Ella Anghel

Many believe that higher education contributes to students’ joint cognitive and non-cognitive development. However, relevant empirical evidence of that is scarce. Employing a sample of 348 college students, the present study explored the relationships among a range of outcomes using both a variable- and a person-centered approach. We found that a sense of purpose, strength of principles, and moral agency were positively associated. However, cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes were only weakly correlated. We also found that most students had either high or low scores in all of the measured outcomes, but some had non-uniform profiles. These results suggest that colleges should not assume that cognitive and non-cognitive developments are strongly related. College students likely need differentiated instruction and support, depending on their individual backgrounds, interests, and levels of the target constructs.