The U.S. Supreme Court provided evidence that its membership had shifted to be more critical of affirmative action as it heard oral arguments last week in two cases involving the race-based assignment of students to public schools. Although the court did not exhibit any desire to reconsider its stand on affirmative action in higher education, the…

The author discusses how faculty inquiry can inform and support classroom teaching and learning, as well as allow for better designed courses and programs. "Faculty inquiry" is a term that encompasses a range of practices that engage teachers in looking closely and critically at student learning for the purpose of improving their own…

The concept of community in higher education is broadly defined yet often exclusively linked with the undergraduate student population. Based on a two-year qualitative study at Oregon State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this article explores the notion of doctoral student community. Community as experienced by science…

Young adulthood is filled with major life events and pursuing higher education is one of the most common transitions. It is also the time when many young adults enter the labour market, move out of their parents' household and begin family formation. These significant events affect each other and impact the rest of their lives. Given the…

There has been much discussion in recent years concerning student consumerism and its potentially negative impact on higher education. Much of the literature has been anecdotal (Bellah 1999; Delucchi and Smith 1997; Edmundson 1997; Smith 2000), while some studies have been more empirical in nature (Levine and Cureton 1998; Delucchi and Korgen…

"Minding the Gap" argues that in today's highly competitive, global economy, all young people need a postsecondary education. Yet only one in ten students from the lowest economic quintile in the United States currently earns a postsecondary credential. This timely and instructive book from Jobs for the Future explores policies and…

Today, there is little deviation from the standard, business-as-usual practices in the world of education. This book challenges these stale practices and asks the important questions that can improve schools beyond the current state of mediocrity. Written for administrators, supervisors, teachers, parents--even politicians and corporate…

The first volume of the 31st annual proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education conference presents plenary lectures; research forums; discussion groups; working sessions; short oral communications; and posters from the meeting. Plenary lecture papers include: (1) On Humanistic Mathematics Education: A…

Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group nationally, yet they continue to be undereducated and underemployed. This paper discusses one community college's success in preparing and transfering Hispanic students to 4-year institutions. The study examined a San Francisco Bay Area high transfer community college, which was experiencing an…

Which factors promote transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges and universities? What can individuals learn about transfer from tracking cohorts of students? What can they learn from studying colleges that have a strong track record of transferring students? These questions are at the center of a study funded in 2007 by the…

This occasional paper is intended to serve as a supplement to the larger annual volume, "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2007: Volume I: Secondary School Students." This supplement contains the graphic presentation of the trends in drug use for various demographic subgroups, namely those defined by gender, college…

In this paper, I use a nationally representative sample of American high school seniors in 1992 to examine change and stability in the employment patterns of youth as they make the transition from high school to college. Students with weak attachments to the labor force in high school tend to remain unemployed during the first year of college.…

This study examined the characteristics of students who default on their student loans and compared default among Whites, Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Four logistic regression models were developed using information from the National Post-Secondary Student Aid Study which contains an array of pre-college, college,…

Papers from a British conference on applied linguistics address various aspects of evaluation and language. Articles include: "Grammar and Language Impairment: Clinical Linguistics as Applied Linguistics" (Paul Fletcher); "Putting Our Practice Into Theory" (Deborah Cameron); "Applied Linguistics as Evaluation of Theory and…

This report summarizes the highlights of a national survey, part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, which examined college faculty demographic and biographic information, how faculty members spend their time, how they interact with students, their preferred methods of teaching and examining students, their perceptions of the…