Peer coaching is a formal program whereby successful students support their peers in attaining academic and social goals. Survey results unveiled that 90 percent of coachees felt peer coaches enhanced learning, and 100 percent felt peer coaches engendered a sense of community and belonging. More than 85 percent of coachees planned to persist in…

One of the most underutilized and cost-effective ways of encouraging more undergraduate students to actively engage in the college experience and complete their studies is through educationally purposeful peer interactions (EPPIs). Many institutions use mentors, coaches, and tutors to leverage the power of EPPIs. This article is about why and how…

The need to improve institutional performance seems clear considering equity gaps and the high costs associated with higher education. Although the idea of holding higher education institutions accountable for their students' success is laudable, it is also pushing many institutions to make decisions based on meeting externally imposed metrics.…

Since June 22, 1944, when the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, more commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights, was signed into law, colleges and universities in the United States have been asked to open their doors to military veterans. Today there is interest by policy makers and veteran groups in better understanding this special subset of college…

Many institutions are trying to better understand the factors that drive student success and failure in order to improve the efficiency of degree production. Traditional academic reporting systems are not adequate for this purpose, since they are designed to measure outcomes, not to uncover the factors that influence them. To address this problem,…

A startling number of students arrive at the doors of colleges and universities lacking the essential skills and knowledge required to succeed there. If given the proper tools and supports, the great majority of these students would be able to achieve their goals in and outside of the classroom. But most of them are shuttled off to developmental…

Traditionally, the collegiate advising system provides each student with a personal academic advisor who designs a pathway to the degree for that student in face-to-face meetings. Ideally, this is a supportive mentoring relationship. In truth, however, this system is highly inefficient, error prone, expensive, and a source of ubiquitous student…

The 2013 US college/university policy agenda, "Making College Affordable: A Better Agenda for the Middle Class," highlighted the role of developing technologies, institutional curriculum-design processes, and new delivery methods as keys to providing quality, affordable postsecondary education. Competency-based education (CBE) is given…

Should remediation in higher education be ended? A recent report from Complete College America says exactly that. The authors call for all public institutions of higher education in the United States to stop offering it and instead ensure that students who need extra help take co-requisite requirements, such as extra tutoring. Their…

Despite enrolling almost half of all undergraduate students in the United States, community colleges have struggled for decades with low degree-completion rates. CUNY community colleges struggle with the challenge of low completion rates even when the degree timetable is expanded. According to the CUNY Office of Institutional Research and…

When colleges turned to online learning, they opened the door for a number of students who might have only dreamed of pursuing a degree or credential. In 2006, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS) surveyed prospective adult students without a college degree and discovered that they were three times more likely to enroll in…

In the May/June issue of "Change", US Undersecretary of Education Martha J. Kanter described President Barack Obama's plan for recapturing the position of the best-educated country in the world by 2020. She spelled out the formula for meeting the President's ambitious goal: increasing postsecondary access, improving the quality of a…