The transition into high school is a critical time to act for students with a history of academic difficulty. In this study, researchers examined the impact of a learning strategies intervention program called High School Success on performance of students demonstrating deficits in literacy and academic skills. Data were collected on performance…

Few college students wanting to major in an engineering discipline who begin in precalculus actually complete an undergraduate engineering degree program. One reason for this is students struggle through calculus I and II, known barrier courses for engineering majors. This research utilizes frameworks of future time perspective (FTP) and…

Nationwide, almost a third of 1st-year college students do not return to begin their sophomore year, and the 5-year graduation rate for undergraduates is only around 40%. It is important for universities to implement interventions, such as freshman transition courses, to help new students adjust to college life and succeed, and it is critical that…

The improvement of first generation college student persistence and graduation rates is an undertaking that benefits individuals, society, and the institutions whose mission it is to confer degrees. This goal is one that is best served by an acknowledgment of the causes of attrition as well as understanding the factors that strengthen and…

Although over 80 percent of the 1.5 million students who enter community colleges each year indicate they intend to attain a bachelor's degree or higher, less than 40 percent earn any form of college credential within six years. This discussion starter is designed to help both higher education professionals and the average citizen work through how…

In this study, the authors examined the effect of taking a learning strategies course on grade point average, retention, and graduation rate of 351 first-year students over their first 4 terms in comparison with 351 matched non-course takers. The course taught 4 learning strategies and 8 substrategies to help students overcome procrastination,…

Supplemental instruction (SI)--variously known as peer-assisted learning, peer-assisted study sessions, and other names--is a type of academic support intervention popular in higher education. In SI sessions, a senior student facilitates peer learning between undergraduates studying a high-risk course. This article presents a systematic review of…

African American females at the community level have low persistence rates and the literature regarding motivation and success strategies for those who persist to graduation is limited. This study was designed to identify the motivation and success strategies used by African American females to graduate from community colleges in Minnesota.…

This paper explores the prescriptive, distancing and separating qualities that exist in Western systems of knowledge production. It examines scientific language and how discrimination takes place in the university setting and explores the ways in which academic knowledge production affects the learning experiences, participation and completion…

This qualitative case study examined causes of low graduation rates for young adults. The purpose of this study was to evaluate students participating in an after-school program and reflect on their perceptions of that program a year after they graduated. The theoretical framework for this study reflected upon an open social system. The research…

President Obama wants it. Billionaire business mogul turned philanthropist Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, say it's key to the nation's economic future. But are America's colleges really poised to regain the world lead in college graduates by 2020? Doing so would require adding an additional 5 million graduates during the next decade--a lofty…

College matriculation rates are increasing but graduation rates are failing to parallel the increased enrollment. One reason for this discrepancy may be that many college students are unable to regulate their own learning. This dissertation examined the Self-Regulated Learning (SRL; Pintrich, 2004) model in students taking Statistics in Psychology…

Advancement Via Individualized Determination (AVID) provides middle-achieving, underachieving and socio-economically disadvantaged students in grades 4-12 with success strategies, and rigorous coursework that prepares them for high school graduation and college acceptance. Based on a series of interviews with Latina students who had participated…

Despite numerous successes achieved by American schools in recent years, one of the remaining challenges is the large number of adolescents who lack basic literacy skills. Nearly 25 percent of 8th and 12th graders score below the basic level in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and only 70 percent of all high school…

Both internationally and within South Africa the failure rates at universities are presently high and throughput and graduation rates are low. It is thus imperative that the cognitive and non-cognitive predictors related to identifying learners who will succeed academically are explored. This paper focuses on two potentially important…