Improving the academic achievement of students for success in college in ways that lead to college degree attainment is a growing concern for our nation. Educators are exploring the topic of student engagement to better understand critical issues surrounding college degree attainment. Through analysis of data collected from the Survey of Entering…

In 2006, the Board of Governors (BoG) revised Code Section 400.1.5 on "Improving Retention and Graduation Rates," asking each campus to consult with University of North Carolina General Administration (UNCGA) and establish goals for increasing these rates for the period 2008-09 through 2012-13. The goals included freshman-to-sophomore…

There is a strong consensus that students ought to leave high school ready for both college and careers. But what, exactly, does that mean? This summary provides an overview of the first attempt to answer that question with empirical research. Presented is an empirical analysis of the mathematics and English literacy skills needed in a range of…

Since 2001 Colorado, Illinois, and Maine have all enacted policies that require high school juniors to take college entrance exams--the SAT or the ACT. One goal of these policies was to increase college enrollment based on the belief that requiring students to take these exams would make students more likely to consider college as a viable option.…

Little has been done to profile or describe private junior colleges, their role in the higher education landscape, their practices, and in particular, how these institutions use and offer athletic programming. The current study was designed to profile the athletic program offerings of private junior colleges and to describe the extent of their…

Community colleges are becoming the primary access point for a growing number of underrepresented and underserved students in the higher education system. First-generation college students make up a large proportion of this population, comprising about 45% of community college attendees (Nomi, 2005). Research has explored the transfer success of…

Sociologists of education have explored the relationship between students' postsecondary aspirations and their propensity to get "cooled out" in community colleges. However, researchers have directed little attention to students whose aspirations remain stable over long periods of time or to the different roles that college degree goals…

In this article, Carola Suárez-Orozco and colleagues investigate how to improve undocumented undergraduate student experiences across a variety of US campuses. The authors draw on a national survey of diverse undocumented undergraduates attending two- and four-year public and private institutions of higher education. Using an ecological framework…

Objective: This study analyzes how ethnicity, gender, and non-traditional student characteristics relate to differential online versus face-to-face outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses at community colleges. Method: This study used a sample of 3,600 students in online and face-to-face courses matched by…

This qualitative case study at a two-year community college investigated the reasons behind a persistent gap in the college students' engagement level in several key areas such as active and collaborative learning and student-faculty interaction as demonstrated in the longitudinal Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and the…

This article focuses on an exploratory study, undertaken in 2009-2012, which explored student transitions from a foundation degree (level 5) into the third year of a BA honours degree (level 6). Direct entry students and staff from an early years programme at a post-1992 British university and second-year foundation degree students and staff from…

In 2001, the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) was created to provide information about student engagement, a key indicator of learning and, therefore, of the quality of community colleges. The focus was helping colleges use survey data to guide efforts to improve student learning and retention. In 2003, to further assist…

This "First Look" presents findings from the provisional data of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2014 data collection, which included three survey components: (1) Institutional Characteristics for the 2014-15 academic year; (2) Completions, covering the period July 1, 2013, through June 30, 2014; and (3)…

In this issue of the Occasional Paper Series, the authors reimagine progressive pedagogy within the framework of digital pedagogy and online practice. The issue begins with "Notes from the Special Issue Editors," Helen Freidus, Mollie Welsh Kruger & Steven Goss. In the first set of essays, "Inside the Online Classroom," the…

There is little discussion in the Design-Based Research (DBR) literature on how to design an intervention that has the potential to be highly effective. The act of designing is usually viewed as engineering something from theory or research on best practices. This paper challenges that universal belief and presents successful design as an…