The benefits and broad perspectives that can result from higher education and the tension that exists between vocational and liberal education are addressed. It is suggested that this tension is powerfully related both to the content and the quality of higher education. The importance of introducing students to those themes of life that are…

A major goal of the National Rural Project's (NRP) Management Information System (MIS) is to aid the parents and educators of rural handicapped students in delivering quality educational services and fully implementing the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, PL 94-142. MIS tailors reports to the specific needs of three target audiences…

The extent to which the middle school becomes a true educational alternative is directly related to the ability of middle school educators and researchers to identify and investigate the developmental needs and learning capacities of students. Three important developmental characteristics of early adolescents are a high need for peer friendships,…

Prepared as the result of a revision of the vocational education curricula by members of the Western State Curriculum Council (American Samoa, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada, and the Trust Territories of the Pacific), this guide is intended to help meet the needs of both students and a highly technical and rapidly changing society. It…

Specific goals sought by a group of off-campus study program directors were identified in an effort to develop an appropriate instrument for assessing whether the student participants perceived these goals as having been actualized within themselves. An Individual Opinion Inventory was developed for this purpose. Students participating in overseas…

The intent of a recent study was to extend earlier studies on college environments into the 1970's by examining the impacts of various aspects of the academic environment at 12 California colleges and universities. The effects are investigated of several aspects of the college environment on students' satisfaction with the college experience,…

Drawing heavily on the speeches and discussions that took place at a League for Innovation in the Community College conference held late in 1977 in North Carolina, this paper discusses the problem of increasing productivity in community colleges. Although escalating costs and decreasing revenues over the past decade have given the problem of…

This paper presents an evaluation of both process (program content) and outcome (effects on children) of a day care center and emphasizes the importance of considering process variables in order to understand program results. Subjects for the study were 25 control children who were not attending a preschool program, 25 children who attended the…

This study attempted to determine the effect of a self-development seminar on the learning of 27 randomly selected college freshmen as measured by grade point averages (GPA), academic units completed, and retention rate (the percentage of students returning for a second term) for one semester beginning fall 1977. Both experimental and control…

Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) has developed a peer helper training program based on a modular training design. A peer helper at VWCC is a student attending the college who has been trained and evaluated as being effective in specifically defined interpersonal helping relationships. Peer helpers provide services as an adjunct to those…

Student development has come to have a special meaning that focuses on activities undertaken for the educational benefit of the student outside the traditional purview of the professor. It has a positive educational rather than administrative aspect that has come to be associated with student personnel work. This accentuating of the positive has…

Environmental assessment of Colorado State University (CSU) was undertaken to identify mismatches between the needs and goals of students and the resources and goals of the University. The perceptions and attitudes of a large representative sample of CSU students were measured using the College Student Questionnaire (CSQ) and the Environmental…

In an attempt to make basic social science education more responsive to the needs of students in a rapidly changing society, the authors developed and conducted an experimental course entitled "Economics and Politics in a Changing Society" (EPICS). The goals of this course include improvement in thinking ability and creativeness, progress in…

Topics covered in these essays on testing in high school English are (1) the need for major literature tests to determine not factual recall but whether students are growing into rational and humane persons through their experiences with English; (2) the usefulness of pre-tests and re-tests, and the need to emphasize tests as a means of…

This study examined the effects of residence hall homogeneous housing and tutoring on college freshmen. The following areas were investigated: (1) achievement patterns; (2) attrition; (3) achievement of average or high ability students; (4) achievement of students from various socio-economic backgrounds; and (5) study habits. The results show that…