This First Look report presents selected findings from the 2012/17 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17), a nationally representative survey of undergraduates who entered postsecondary education for the first time in the 2011-12 academic year. BPS:12/17 covers the experiences of these first-time beginning postsecondary…

Two studies investigated the relationships between readability, prior knowledge, and interest in the material being read. In the first study, 169 college freshmen read cloze passages of materials from the Nelson-Denny Reading Tests, then one week later read the whole passages and completed the related multiple choice questions. A control group…

This study addressed the question of how much graduation rates would improve if new students were followed for 10 instead of four or six years from their date of first enrollment; it also compared enrollment and graduation patterns of new freshmen and new transfers to see if graduation rates were similar after 10 years. Participants were all…