Many community colleges do not have a formal process in place to offer or support a structured gap year option for students who recently graduated from high school, thereby denying those students an educational option that has been recognized as beneficial to many learners. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore factors that…

High attrition rates in doctoral programs have long plagued the field of higher education. Over the past half century, approximately half of all students who enroll in doctoral program at North American institutions fail to earn their degree (Lovitts, 2001; OECD, 2020; Schneider & Yin, 2011; Sverdlik et al., 2018). The purpose of this study…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how the social and academic integration of first-time college students from a midwestern university influenced their decision to return to college. This qualitative descriptive study explored two research questions: RQ1: How do first-time college students describe their role of…

This phenomenological, qualitative study addressed student perceptions of their meaning-making process towards self-authorship in a self-designed gap year experience and was conducted in a public higher educational institution in the Southeast. Data was gathered through interviews from a purposeful sample of gap year program participants and…

Observers of education often assume measuring non-continuation -- or, more colloquially, "drop-out" rates -- among students must be straightforward. In fact, there are numerous different ways to measure the phenomenon of non-continuation that make it challenging to discuss. This paper addresses the following questions regarding…

This study explores the role of student support services in fostering persistence among Some College, No Credential (SCNC) students re-entering higher education, with a specific focus on community colleges in Southern California. As the number of SCNC students continues to rise, understanding the challenges and support systems available to this…

In Canada, there are few long-term developmental education studies of adult basic education (ABE) students. This lack of studies impedes the understanding of ABE students' complex motivations, their diverse challenges, and their exceptional achievements. This 5-year cohort longitudinal panel study used interview data augmented by quantitative…

The study was set to investigate the influence of regulatory frameworks for higher education on the decrease of student enrollment in 6 selected private tertiary institutions in Rwanda. This study adopted the quantitative research design. The study involved a sample of 370 students selected from the 6 private universities. The study used…

Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined how grieving college students perceived the effectiveness, benefits, drawbacks, and areas of improvement of a student bereavement leave policy, Grief Absence Policy for Students (GAPS). Though GAPS facilitated students' grief, data indicated that the policy could benefit from improvements in the…

This qualitative case study explored the effects of interrupted education--including the linguistics challenges--on 14 (N = 14) Ukrainian higher education refugee students who arrived in Poland after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022. All participants were refugee students who were enrolled in Ukrainian universities prior to the Russian…

Students entering into US-based higher educational institutions are electing more to take a gap year, loosely defined as a 6-12-month student-directed experience to pursue personally relevant interests, rather than traditionally matriculate into their institution after high school (Simpson, 2004; White, 2009; O'Shea, 2014; GYA, 2023a). However,…

Rural undergraduates lag behind urban and suburban undergraduates across many measures of college success, even though they graduate from high school at a higher rate. While a small but growing body of research literature addresses the challenges and barriers rural students face during the college process, few, if any, studies have focused…

The population of adult learners with Some College, No Credential (SCNC) has risen over the years to over 40 million individuals. A smaller subset of this population has debt that they owe their institutions directly in addition to state, federal, or private loans. As of 2020, approximately 6.6 million students owed more than $15 billion in…

Summer melt is a national phenomenon that occurs when high school graduates who intend to matriculate into higher education following graduation end up not doing so. This phenomenon is widespread across the country and enables the poverty cycle to continue. Over the last decade, national studies conducted to understand the summer melt phenomenon…

Some college, no degree (SCND) students are adults aged 25-64 who have earned college credit but no degree (Shapiro et al., 2019). There are currently 36 million adults in the United States with some college but no degree (Lumina Foundation, n.d.; U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). Reengaging this population to complete a degree or credential will assist…