UNDERSTANDING COLLEGE DEGREE COMPLETION OF STUDENTS WITH LOW SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS: The Influence of the Institutional Financial Context w Marvin A. Titus* , ** ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ Using national survey data, multilevel modeling techniques, and descriptive statistics, this study makes an effort to understand the influence of the financial context of institutions on the chance of college completion for low socioeconomic status (SES) students at four-year colleges and universities. This research shows that college completion is positively associated with an institution’s tuition revenue as a percent of total revenue and educational and general expenditures per full- time equivalent student. This study also documents that, compared to high SES students, low SES students are disproportionately enrolled in institutions with lower levels of financial resources and higher dependence on tuition as a source of total revenue. The results of this research have implications for policy with regard to addressing the chances of college completion for low SES students. ................................................................................................ ................................................................................................ KEY WORDS: low socioeconomic students; college completion; institutional financial context. According to the report, Swimming Against the Tide: The Poor in American Higher Education (Terenzini, Cabrera, and Bernal, 2001), com- pared to other students, low socioeconomic status (SES) students, are less likely to earn a degree from a four-year institution. Similarly, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that students from families with low-income or with parents who did not have a bach- elor’s degree were more likely to drop out of college compared to students from families with high income or with parents who had a w An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education in Kansas City, Missouri. *North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA. **Address for correspondence to: Marvin A. Titus, North Carolina State University, 300M Poe Hall, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801,USA ; E-mail: marvin_titus@ncsu.edu 371 0361-0365/06/0600-0371/0 Ó 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. Research in Higher Education, Vol. 47, No. 4, June 2006 (Ó 2006) DOI: 10.1007/s11162-005-9000-5