American colleges are redesigning the ways in which they offer remedial courses, including mainstreaming students into college-level courses and making greater use of learning-technology to tailor the curriculum to students' specific academic needs. Exploiting a statewide cutoff on a remediation placement exam along with data on student outcomes…

In 2011, under the Florida College and Career Readiness Initiative (FCCRI), Florida made college placement testing mandatory for 11th-grade students who had scored in the midrange of its standardized 10th-grade assessment. Those with placement test scores below college-ready were assigned in 12th grade to college readiness and success…

This study applies the principles of critical race theory to examine quantitatively the experiences of a national sample of 37,582 faculty. Among the key factors influencing retention and satisfaction are campus racial climate, autonomy and independence, and the review and promotion process. Results support the value of examining faculty of color…

Using resource dependency theory as a conceptual framework, this study explores the relationship between the financial context of four-year institutions and student persistence. This research reveals that student persistence is positively related to the percent of revenue derived from tuition and negatively related to percent of expenditures on…

The unique challenges of balancing teaching, research, and service in urban public universities are likely to affect faculty intentions to remain in or depart from these institutions. Findings from this national study of urban public university faculty suggest that institutional efforts to retain faculty should attend to the structural…

The research presented in this article examines the predictors of institutional commitment of first-year students at 28 two-year and 23 four-year public institutions. Previous research has demonstrated that institutional commitment is a strong predictor of college students' intent to persist, and ultimately student persistence itself (Braxton,…

Using data from the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty, this study examines the extent to which demographic variables, the quality of worklife, and satisfaction have an impact on community college faculty members' intentions of leave. The findings indicate that faculty members' worklife had a direct and powerful impact on their…

A set of variables termed "bicultural adaptive strategies" was formulated and tested for predicting Black students' (n=171) levels of adjustment to a predominantly White university. Findings suggest that the incorporation of variables reflecting Black cultural frame of reference is fruitful in studying Black student adjustment and retention.…

A study integrated the major propositions of 2 theories of college persistence (Tinto's and Bean's) and used the resulting framework to survey a population of 466 first-year college students at 1 university. Findings supported most of the hypothesized links between the models and revealed a complex role for environmental factors in retention.…

Two theories concerning students' decisions to leave college are compared, and the convergence and discriminant validity of the two theories are examined empirically. The extent to which the theories could be merged to help researchers understand the role of institutional and noninstitutional variables in student persistence is discussed. (MSE)

Students today are different from their counterparts of three and four decades ago. Women have outnumbered men for more than 15 years, and the participation rates for members of historically underrepresented groups have made impressive gains. Many of these "new" students are the first in their families to attend college. It is important that these…

The widely accepted theory that college participation is a "rite of passage," where academic and social integration is required for student persistence, is criticized as misinterpreting anthropological notions of ritual and holding consequences harmful for racial and ethnic minorities. An approach focusing on emancipation and empowerment is…

The influence of an intensive two-day orientation to college on freshman voluntary persistence and withdrawal decisions was estimated with an explanatory causal model. Results suggest the major influence of orientation on persistence is indirect, transmitted through positive effects on student social integration and commitment to the institution.…

This study reviews higher education assumptions of traditional net-price theory and an emerging approach considering a set of price and subsidies in enrollment and persistence decisions. Results suggest that within-year persistence decisions made by students from all income groups are more sensitive to tuition charges than to student aid.…

The development of models predicting progress toward the master's and doctoral degrees is reported. The models link department and student characteristics, student financial support, and student perceptions of the faculty with grades, involvement in the program, satisfaction with the department, and student feelings of alienation. (Author/MSE)