First year nursing students at a small public university participated in a longitudinal study following a bridge course to prepare them for the transition to college and rigorous nursing curriculum. The bridge course included activities to identify challenges and strategies for success, develop belonging with peers and faculty, and explore…

Online education has become an integral part of higher education with the ever-increasing demand for online doctoral programs. The purpose of this mixed-method study was to explore the nature of student success and contributing factors to improving student success for nontraditional students in an online doctoral program. Relationships between…

Given the current surge in student participation in dual enrollment programs, an updated synthesis of literature relating to how these programs impact students is warranted. Furthermore, while there are qualitative literature reviews relating to dual enrollment and student outcomes, there has not been a quantitative synthesis of literature…

This study examined whether first-time full-time freshman students' sense of purpose predicted their progress towards a degree. Freshman students (N = 421, 62.2% females) completed self-report measures of sense of purpose and academic commitments within the first month of starting college; a year later, the data on first-year progress towards a…

A Monte Carlo algorithm is designed to predict the average time to graduate by enrolling virtual students in a degree plan. The algorithm can be used to improve graduation rates by identifying bottlenecks in a degree plan (e.g., low pass rate courses and prerequisites). Random numbers are used to determine whether students pass or fail classes by…

This study investigates the relationship of students' participation in peer-led Supplemental Instruction groups, called facilitated study groups (FSGs), with their academic performance and years to graduation. In 2017, the full academic records of about 2,400 students who started university between 2005 and 2007 and took Psychology 100 (PSY100)…

This article examines the link between secondary school context and both college completion and timely college completion. A quantitative methodology is applied to study the cohort of Chilean students who began postsecondary studies in 2008. Specifically, multilevel logistic regression models were considered. The results show that students who…

First-generation college students (FGCS), nearly 50% of which identify as Hispanic, are an underserved population. The psychosociocultural theoretical framework posits that individual, environmental, and cultural factors contribute to the academic success of Hispanic students. This study examined the relationship between these factors (i.e.,…

Social support is a crucial factor for first-generation students' (FGS) integration at university and their educational success. FGS are often assumed to lack social support and integration, but research shows mixed results. By means of a mixed-methods approach (combination of interviews and online survey), we aimed to shed light on the…

Increasing graduation rates continues to be a high priority for administrators at many institutions of higher education. With longitudinal data from a large research university in the Western United States, the purpose of this study was to examine the potential relationship between matriculating with or without a major declared and degree…

Higher education institutions have prioritized supporting undecided students with their major and career decisions for decades. This study used a U.S. public research-focused university's large-scale institutional data set and undecided student's retention and graduation rate predictors to demonstrate how to couple student and institutional data…

In this study, we investigated how environmental, cognitive, and demographic variables influenced students' ability to graduate from a 4-year university in 4 years. Specifically, we examined how behaviors related to social cognitive career theory (i.e., self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and academic goals) were influenced by contextual…

In this study, we identified factors influencing completion rates (graduation) of undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We used hierarchical, logistic, and linear regression models to analyze the data and found significant predictor variable interactions across various underrepresented versus…

This qualitative study extends the research on postsecondary delay by examining the college experiences of six male nontraditional students from the North Texas area who purposefully postponed college education for 3 years after high school graduation to fulfill religious commitments. Unlike the majority of delayers, the participants successfully…

This study examined department supports that influence doctoral completion and time-to-degree among 5,001 doctoral programs at 212 universities in the United States. Multiple regression models were used to determine the relationships between financial support and academic support and doctoral retention and how these relationships vary across STEM…