Literature on retention for first-year students appears to focus on the emotional, interpersonal, and financial problems these students face when beginning their post-secondary education. The article accepts the importance of these issues and their effect on retention. However, the article suggests that there are other issues that should be…

This study, with 228 freshmen at the University of Hartford (Connecticut), found significant intellectual growth (especially in movement away from dualistic thinking) in most students over the year, with the amount of growth related to the number of completed interdisciplinary general education courses, which were specifically designed to promote…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an operational definition of college readiness that differs from current representations of this concept primarily in its scope. The paper suggests that, while much has been learned about this phenomenon, particularly during the past 20 years, few systematic attempts have been made to integrate the various…

This study investigated the relative freshman-year cognitive impacts of 2 historically black and 16 predominantly white colleges on black students. Of these institutions, 5 were 2-year institutions and the rest were 4-year colleges. The data were taken from a pool of 2,416 freshmen students who participated in the National Study of Student…

This study investigated the relative freshman-year cognitive impacts of five two-year and six four-year colleges and universities drawn from all sections of the United States. The overall sample was 2,685 freshmen students participating in a national longitudinal study and of these the final sample contained 811 students, 280 attending five…