This book looks at the socialization process and persistence to graduation from the perspectives of black students at American universities today. The students' perceptions discussed include what it meant to them to have a pre-college experience, the importance of expectations, the pain caused by racism, and how they were able to find "safe…

In 1996, the Oregon University System (OUS) conducted the first systemwide survey of recent (1994-95) bachelor's degree recipients. Changes in Oregon's economy in the preceding decade led to concerns about the preparedness of college graduates as they entered the work force. The purpose of this study is to assess an OUS college experience from the…

Deliberately introducing change into an established English language program, in which faculty, students, and administrators are comfortable with courses and procedures, is unsettling and often costly. Why, then, would overworked program directors, coordinators, and faculty decide to overhaul their curricula, testing procedures, and academic…

This article explores the association between school racial composition and students' expectations to graduate from a four-year college. In addition to the individual characteristics of students that have been repeatedly shown to influence educational goals, the results indicate that both school socioeconomic level and achievement composition are…

Minnesota's Intervention for College Attendance Program (ICAP) is a program of competitive grants awarded to postsecondary institutions, professional organizations and community-based organizations. Funded programs focus on increasing the access and success of groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education by strengthening their…

This study addresses Waukesha County Technical College's (WCTC) 5-year retention and graduate rates. Some of the key findings of the report are as follow: (1) overall, 35.4% of cohort students graduated; (2) a 4-year combined graduation rate for ethnic minorities was 26%, well below the overall average; (3) the percent of cohort that graduated…

This study examines graduation rates at public two-year, public four-year and private four-year colleges in the United States. Its major purpose is to account for the variance in graduation rates taking into account several institutional and institutionally-related student financial aid predictor variables. United States colleges and universities…

This report discusses the outcomes of a study that investigated state appeals processes for students with disabilities who fail state-mandated graduation exams. State Web sites were studied to determine the extent to which there are other options for demonstrating skills, to check the availability of these to students with disabilities, and to…

Over the past 20 years, major transformations have occurred in educational, social, political, and economic areas that continue to have an impact on the education and development of youth with disabilities and the institutions that support them. Approximately half of all students with disabilities in 2003-04 spent 80% or more of their day in a…

Superintendents often mourn the "good old days" when they were educators and did not need to worry about the managerial and political aspects of their districts. Linda Hanson shows how effective a superintendent can be in the role of educator as she and her reading staff help their school board understand the implications of a mandatory graduation…

Recent studies have argued that there is a dropout crisis in the U.S. But the authors in this article, find that this contention is based on flawed analyses of inadequate data. Using a much wider range of sources, they conclude that the situation is not nearly so dire as is commonly believed. (Contains 14 endnotes.)

One of the most pressing issues facing American universities is the number of students who fail to graduate. Nearly one out of five four-year institutions graduate fewer than one-third of its first-time, full-time degree-seeking first-year students within six years. Although there are various explanations for attrition, students often leave for…

Research extols the benefits of parent involvement in college choice, but low-SES African American parents are unable to match efforts of wealthier parents. This qualitative study found that in their communities the high school diploma was the normative credential for upward mobility. To this end, parents used narratives of struggle to motivate…

If non-completion rate is to be a useful performance indicator it must reflect the recent health of a course in a transparent and robust manner that enables comparisons to be made between groups of students and between courses of varied structures. For flexible degree programmes with varied attendance modes and multiple entry points, traditional…

The authors performed path analysis, followed by a bootstrap procedure, to test the predictions of a model explaining the relationships among students' distal future goals (both extrinsic and intrinsic), their adoption of a middle-range subgoal, their perceptions of task instrumentality, and their proximal task-oriented self-regulation strategies.…