College Students' Academic Motivation: Differences by Gender, Class, and Source of Payment

The purpose of this paper is to describe college students' (n = 856) gender, year in school and source of tuition funding in relation to their academic motivation. The design was cross-sectional and used cluster sampling. The Academic Motivation Scale was used to measure students' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as amotivation. Three main findings of this study are as follows. First, females reported higher levels of overall motivation as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Second, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation declined with years in college. Third, self-funded students appeared lower in academic motivation in general and in extrinsic motivation in particular. (Contains 2 tables.)