As the tenth in the Completing College series, this report updates the six-year college completion rates nationally and by state, by tracking the enrollment and completion outcomes for the fall 2015 cohort of beginning college students through June 2021. The national completion rate measures the performance of the entire higher education system.…

Prior learning assessment (PLA) is the process of evaluating learning, regardless of when or where the learning occurred, and, if the learning is at the college level, awarding college credit to the possessor of that learning. This article provides an overview of the PLA program at a large public U.S. institution and presents the findings of the…

In the past few years there has been an increase in the number of adult students in higher education courses, many of whom have returned to school after a break. Most of these students do not intend to continue their studies from the point where they stopped; rather, they want to prepare for specific tests in order to have direct access to higher…

Past research has indicated that different students learn differently. If we could identify into which group(s) students were more closely aligned, then we could help students learn more effectively. One such classification has been whether students were considered to be traditional or nontraditional, where traditional students were frequently…

There are many causes of poor academic performance among college students and many methods of assisting academic underachievers to improve their academic standing. A study was conducted to compare the rates of ongoing academic success of students who had been academically suspended and who reentered the university less than one year following…

This study reports on an examination of the experiences and expectations of the older university student who is returning to school to either complete a degree or begin a new career--one who in all likelihood did not have any computer experience before attending university classes. Specifically, the study was designed to: (1) compare attitudes…

The two purposes of this study were to: (1) determine whether there had been an increase in the enrollment of returning women students (twenty-five years of age or older) between the fall of 1975 and the fall of 1976 at the Quad-Cities Campus, Black Hawk College. A second problem was to compare the mean grade point average achieved by these…

A study compared the effects of retesting (with and without the benefit of short term instruction) on the scores of subjects in an upper-division university who had failed a writing test. Subjects who did not receive a passing score in their first attempt at the essay test were given the opportunity of attending a 4-hour workshop designed to…

The relationships among demands, coping resources, experienced stress, and well-being were studied in a cross-sectional survey of 210 reentry and 102 traditional women at the University of California, Irvine. The analysis was based on psychosocial stress theory and contextual analysis. Reentry women ranged in age from 26 to 66, with a mean age of…

There is little literature comparing personality differences between traditional (under age 25) and reentry women students (aged 25 and older). The purpose of the present study is to examine these differences. A background questionnaire and five additional scales: (1) the Work and Family Orientation Questionnaire (WOFO-3); (2) the…

College attendance by Italian and American women over age 30 is compared, and attention is directed to whether mature Italian and U.S. women who continue their education do so for similar reasons and whether they experience similar problems. The analysis is based on two studies of women over 30 in post-compulsory degree programs: (1) a study on…

The 1980-1981 Graduate Record Examination General Test verbal and quantitative ability scores were examined for four age groups of test takers (those age 22 or less, 23-29, 30-39, and 40 or more), and two groups returning to graduate study many years after completing the bachelors degree. The late returners were those 9-15 years beyond the…

Colleges and universities are having to design instructional formats for both traditional and nontraditional, second career individuals. To compare the learning styles and other related educational factors (e.g., test preferences, educational goals) of traditional and nontraditional students at the University of Akron (Ohio), 154 traditional…

A qualitative study examined the revision of writing on the word processor of two re-entering students in advanced composition in comparison to three traditional-age students. Its purposes were to see whether there was any difference in adaptation to the word processor between the two groups and whether each writer had a consistent revision…

Assesses the needs of returning women as compared to returning men and traditional students. The results show many demographic differences between returning women, returning men, traditional women, and traditional men. Campus programs and services should be tailored differently for the different groups. (Author)