Comprehensive Cocurricular Support Promotes Persistence of Community College STEM Students

ABSTRACT

Despite good career prospects in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, persistence of students in STEM fields of study at the community college and transfer to universities to pursue STEM majors is often quite low. Theories of persistence emphasize the importance of engagement, integration, validation, and financial assistance. The DCCCD STEM Institute is a comprehensive cocurricular program for community college STEM students. It illustrates the application of persistence theories in a multicollege urban district with a diverse student body. The STEM Institute uses a student/faculty cohort model with mentoring, professional skills programming, and scholarship support to transform student perceptions of themselves, integrate them into a STEM educational community, and validate their membership within that community. Institute membership also reduces isolation and financial concerns as potential barriers to persistence. STEM faculty also participate in professional skill development through a cross-college and cross-disciplinary cohort. Data on students who participated in the DCCCD STEM Institute from 2010 through 2014 show that 92% remain in a STEM educational or career pathway. Important practice implications for community college professionals include (1) forming student and faculty cohorts, (2) facilitating the development of mentoring relationships, (3) providing adequate centralized staffing, and (4) integrating resources and opportunities into a unified cocurricular program.     

Alumni giving at a small liberal arts college: evidence from consistent and occasional donors

This study observed the financial giving of alumni at a small, private liberal arts college covering a 23 year period of consistent (longitudinal) and occasional donors. After observing historical characteristics of donors, college officials have a greater probability of accurately predicting future alumni gifts. Key determinants of alumni giving for both consistent and occasional donors are as follows: volunteering for the college, major in a social science division, language school attendance, residence in states with alumni chapters, and employment within the financial sector. Additionally, alumni with relatives who have attended the college, and alumni who have played a varsity sport during college, are two groups very likely to donate. Our study suggests that Alumni Offices may benefit from rating donors' giving potential (and subsequently focusing on these individuals), extensively publicizing reunions, and by targeting those who volunteered during their college years. Among occasional donors, Alumni Offices may want to target males, fraternity/sorority members, and alumni who are close to retirement.     

Aid for all: College coaching,financial aid,and post-secondary persistence in Tennessee

Beginning with the high school class of 2015, Tennessee Promise will provide college coaching and last-dollar aid to every high school graduate making a seamless transition to community college. We examine the program that preceded this effort and evaluate its potential effect on college-going and college persistence. Knox Achieves originated in Knox County, Tennessee with the class of 2009. Eligibility was neither need-based nor merit-based, negating some of the application hurdles that accompany other aid vehicles. We find that program participation is strongly associated with an increased likelihood of graduating from high school and enrolling directly in college, albeit with a modestly lower chance of starting in a four-year college. The evidence suggests that aid per se is not the only lever by which Knox Achieves worked: college enrollment and college credit gains are largest among lower-income students who likely saw little to no scholarship aid from the program.     

Increasing Access to Higher Education Among Low-Income Students: The Washington State Achievers Program

The purpose of this study was to assess how a comprehensive precollege intervention and developmental program among low-income high school students contributed to college enrollment outcomes measured in 2006. Our focus was on the Fifth Cohort of the Washington State Achievers (WSA) Program, which provides financial, academic, and college preparation support to 500 high school students who come from the lowest 35% of Washington state income levels. One important feature of the WSA Program is that it provided funding for complete high school curriculum reform among 16 Washington high schools that have a high prevalence of low-income students. The data set contained three groups of students from these 16 high schools: Funded Achievers who were part of the WSA Program and received funding for college; Nonfunded Achievers who were part of the WSA Program and but did not receive funding for college; and Nonrecipients who were neither part of the WSA Program nor received funding for college. Results from generalized multinomial logistic models found two trends (a) early and continuous financial support for college along with being active in the WSA Program nearly guarantees enrollment in college and increases enrollment in 4-year and highly selective colleges; and (b) even in the absence of financial support for college there are still quantifiable and positive effects on college-going for just participating in the WSA Program and receiving its abundant nonfinancial resources and support. These results persist even with strong controls for selection, background, academic, financial, aspiration, and school-level variables.     

台湾地区大学入学制度多元化探析——以“繁星计划”为主

台湾地区高等教育发展迅速且充满特性。2002年全面实行大学多元入学方案;2007年推行＂发展国际一流大学顶尖研究中心＂计划,以台湾大学为首的12所高校,结成以世界高水平大学为目标的战略联盟,由此诞生了与台湾＂教育部＂＂多元入学方法＂并行的、以学校推荐入学的、旨在招收优秀毕业生的＂繁星计划＂。本文拟就台湾高等教育发展特色、大学入学制度改革内涵及启示做一初步探讨。     

数字化校园环境下财务管理信息化应用探析

数字化校园建设给高校财务管理带来新的发展机遇,在技术层面实现了学校对下属经营服务单位的财务监管,规范了组织收入行为,增强了学校对资金的调控能力。为进一步加强高校财务管理信息化建设,需要贯彻全员参与思想,加强制度建设,提高人员素质,实现财务管理信息化系统的稳定运行与网络安全,重视财务管理的信息审计,加强银校合作保证圈存资金的专款专用。     

The Laser Academy: An After-School Program to Promote Interest in Technology Careers

We present a review of an after-school program that has been running at Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York for the past 5 years. The program is unique among after-school activities for high school students in several ways. First, it deliberately focuses on students who do not excel in science and math courses and students who are unsure about a college career. Second, it targets typically underrepresented minorities in the technology fields, namely blacks, Hispanics, and women. Third, it introduces these students to high-tech career options which do not require 4 years of college. The goal of the program is to make the students aware of technician-level careers and to give them a chance to learn the skills needed for such careers in order to help them make an informed decision about their future.     

The Effect of a Community College Promise Scholarship on Access and Success

Based on a mixed methods case study design, the current study reports on a Promise Scholarship program offered by a community college and its affiliated foundation to graduating students at a nearby high school located in a low-income neighborhood of a large city and with a high proportion of African American and other students of color. Using a mix of government and private funding, all graduating students, regardless of financial need or academic achievement, were offered free tuition at the community college for one year. The promise of a scholarship plus an intensive outreach effort resulted in the majority of graduating seniors submitting scholarship applications and a four-fold increase in the proportion of graduates from the high school who subsequently matriculated at the community college. Once at college, the student recipients demonstrated a high rate of quarter-to-quarter retention. However, few placed into college-level courses in English and math, and their academic progress at the end of the first year was modest.     

Are college costs worth it? How ability,major, and debt affect the returns to schooling

This paper examines the financial value over the course of a lifetime of pursuing a college degree under a variety of different settings (e.g. major, student loan debt, individual ability). I account for ability/selection bias and the probability that entering freshmen will not eventually graduate.I find the financial proposition of attending college is a sound investment for most individuals and cost scenarios, although some scenarios do not pay off until late in life, or ever. I estimate the present discounted value of attending college for the median student to vary between $85,000 and $300,000 depending on the student’s major. Most importantly, the results of this paper emphasize the role that risk (e.g. the nontrivial chance that a student will not eventually graduate) plays in the cost-benefit analysis of obtaining a college degree.     

美国高等教育成本、价格和学生资助——基于国会指令下的调研

在学费上涨引起公众普遍担忧的背景下,上个世纪末,美国国会指令了两项大规模的高校成本、价格和学生资助的研究.研究报告确认了高校财务理论框架,澄清了高校成本、价格和学生资助的概念,考察了它们的变化趋势和相互关系,分析了成本和学费提高的原因.美国的研究对我国有启发.     

Academic Readiness and Career/Life Planning: A Collaborative Partnership Focused on Student Learning

The umbrella program called Keeping Options Open, initiated by Johnson County Community College (JCCC), is a collaborative partnership between JCCC and Johnson County high schools to meet the educational and career needs of learners. Assessment of academics and interests are key components when assisting students to make the best decisions regarding their high school and postsecondary educational plans. A pilot program was designed to deliver a series of 3-year tiered career development/academic readiness workshops for students and parents beginning in the sophomore year and building through the junior and senior years. The goal was to enhance career development for high school students by linking it with academic readiness.     

Perceiving school performance as instrumental to future goal attainment: Effects on graded performance

Three studies examined the perception among college students that school performance is instrumental to future goal attainment. Study 1, an exploratory study involving free report goal assessments, indicated that perceived instrumentality (PI) is a subjectively salient aspect of college students’ achievement motivation. Study 2 provided evidence for the structural distinctiveness of PI from self-efficacy, task value, and the achievement goals, and also demonstrated that PI prospectively predicts unique variance in graded performance beyond that accounted for by these motivational variables. Study 3 demonstrated that PI prospectively predicts unique variance in graded performance independently of future time orientation. We argue that a comprehensive understanding of the purposes underlying classroom achievement behavior requires consideration of how school performance may be perceived as instrumental to the attainment of valued life goals.     

柔性管理在独立学院共青团工作中的移植应用

共青团工作的主要对象是团员青年,要使团员青年围绕学校的培养目标全面发展,进一步团结和凝聚团组织力量,就必须在＂以人为本＂上做好文章;而独立学院共青团组织更应该充分利用独立学院的独有特点解决其独有的问题,做好＂人＂的工作,因此合理有效地移植柔性管理是非常有必要的。     

About Wen I-To

Tsinghua College was a unique institution in that there were four years of middle school and four years of higher school. It was one or two years short of the standard of a regular college because its goal was to prepare students to study in the United States. The school was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which appointed its president. Its students were recruited from the various provinces in China through open examinations, the number allocated to each province being in proportion to the amount of the Boxer Indemnity paid by that province.     

虚拟专用网在高校财务管理中的应用研究

鉴于对财务数据安全性和保密性的考虑,高校的财务信息管理系统多数脱离于校园公共网络,而独立运行于财务部门的内部局域网。但随着高校办学体制的日益革新与建设规模的不断扩大,多校区、跨地域以及多部门办学模式已成为普遍现象,从而产生了集中式的办公模式与远程协同办公需求之间的矛盾。文章研究的主要内容是针对这一矛盾,采用实例的方法,探究如何运用新的网络技术(VPN)搭建高校财务信息管理系统的网络运行环境,实现财务信息管理系统远程协同办公的目的,同时满足财务数据安全性的需求。     

关于大学英语课程终结性评估体系的思考

全面、客观、科学、准确的教学评估体系对于实现大学英语课程教学目标至关重要。本文以教育测量学基本原理和大学英语教学实际为依据,认为大学英语课程终结性评估体系要结合学校自身特点和实际,综合考虑学生群体和个体差异,形成全国统考和学校测试相结合的两位一体;分析目前学校测试所存在的较为普遍的问题,即对命题工作缺乏正确认知、对命题过程缺乏有效监控、对命题质量缺乏科学把握,从新颖性、原创性、前瞻性和科学性等视角,提出学校测试要以先进的测试理论为指导,取得良好测试反拨效应,促进大学英语教学目标的实现。     

Conditional cash penalties in education: Evidence from the Learnfare experiment

Wisconsin's influential Learnfare initiative is a conditional cash penalty program that sanctions a family's welfare grant when covered teens fail to meet school attendance targets. In the presence of reference-dependent preferences, Learnfare provides uniquely powerful financial incentives for student performance. However, a 10-county random-assignment evaluation suggested that Learnfare had no sustained effects on school enrollment and attendance. This study evaluates the data from this randomized field experiment. In Milwaukee County, the Learnfare procedures were poorly implemented and the random-assignment process failed to produce balanced baseline traits. However, in the nine remaining counties, Learnfare increased school enrollment by 3.5 percent (effect size = 0.08) and attendance by 4.5 percent (effect size = 0.10). These results suggest that well-designed financial incentives may be an effective mechanism for improving the school persistence of at-risk students at scale.     

Willingness to Pay and Preference for Private Institutions

This study focuses on the correlates of student preference for private institutions over public institutions in their senior year in high school, with a particular focus on the effects of students' subjective responses to tuition costs and to financial aid availability. The data for this study were drawn from a longitudinal study of postsecondary educational choice of high school students in the state of Indiana. The results indicate that in addition to student and family background and student academic characteristics, students' subjective responses to tuition costs and to financial aid availability have a substantial linkage with student preference for private or public institutions. This study suggests that family and ascribed characteristics alone do not explain student preference for the type of postsecondary institution. Students' subjective responses to tuition costs and to financial aid availability are also directly related to student preference for a certain type of postsecondary institution, independent of student family background and academic characteristics. This suggests that the willingness to pay, not only the ability to pay, plays a direct role in student college choice decisions. The implications for policy making are discussed.     

MARKETING THE PERCEPTIONS OF A COMMUNITY COLLEGE'S POSTSECONDARY ENROLLMENT OPTIONS PROGRAM

A vast majority of colleges and universities have provisions for admitting high school students to special college programs (Robinson & Noble, 1992). These postsecondary enrollment options programs are vital because they link local higher education to the community by actively involving high school personnel, students, and parents in planning for college. Establishing and maintaining this link presents unique challenges to educators because it must meet the needs of a diverse population. The purpose of this study was to assess how students and parents perceived a suburban community colleges’ postsecondary enrollment options program. Basing marketing strategies on these perceptions provides colleges and universities an effective means to maintain the established community link.     

The Impact of School Improvement Grants on Student Outcomes: Findings From a National Evaluation Using a Regression Discontinuity Design

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the School Improvement Grants (SIG) program received more than $3 billion with the goal of substantially improving student achievement. The SIG program’s funding was to help states turn around the nation’s persistently lowest-achieving schools using one of four school intervention models—transformation, turnaround, restart, or closure. We used a regression discontinuity design and a large sample of schools from more than 20 states to evaluate the impact of implementing a SIG-funded intervention model on use of SIG-promoted practices and student outcomes. Our regression discontinuity design exploited cutoff values on the continuous variables used to define the SIG eligibility tiers to compare outcomes in schools that just met the eligibility cutoff for receiving SIG funding to outcomes in schools that just missed it. We found that SIG had no impact on any of the outcomes we examined, including math and reading test scores, high school graduation rates, and college enrollment rates. Using a correlational analysis, we found the turnaround model was associated with larger student achievement gains in math than the transformation model for grades 6 through 12.