Vancouver, British Columbia Motivation is often thought to be a
fixed, inborn personality trait whose presence or absence helps
explain why some students succeed while others fail to graduate.
Recent research, including papers presented here at the annual
meeting of the American Educational Research Association, a
forthcoming book, and a well-regarded longitudinal survey of
three cohorts of 17,000 students at 49 institutions, have taken
a different view. Motivation, these researchers argue, is far
more malleable, and colleges wield significant power in
instilling—and discouraging—it in their students. "Motivation is
an outcome of college," said Daniel F. Chambliss, professor of
sociology at Hamilton College, whose book How College Works will
be published by Harvard University Press. "It energizes people
to want to learn more and go out in the world and grab it by the
throat." Mr. Chambliss came to this conclusion after conducting
nine years of longitudinal research on 100 randomly selected
students who entere