The Effects of Development-Oriented Aid on Student Development in Higher Education: The Mediating Effect of Psychological Capital

Recently, there has been a transition from guarantee-oriented financial aid to development-oriented aid for economically disadvantaged students. Development-oriented aid aims to enable economically disadvantaged students to acquire long-term and sustainable self-development capacity. However, to what extent and how development-oriented aid promotes student development remains unclear. Identification of the related mechanism can help both students and educators effectively apply development-oriented aid in higher education scenarios. The main objective of this study was to uncover the effect of size, pathways, and mediating factors of development-oriented aid on student development in higher education. Drawing from a sample of 1792 sponsored students at University G in China and applying the structural equation modeling method for quantitative analysis, the results indicate that development-oriented aid directly shows positive influences toward student development and indirectly impacts student development through psychological capital. These results also show that development-oriented aid directly impacts Han Chinese students’ development more than the development of ethnic minority students. The pathways through which development-oriented aid positively influences Han Chinese students and ethnic minority students vary.