Academic Entitlement Beliefs of Information Systems Students: A Comparison with Other Business Majors and an Exploration of Key Demographic Variables and Outcomes

Academic entitlement has received much attention in both academic and practitioner outlets. It is defined as "the tendency to possess an expectation of academic success without taking personal responsibility for achieving that success" (Chowning & Campbell, 2009 p. 982). The concept evolved from research in the area of generalized entitlement and narcissism resulting in a context-specific measure useful in understanding entitlement beliefs specific to educational environments. The overall goal of this research is to provide an introductory understanding of entitlement beliefs among information systems students and subsequently compare them to the greater population of students in a business college. Data was collected from 529 undergraduate students at a public university in the southeastern United States. A series of nested models were analyzed to better understand the overall structure of the construct and determine the extent of differences in the two populations. Additional demographic factors were examined including age, gender, employment status, and self-reported GPA (overall and within major). For the sample examined in the current study, findings indicated undergraduate information systems students are quite similar in their entitlement beliefs when compared to students in the other disciplines. Additionally, within-major GPA was found to be significantly related academic entitlement among both populations. A discussion of the findings is provided along with general recommendations for future research.