When a college or university's identity is closely linked to its education mission, the quality of student life and the effectiveness of the educational program assumes much greater importance. The talent development view of excellence that emphasizes the educational impact of the institution on its students is discussed. (MLW)

This lecture decries the lack of any real sense of community in the modern university. It argues that the fundamental difficulty of creating a greater sense of community in higher education institutions is a problem of values. Competitiveness and materialism are emphasized more than those values that support and nurture a sense of community. There…

During the past three years more than 80 scholars, students, and educational leaders have participated with the Higher Education Research Institute in an extended series of dialogues about issues of spirituality, authenticity, meaning, wholeness, and self-renewal in higher education. These dialogues explored issues related to: achieving a greater…

The American Council on Education has been conducting a longitudinal research study to assess the impact of different college environments on the student's development and to provide a source of current, readily available, descriptive information about the student population. The findings presented in this paper are based on the followup of the…

The 23rd annual report of national normative data on the characteristics of students attending American colleges and universities as first-time, full-time freshmen is presented. This project of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program of the American Council on Education and the Graduate School of Education at the University of California,…

Higher education's principal reason for being is seen as that of developing student talents. This premise suggests that a high-quality institution is one that maximizes the intellectual and personal development of its students. Student involvement is seen as the cornerstone of academic excellence. (MLW)

The annual ACE/UCLA Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) surveys of American freshmen show a major movement in certain generalized political self-identification labels. The direction has been from liberal to middle-of-the-road. (MLW)

This report presents a national profile of black college freshmen in 1989-90 and shows how these students have changed based on the past 19 surveys (1971-1989), using data on 16,000-20,000 black freshmen from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program. The study focuses on a wide variety of characteristics of black college freshmen: family…

Trends in the characteristics of students who go directly on to college after completing high school have been surveyed for the past l6 years. Findings on significant trends are cited and analyzed: (1) Students are less well prepared academically than entering students of 10 or 15 years ago. (2) Declining academic skill levels are reflected in the…

National normative data on characteristics of students entering college as first-time, full-time freshmen are presented, based on results of the fall 1985 Cooperative Research Program survey. The data are weighted to represent the population of freshmen. Extensive statistical data are reported separately for women and men, and for 37 institutional…

National normative data on characteristics of students entering college as first-time, full-time freshmen are presented, based on results of the fall 1986 Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey. The data are weighted to represent the population of freshmen. Extensive statistical data are reported separately for women and men, and for 37…

National normative data on characteristics of students entering college as first-time, full-time freshmen are presented, based on the results of the fall 1984 Cooperative Research Program survey. The data are weighted to represent the population of freshmen. Extensive statistical data are reported separately for women and men, and for 37…

This analysis of how college affects students is based on the largest nationwide study of student development ever undertaken, a ten-year effort by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program of the American Council on Education and the University of California at Los Angeles. Using longitudinal data from over 200,000 students and 300…