Recent research has highlighted the critical problem of high rates of "disconnected youth"--youth and young adults who are neither employed nor in school. Practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and a range of stakeholders express mounting concern that disconnected youth are a societal burden that costs countries trillions of dollars.…

Student engagement is a key predictor of academic performance, persistence and retention in higher education. While many studies have identified how aspects of the college environment influence engagement, fewer have specifically focused on emotional intelligence (EI). In this study, we sought to explore whether EI could predict cognitive and/or…

This study leverages human capital theory to identify the correlates of expected returns on investment in higher education at the level of institutions. We leverage estimates of average ROI in post-secondary education among more than 400 baccalaureate degree conferring colleges and universities to understand the correlates of a relatively new…

We study the impact of socio-economic status on enrollment and study decisions in higher education. We use a discrete choice approach to distinguish between three channels. First, students from disadvantaged backgrounds may be more sensitive to the costs of education. Second, they may have lower preferences for education. Third, they may have…

Learning to program is a complex task, and the impact of different pedagogical approaches to teach this skill has been hard to measure. This study examined the performance data of seven cohorts of students (N = 1168) learning programming under three different pedagogical approaches. These pedagogical approaches varied either in the length of the…

The challenge of translating equity of access into equity of outcome with students from a differentially resourced secondary education system which may have advantaged or disadvantaged them in demonstrating their academic ability in the conventional matriculation/national senior certificate (NSC) examinations necessitated that Universities…

Following recent developments within higher education where provision of foundation degree courses at further education colleges has been extended, it seemed appropriate to investigate the extent to which the system is working. This should not necessarily be measured by the number of students enrolling, but rather by how many are achieving their…

Service-learning continues to gain in popularity across the higher education landscape and can be found in most educational institutions. Although more often found in student affairs programming, it is also viewed as a viable pedagogy. Most studies show that service-learning impacts students in various ways: academically, socially and…

Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2010. This presentation examines the relationship between academic self-beliefs and outcomes.

Finds that lexical level in a second language (L2) is a better predictor of reading in L2 that the learners' general ability, predicting certain failure (when the learner's lexical level is lower than 3,000 word families), or certain success (when the level is over 5,000). (SR)

A study evaluated the use of the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory as a predictor of academic potential, for use in recruitment of optometry students. Although distinctive learning preferences were observed in low- and high-achieving students, correlations were not strong enough for predictive use. (Author/MSE)

Individual items within the Knower Speech Experience Inventory were studied to discover what specific communication-related experiences distinguish effective from poor public speakers in a basic college level speech communication course. Results showed that 30 of the 48 items successfully discriminated among groups of speakers. (JF)

Examined whether global academic self-concept and academic self-efficacy beliefs that vary in domain specificity/globality represent distinct or common underlying dimensions. Results based on 205 university students revealed that each of the variables represented separate, though related, latent dimensions of self-perception. Implications for…

Three measures of academic intelligence and three measures of social intelligence were investigated in a group of college students. In the social domain, intradomain correlations were no higher than interdomain, factor analyses produced no identifiable social factor, and academic measures were better at predicting a social competence criterion…