According to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, safety is the second most basic need, before love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, that humans require in order to be motivated. When this theory is placed within the context of higher education, one could argue that in order to reach their full potential, students must first feel…

Due to its emphasis on academics and exclusion of athletic scholarships, the NCAA's Division III (DIII) is often praised by coaches, media, and higher education leaders for offering the purest form of collegiate athletics. However, the academics-first philosophy and higher graduation rates the NCAA celebrates for most of its sports are not…

Institutions of higher education (IHEs) are competing to recruit students in a crowded market with the number of colleges on the increase and the number of high school seniors declining. IHEs are looking for effective ways to recruit students and increase retention and graduation rates. Relationship marketing (RM) is an approach from business that…

A high impact mentoring program at a community college connected professionals from the special education and early intervention fields with small groups of teacher education students. Two federal grants from U.S. Department of Education funded tuition scholarships and mentoring for 76 Special Education students and 78 Early Childhood…

New teachers often struggle with handling their students and their many responsibilities because of demanding nature of the job. A strong preservice preparation is critical to teachers' success and increases teacher retention in the profession. This quantitative study examined the association among emotional intelligence, as measured by the…

A cohort of first-time, full-time, degree-seeking undeclared freshmen at a medium-sized university in Pennsylvania was used to study the relationship between tutoring and the retention rates and decision paths of undeclared students. Undeclared students who did and did not receive tutoring were tracked over four years to determine rate and…

This dissertation uses a mixed-methods design to examine persistence into the second year by students' parental education level. The institution selected for this dissertation is Temple University, a large, urban, public university in the Northeast. Using Tinto's (1993) model of student departure as a conceptual framework, the quantitative…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to explore salient nonacademic factors related to social, economic, and cultural aspects together with traditional academic factors that influenced college retention. The study design employed a mixed-methods sequential explanatory method design, collecting quantitative data for correlation and…

The purpose of this study is to develop a preadmission predictive model of student success for prospective first-time African American college applicants at a predominately White four-year public institution within the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. This model will use two types of variables. They are (a) cognitive variables (i.e.,…

Nursing student attrition in community colleges negatively affects students, faculty, colleges, and the nursing profession. The purpose of this quantitative correlational retrospective research study was to examine the possible relationships between each of the independent variables of academic preparedness (as measured by NET mathematics and…

In 1981, a study was conducted to investigate the academic performance and persistence patterns of developmental students who matriculated at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) between 1977 and 1979. Specifically, the study sought to determine the proportion of developmental students who successfully completed developmental and subsequent…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…