The State of College Access and Completion

The State of College Access and Completion
Author: Laura W. Perna
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2013-07-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135106703

Despite decades of substantial investments by the federal government, state governments, colleges and universities, and private foundations, students from low-income families as well as racial and ethnic minority groups continue to have substantially lower levels of postsecondary educational attainment than individuals from other groups. The State of College Access and Completion draws together leading researchers nationwide to summarize the state of college access and success and to provide recommendations for how institutional leaders and policymakers can effectively improve the entire spectrum of college access and completion. Springboarding from a seminar series organized by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, chapter authors explore what is known and not known from existing research about how to improve student success. This much-needed book calls explicit attention to the state of college access and success not only for traditional college-age students, but also for the substantial and growing number of "nontraditional" students. Describing trends in various outcomes along the pathway from college access to completion, this volume documents persisting gaps in outcomes based on students’ demographic characteristics and offers recommendations for strategies to raise student attainment. Graduate students, scholars, and researchers in higher education will find The State of College Access and Completion to be an important and timely resource.

After Admission

After Admission
Author: James E. Rosenbaum
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2007-01-04
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1610444787

Enrollment at America's community colleges has exploded in recent years, with five times as many entering students today as in 1965. However, most community college students do not graduate; many earn no credits and may leave school with no more advantages in the labor market than if they had never attended. Experts disagree over the reason for community colleges' mixed record. Is it that the students in these schools are under-prepared and ill-equipped for the academic rigors of college? Are the colleges themselves not adapting to keep up with the needs of the new kinds of students they are enrolling? In After Admission, James Rosenbaum, Regina Deil-Amen, and Ann Person weigh in on this debate with a close look at this important trend in American higher education. After Admission compares community colleges with private occupational colleges that offer accredited associates degrees. The authors examine how these different types of institutions reach out to students, teach them social and cultural skills valued in the labor market, and encourage them to complete a degree. Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen, and Person find that community colleges are suffering from a kind of identity crisis as they face the inherent complexities of guiding their students towards four-year colleges or to providing them with vocational skills to support a move directly into the labor market. This confusion creates administrative difficulties and problems allocating resources. However, these contradictions do not have to pose problems for students. After Admission shows that when colleges present students with clear pathways, students can effectively navigate the system in a way that fits their needs. The occupational colleges the authors studied employed close monitoring of student progress, regular meetings with advisors and peer cohorts, and structured plans for helping students meet career goals in a timely fashion. These procedures helped keep students on track and, the authors suggest, could have the same effect if implemented at community colleges. As college access grows in America, institutions must adapt to meet the needs of a new generation of students. After Admission highlights organizational innovations that can help guide students more effectively through higher education.

Beyond College Access

Beyond College Access
Author: Sherell D. Wilson
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-10
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781638372837

This novel resource was written for educators and educational leaders, empowering them to meet the needs of traditionally underserved students, from acceptance to commencement and beyond. If you are committed to helping all students succeed in college, this book is for you. Using a three-pillar system informed by insights and research, Dr. Sherell Wilson's high-quality, solutions-focused, professional learning guide and workbook for schools, colleges, universities, and education nonprofits provides a research-informed model to improve outcomes and success for underserved college students. Only about 60 percent of students who enroll in college earn a degree within eight years, and that rate is significantly lower for racial and ethnic minority students and low-income students. Without the same equitable resources as their academic peers, these students often find it easier to simply transfer or drop out. The solution is not more outreach or support programs. Instead, the college experience itself must be fundamentally reevaluated for an increasingly diverse student population, and reshaped to address the deeper roots of the continuing lack of success. Understanding a student's motivation to continue college enrollment requires learning the key influences on their educational decision-making. Educational leaders need a reliable method that better identifies, measures, and structures student achievement for diverse learner populations in a practical way. Dr. Wilson addresses the many challenges by using a multifaceted and comprehensive approach. As part of a solid strategy to inspire, inform, and empower educational leaders, the book addresses three main concepts called pillars: enabling successful student transitions, promoting student growth and development, and enhancing student motivation to persist. Each pillar is divided into two parts: to examine and understand (guide) and to explore and develop (workbook). It is an eminently practical and engaging book that includes a wealth of resources and activities, enhanced by students telling of their own experiences. Online bonus resources include a members-only community and more.

The Toolbox Revisited

The Toolbox Revisited
Author: Clifford Adelman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The Toolbox Revisited is a data essay that follows a nationally representative cohort of students from high school into postsecondary education, and asks what aspects of their formal schooling contribute to completing a bachelor's degree by their mid-20s. The universe of students is confined to those who attended a four-year college at any time, thus including students who started out in other types of institutions, particularly community colleges.

Completing College

Completing College
Author: Vincent Tinto
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2012-04-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0226804526

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto’s pathbreaking book Leaving College has been recognized as the definitive resource on student retention in higher education. Now, with Completing College, Tinto offers administrators a coherent framework with which to develop and implement programs to promote completion. Deftly distilling an enormous amount of research, Tinto identifies the essential conditions enabling students to succeed and continue on within institutions. Especially during the early years, he shows that students thrive in settings that pair high expectations for success with structured academic, social, and financial support, provide frequent feedback and assessments of their performance, and promote their active involvement with other students and faculty. And while these conditions may be worked on and met at different institutional levels, Tinto points to the classroom as the center of student education and life, and therefore the primary target for institutional action. Improving retention rates continues to be among the most widely studied fields in higher education, and Completing College carefully synthesizes the latest research and, most importantly, translates it into practical steps that administrators can take to enhance student success.

Cost Control, College Access, and Competition in Higher Education

Cost Control, College Access, and Competition in Higher Education
Author: Robert Edward Martin
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781781958308

This book is much more interesting, and more important, than its technical-sounding title might suggest. It combines rigorous economic analysis with thoughtful conclusions as to the public purposes and organisational priorities of higher education. Paul Temple, Institute of Education, UK The book provides an interesting blend of conceptual, theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects on costs of higher education that are key to understanding how higher education institutions operate. The author examines in detail the complexities involved in the application of principles of firms to academic institutions, such as pricing, cost functions, product functions, quality, product differentiation, subsidies, competition, technology, risk bearing, etc. The examination of how charity market works, the economic forces that explain the demand for and supply of endowment funds is quite insightful. By emphasizing the public good nature of higher education, the social purpose it serves, the principle of equality in higher education, the principle of social contract, erosion of public trust, etc., while addressing a broad set of standard issues in economics of higher education relating to costs and quality of higher education, the book indeed forms a special reading on the subject. Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, Journal of Educational Planning and Administration Quality has never been more important for the future of higher education and the economy than it is today. Unfortunately, the decline in student quality is accompanied by costs that are out of control, a governance system that will not permit any reallocation of resources, and a society that expects higher education to address problems that are well beyond its core competencies. In this timely volume, Robert E. Martin presents a thorough treatment of the social contract between those who fund higher education and those who benefit from it. In-depth discussions include: the institution s role as steward of the higher education social contract the role of transaction costs, risk bearing, production technology, and asset ownership in determining the internal structure of the institution the market for academic charities price, quality, and advertising competition in higher education. Formal models of production and cost, optimal fundraising, the maximization of academic reputation, agency behavior, and the student's enrollment decision are also presented and analyzed. Cost Control, College Access, and Competition in Higher Education will be of great interest to higher education researchers and administrators, economists, and public policymakers.

Rewarding Strivers

Rewarding Strivers
Author: Richard D. Kahlenberg
Publisher: Century Foundation Books (Cent
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780870785160

" "Rewarding Strivers" presents provocative research and analysis that provides a blueprint for the way forward."--William R. Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admissions, Harvard University "The terrible 'secret' of higher education in America is that too few students from poorer families have access to it.... Kahlenberg again gathers the best thinkers on how to challenge this status quo."--Anthony Marx, President, Amherst College Today, higher education is a major force in promoting social mobility, yet colleges and universities seem more concerned with prestige than finding ways to make higher learning more accessible. Rewarding Strivers outlines two high-profile models that colleges and universities can follow in making the American Dream a realistic one for all students. Former New York Times education writer Edward B. Fiske (author of The Fiske Guide to Colleges) explores an exciting new effort to provide extra financial aid and academic support to low-income students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He finds that the "Carolina Covenant" has much to teach public and private universities across the country. In order to benefit from financial aid and support, low-income students first must be admitted to college. In a chapter that is likely to prove highly controversial, Georgetown University's Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl articulate a coherent and concrete way for colleges and universities to provide a leg up to economically disadvantaged students in selective college admissions. The authors make an important contribution to the nation's raging debate over affirmative action by calling on universities to expand preferences beyond race to also include socioeconomic status, and outlining how such a program could work in practice.

Debt-Free Degree

Debt-Free Degree
Author: Anthony ONeal
Publisher: Ramsey Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2019-10-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1942121121

Every parent wants the best for their child. That’s why they send them to college! But most parents struggle to pay for school and end up turning to student loans. That’s why the majority of graduates walk away with $35,000 in student loan debt and no clue what that debt will really cost them.1 Student loan debt doesn’t open doors for young adults—it closes them. They postpone getting married and starting a family. That debt even takes away their freedom to pursue their dreams. But there is a different way. Going to college without student loans is possible! In Debt-Free Degree, Anthony ONeal teaches parents how to get their child through school without debt, even if they haven’t saved for it. He also shows parents: *How to prepare their child for college *Which classes to take in high school *How and when to take the ACT and SAT *The right way to do college visits *How to choose a major A college education is supposed to prepare a graduate for their future, not rob them of their paycheck and freedom for decades. Debt-Free Degree shows parents how to pay cash for college and set their child up to succeed for life.

Preparing Students for College and Careers

Preparing Students for College and Careers
Author: Katie Larsen McClarty
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2017-08-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317221613

Preparing Students for College and Careers addresses measurement and research issues related to college and career readiness. Educational reform efforts across the United States have increasingly taken aim at measuring and improving postsecondary readiness. These initiatives include developing new content standards, redesigning assessments and performance levels, legislating new developmental education policy for colleges and universities, and highlighting gaps between graduates’ skills and employers’ needs. In this comprehensive book, scholarship from leading experts on each of these topics is collected for assessment professionals and for education researchers interested in this new area of focus. Cross-disciplinary chapters cover the current state of research, best practices, leading interventions, and a variety of measurement concepts, including construct definitions, assessments, performance levels, score interpretations, and test uses.