'I'm Stressed--You Have to Do Something to Help Me': The Relationship between Student Academic Entitlement, Academic Stress, and Satisfaction

Concern over academic entitlement has grown in higher education in the last two decades. Academic entitlement, defined as unfounded expectations of academic success, undeserved services and unrealistic accommodations (McLellan & Jackson, 2017), in nursing students is an under investigated phenomena. In this correlational, cross-sectional study, the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, 1987), and Jeffreys' nursing universal retention and success model (2022) were used to understand how academic stress, student general satisfaction might affect academic entitlement, and impact student success. A stratified random sample of 100 prelicensure, junior and senior nursing students representing all regions of the U.S. participated in this study. Instruments used to measure the study variables included the Academic Entitlement Scale (Chowning & Campbell, 2009), the Undergraduate Nursing Student Academic Satisfaction Scale (Dennison & El-Masri, 2012), and the Perceptions of Academic Stress Scale (Bedewy & Gabriel, 2015). Descriptive statistics, correlation testing, simple linear regression analyses, and hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses determined that lower levels of academic stress and higher levels of general student satisfaction were associated with lower levels of academic entitlement. Additionally, changes in the levels of academic stress and general student satisfaction significantly predicted changes in academic entitlement. The findings of the study can be used in nursing academia to mitigate academic entitlement and may improve student success. There remains a need for future research on academic entitlement in nursing academia, including studies to investigate the effectiveness of interventions to reduce academic entitlement, how faculty perceive the problem of academic entitlement, and the impact academic entitlement has on student success. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]