Background: Grades in college and university STEM courses are an important determinant of student persistence in STEM fields. Recent studies have used the grade offset/grade penalty method to explore why students have lower grades in STEM courses than their GPAs would predict. The results of these studies are in doubt; however, as they use GPA as…

The proliferation of Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment taken by high school students expanded over the past few decades due concerted efforts to make the accelerated mechanisms more available to historically underrepresented groups and to reduce the cost of higher education. Supported by years of research correlating improved first-year…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the degree to which character strengths can predict grade point average (GPA), in comparison with and over and above the established predictors of grit, self-control, and conscientiousness. The current study was based on the work of Boerma and Neill (2020), who examined the relationship between…

Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is a feeling of illegitimacy or fraudulence despite evidence to the contrary. Most people experience feelings of impostorism in their lifetime, and it has been associated with several outcomes in the literature. Although there is some evidence higher education may facilitate feelings of IP, community college students have…

For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high-achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full tuition, now called the Zell Miller Scholarship,…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the differences in the academic outcomes of first-year academically underprepared TN Promise-eligible college freshmen who participated in a college bridge program. A comparative research design was applied to existing data, including first-semester GPA, first-semester credit completion rate,…

Student enrollment at community colleges within the U.S. has remained flat or decreased for over a decade (AACC, 2019). Before COVID-19, community colleges had been experiencing a steady decline in enrollment for approximately ten years (Irwin et al., 2021). The purpose was to determine whether demographic, environmental, and academic variables…

Born on the eve of the Civil War, community colleges were designed to provide access to higher education for the masses. Community colleges, also referred to as "the people's college," were a radical departure from the traditional institutions of higher education. One significant difference, compared to other institutions of higher…

We study the long-term effects of a psychological intervention on longitudinal academic outcomes and degree completion of college students. All freshmen at a large public university were randomized to an online growth mindset, belonging, or control group. We tracked students' academic outcomes including GPA, number of credits attempted and earned,…

This study expands on current research that examines the impact of online courses on retention, degree completion, and student success. The researchers investigated the impact of online courses on degree completion by using existing graduation rate data, course enrollment data, and student grades for undergraduate students at a multicampus 4-year…

Background: College dropout has been described as an epidemic, with underrepresented minority (URM) students having the highest dropout rates at colleges and universities. This study examines interpersonal violence and substance use as potential threats to the academic success of URM students. Methods: This study is a secondary data analysis of…

Methods that provide an early indicator of factors that affect student persistence are important to colleges and universities. This quantitative research focused on the role of level of entry mathematics and English and also on grades earned in those classes, as they relate to persistence after 1 year. The research showed that by far, the variable…

This review examined the relations between grit and academic achievement based on a meta-analysis of 137 studies yielding 156 dependent samples (N = 285,331). Using the robust variance estimation, we found that the correlations of overall grit level with academic achievement were generally weak to moderate (weighted r = 0.19). The correlation of…

The current study examines how the integration of SAT scores with context information about students' neighborhood and high school from the College Board's Landscape™ resource can provide institutions with a nuanced perspective on students' expected performance and retention. This allows institutions to identify incoming students that may benefit…

This quantitative causal-comparative study examined to what extent, if any, there were significant differences in community college student success rates (course grades, semester GPA, and rates of persistence) between those students completing an online college success course and those completing a traditional college success course. Each of the…