injury, illness, decreased quality of life, and less service utilization for physical and mental health problems.
Degree non-completion as a consequence of substance use has been found in longitudinal studies of high school and college students. Adolescents who use alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis grow tray during ninth grade are less likely to complete high school than nondrug users.One study integrated data from three longitudinal studies and found that daily marijuana use during adolescence was significantly associated with decreased odds of both high school and college completion.In a study of college students, frequent marijuana use during the course of college was associated with increased likelihood of dropping out.Despite evidence of associations between alcohol and marijuana use and high school and undergraduate degree non-completion, the possible impact on graduate degree completion has not been explored. An increasing number of college graduates are enrolling in graduate school, with almost 40% of college graduates pursing a graduate degree within four years of graduation.However, only 50% to about 75% of those who enter graduate school ultimately complete their degree, with differences by degree type and academic discipline.Existing theories of student attrition, centered primarily on the undergraduate student experience, posit that attrition is influenced by individual, institutional, and social factors.Institutional factors include program characteristics, administrative policies, and academic requirements, and social factors include peer culture, faculty/staff interactions, and social integration. Individual pre- and post-matriculation factors include demographic characteristics, skills and abilities, goals and expectations, external commitments, and academic history. Largely missing from theories of student attrition are health status and health behaviors, particularly substance use prior to and after enrollment in an academic degree program. The relationship between alcohol and marijuana use and graduate degree completion is likely influenced by demographic characteristics. Both heavy drinking and marijuana use are more prevalent among college males than females,and substance use disorders are associated with being male, white, and unmarried.Having children is associated with a lower prevalence of substance use among both men and women.
Demographic characteristics are also associated with graduate school completion, with burnout and attrition highest among women.Attrition is also more common among African-American/Black students,domestic students,and students enrolled in master’s degree programs.This study aimed to fill a gap in the literature by assessing the relationships between alcohol and marijuana use before and after graduate school enrollment and graduate degree completion. It is hypothesized that lower levels of alcohol and marijuana use both before and after graduate school enrollment are associated with graduate degree completion after adjustment for potentially confounding variables.Alcohol use was measured annually in Y1-Y12. To assess frequency of alcohol use, participants were asked, “In the past 12 months, on how many days have you drank any drink with alcohol in it?”. To assess quantity of alcohol use, participants were asked the number of drinks they had on a typical drinking day.Data on days used during the past year were used to estimate average alcohol use frequency for descriptive purposes. Marijuana use frequency was assessed annually in Y1-Y12 with the question “In the past 12 months, on how many days have you used any type of marijuana?”.Data on days used during the past year were used to estimate average marijuana use frequency for descriptive purposes. Past-month frequency of both alcohol and marijuana use were also assessed, but because of the high degree of correlation with past-year measures,only past-year variables were used in the analyses. For each participant, alcohol use frequency, alcohol use quantity, and marijuana use frequency were averaged separately for each of two time periods: before and after the first year they indicated enrollment in a graduate degree program. The mean for each of the six separate variables was used to capture variation in substance use during the pre- and post-enrollment periods, particularly because the before enrollment period included the undergraduate college years as well as the interim years after college graduation but before graduate school enrollment.
Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the distributions of all study variables. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to analyze the relationships between all six alcohol and marijuana use predictor variables. A series of logistic regression models were fit to assess the relationships between alcohol and marijuana use and graduate degree completion. First, in Stage 1, separate logistic regression models were fit to analyze the relationships between each alcohol and marijuana use predictor variable and graduate degree completion while controlling for demographic and program characteristics. Second, in Stage 2, a best fitting model was obtained by entering each of the six alcohol and marijuana use predictor variables into the model one at a time, retaining any predictor variable that was statistically significant and dropping those that were not significant. All demographic and program characteristic variables were retained in the final model regardless of significance. The Nagelkerke R2 value was used to examine the variance in graduate degree completion explained by the Stage 2 variables. A similar method has been used in prior work by the research team.SPSS Version 24.0 was used for all analyses, and the alpha level was set at 0.05.The majority of participants drank alcohol during at least one year before graduate school enrollment and after graduate school enrollment.Among drinkers, the average alcohol use frequency was about 75 days during the past year before enrollment in graduate school and 88 days during the past year after enrollment.Among drinkers, mean alcohol use quantity decreased from a mean of 3.9 drinks per drinking day before graduate school enrollment to 2.6 drinks per drinking day after enrollment. The typical quantity consumed for male drinkers was greater than female drinkers both before and after graduate school enrollment.Based on past-year data, it was estimated that about 35% of drinkers drank less than weekly and about 24% drank twice a week or more before graduate school enrollment. After graduate school enrollment, 32% of drinkers drank less than weekly and about 31% drank twice a week or more.The prevalence of marijuana use was 72% prior to graduate school enrollment and 49% after graduate school enrollment. As seen in Table 2, marijuana use frequency among users was about the same prior to and after graduate school enrollment with a mean of about 40 days during the past year.
Among those who used marijuana prior to graduate school enrollment, 56% used once a month or less and about a quarter used at least weekly.Among those who used marijuana after graduate school enrollment, 64% used once a month or less and about 18% used at least weekly.The correlations between the six alcohol and marijuana use predictor variables are presented in Table 3. There were moderate to strong correlations between the before enrollment estimates and the after enrollment estimates. Despite this statistical overlap, both before and after enrollment variables were retained due to their importance to the research question of interest. Alcohol use frequency before graduate school enrollment was strongly correlated with alcohol use quantity before graduate school enrollment and moderately correlated with alcohol use quantity after graduate school enrollment.To avoid the potential for multicollinearity effects on the statistical models, only the alcohol use frequency variables were retained for further analyses. There is prior evidence that frequency of alcohol use increases during the post-college period while quantity of alcohol use decreases,and alcohol use frequency has higher sensitivity and specificity in identifying alcohol-related problems than alcohol use quantity .This study examined whether or not alcohol and marijuana use before and after graduate school enrollment were associated with graduate degree completion. Alcohol and marijuana use were moderate among participants in this sample. Results showed that more frequent marijuana use after graduate school enrollment was associated with decreased odds of graduate degree completion after adjustment for potentially confounding variables. This finding is consistent with prior research that has shown a relationship between frequent marijuana use and degree non-completion among high school and undergraduate college students.Marijuana use was less prevalent after graduate school enrollment as compared with before, vertical grow systems for sale which is consistent with research showing that marijuana use declines as young adults age.However, while past-year marijuana use frequency among marijuana users who completed their graduate degree declined from 40 days before enrollment to 35 days after enrollment, frequency among users who did not complete their graduate degree increased from 45 days before enrollment to 85 days after enrollment.
The first is through decreased academic performance, with underachievement cited as the most well-supported correlate of marijuana use.While little research has been done on the relationship between marijuana use and decreased academic performance among graduate students, existing evidence among high school and college students shows that frequent marijuana use is associated with academic unpreparedness,lower grades,and lower academic achievement.The relationship between marijuana use and degree non-completion might also be explained by the effects of marijuana use on cognition.Verbal learning, memory, executive functioning, IQ, and attention, which are critical for academic success, are impaired by both acute and chronic exposure to marijuana.Arria, Barrall, Allen, Bugbee, and Vincent suggest that the immediate, rewarding effects of substance use might lead to a re-prioritization of academic pursuits that are associated with longer-term rewards. This study also observed a positive relationship between alcohol use frequency prior to graduate school enrollment and graduate degree completion. There is evidence that alcohol use is associated with dropout from both high school and college.However, some research has suggested that students who drink more frequently might be more likely to engage in the academic environment and elicit social support.Molnar, Busseri, Perrier, and Sadava found a prospective relationship between alcohol use and higher levels of subjective well being among college students, and Blank, Connor, Gray, and Tustin found increased self-efficacy among college students who consumed alcohol. Existing longitudinal studies have found paradoxical effects between alcohol use and education,highlighting the complex relationship between alcohol use and academic success and calling for increased research in this area. The present study findings should not be misinterpreted to mean that excessive drinking is associated with graduate degree completion, as the vast majority of the students in this sample were light to moderate drinkers. A strength of this study was the use of longitudinal cohort data spanning twelve years of young adulthood. However, because the sample was originally enrolled in a single, large publicly-funded university, findings might not be generalizable to young adults starting their college career in different types of educational institutions. The present sample was somewhat homogenous with respect to demographic characteristics. Further research with larger, more diverse samples is needed to explore the associations between demographic variables and developmentally-salient variables, such as having children, on graduate degree completion. Additionally, graduate degree completion among this sample was 82%, which is higher than the national average of around 65%.Completion of a graduate degree was only analyzed through Y12, and students might have completed their graduate degree later on in adulthood. This study also did not account for several factors that might have influenced graduate degree completion, including academic ability, mental health, motivational factors, employment opportunities, personality, academic goals, external commitments, institutional factors, and social and professional support.