Qualitative differences in learning disabilities across postsecondary institutions

Many college students receiving accommodations for specific learning disability (SLD) do not meet objective criteria for the disorder. Furthermore, whether students meet criteria depends on the diagnostic decision model used by their clinician. The authors examined whether the relationship between diagnostic model and likelihood of meeting objective criteria is moderated by students' postsecondary institution. They administered a comprehensive psychoeducational battery to 98 undergraduates receiving accommodations for SLD at 2-year public colleges, 4-year public universities, and 4-year private colleges. Most 4-year public university students failed to meet objective criteria for SLD. In contrast, most 4-year private college students met objective criteria based on significant ability-achievement discrepancies, and most 2-year public college students met objective criteria based on normative deficits in achievement and cognitive processing. Students who met objective criteria also differed significantly in degree of academic impairment. The authors' findings indicate qualitative differences in SLD across postsecondary settings and have implications for the identification and mitigation of SLD in college students.     

A spectrum of support: current and best practices for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) at community colleges

More than 50% of all college students with a disability enroll in public 2-year institutions. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a type of disability that affects a growing number of students in postsecondary education. Currently, over 70% of 2-year public institutions enroll students with ASD. In spite of increased awareness, the vast majority of existing ASD research focused on primary and secondary education. Research on practices that support students with disabilities in the community college environment is imperative for promoting student success. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore current and best practices that support students with ASD at 2-year public, postsecondary institutions. A web-based tool was used to survey a nationally representative sample of disability service professionals from 367 2-year, public institutions (35.4% response rate). Our results show reasonable accommodations with an academic focus (e.g., extended exam time) were provided more frequently than sensory accommodations. General support services that focused on the transition to college were offered by 42% of the institutions surveyed, and 26% of institutions supplied ASD-specific services. These results indicated that many institutions provide students with a baseline level of academic accommodations; however, accommodations and support services that specifically target the functional limitations of ASD are offered less frequently. Best practices for supporting students with ASD were synthesized and implications for practice were discussed.     

Nationwide survey of postsecondary education services for students with learning disabilities

Postsecondary services for students with learning disabilities vary a great deal from campus to campus, and published guides to postsecondary education services are often inaccurate and incomplete. A nationwide survey was conducted to investigate student service provisions in 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities. The purpose of the study was to identify and catalog postsecondary education service goals and options for students with learning disabilities, and to determine differences between the goals service providers have for these students and services actually provided. The findings and their implications for service providers at both high school and college levels are discussed.     

Experiences of Students with Disabilities Transitioning from 2-Year to 4-Year Institutions

Individuals with disabilities are attending postsecondary institutions and successfully completing both 2-year and 4-year degrees. Although current literature identifies numerous factors associated with success for 2-year college transfer students in general, given the unique needs of individuals with disabilities, it is possible that other factors play important roles in their postsecondary experience. Through phenomenological research, we explored the experiences of a diverse group of 10 academically successful students with disabilities who transferred from 2-year to 4-year postsecondary institutions. Our findings reveal that although their experiences in many ways paralleled those of students without disabilities, our participants identified positive and negative experiences specifically related to their disabilities. We offer recommendations for 2-year college programming and support services.     

Course-Taking Effect on Postsecondary Enrollment of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 were used to examine the effect of academic and career or technical education course-taking in high school on deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) youth’s postsecondary enrollment in 2-year, 4-year, and career or technical education institutions. We examined the proportion of academic and career or technical education courses taken, completion of algebra, and completion of an occupationally specific course of study. Propensity model analyses indicated that academic course taking significantly increased the odds that DHH students would enroll in postsecondary school. Completion of a higher proportion of career or technical education courses was not related to enrollment in postsecondary education, including career and technical education schools. Implications for practice and future research are discussed, including the importance of secondary transition planning staff both encouraging DHH students who have a goal of future postsecondary attendance to take a rigorous, academically focused high school curriculum, and providing students with the support to complete these courses.     

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT,DIRECT FINANCIAL AID,AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS

This article examines federal student financial aid, with an emphasis on direct grant aid programs to serve needy students attending community colleges. It describes the economic, historical, and political assumptions and incentives to show how public community colleges and their students have been impacted by federal and state direct student aid policies. The article then presents recent data regarding how economic incentives inherent in federal and state direct student aid policies impact public community colleges and their students when compared to other types of institutions of postsecondary education. Data presented show that lower-income students attending public community colleges were likely to receive less direct grant aid from federal and state sources than those attending for-profit proprietary two-year institutions.     

Student Loans and Repayment Rates: The Role of For-profit Colleges

This paper examines the institutional determinants of federal loan status for a recent cohort of college students. We first set out how institutions influence loan accumulations and repayment rates, with particular focus on for-profit colleges. We then test a set of hypotheses about loan status and repayment using national data on loans, defaults, and repayments merged with college-level data. For all measures of loan status there are significant raw gaps between for-profit colleges and public and not-for-profit colleges. After controlling for student characteristics, measures of college quality, and college practices, large gaps in loan balance per student remain: students in for-profit colleges, especially the 2-year colleges, borrow approximately four times as much as they would have at a 2-year public college. For a student attending the ‘average’ college, their repayment rate is predicted to be 5 [9] percentage points lower if that college is for-profit compared to public [non-profit]. Repayment rates are also lower for colleges with higher proportions of minority students and with lower graduation rates; contrary to some claims, single-program institutions appear to have higher repayment rates.     

Community College Student Dropouts from Higher Education: Toward a Comprehensive Conceptual Model

ABSTRACT

Historically, higher education research has focused on traditional students (i.e., recent high school graduates at a residential, 4-year institutions), but community college students are quickly becoming the new traditional student (Jenkins, 2012). In the fall of 2011, more than one third (36%) of all students enrolled in postsecondary education and almost half (46.7%) of all students enrolled in a public postsecondary institution were enrolled at a community college (Knapp, Kelly-Reid, & Ginder, 2012). However, community colleges have struggled to match the persistence rates at other institutional types. The 2011 2-year public community college national 3-year persistence-to-degree rate was 26.9% (American College Testing [ACT], 2011). The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding the most prominent theoretical frameworks for community college student persistence and suggest a new theoretical construct. The resultant framework is termed the Collective Affiliation Model because it views the student’s sense of belonging with the college as only one of many senses of belonging in the student’s life (e.g., family, work). The Collective Affiliation Model does not view student dropout as the student’s inability to integrate into the life of the institution; rather, it views it as the institution’s inability to collectively affiliate with the student. This model’s strength is that it does not work from a student deficit model. Instead, it provides a new framework for researchers and practitioners to better understand and address student drop-out at community colleges.     

Student Flow Between Community Colleges: Investigating Lateral Transfer

The traditional unidirectional (“linear”) postsecondary path from high school to a community college to a 4-year institution into the workforce represents accurately a decreasing proportion of the pathways actually taken by students through higher education. Instead, students increasingly exhibit patterns of enrollment that take them through multiple postsecondary institutions, both within levels of the higher education system (e.g., multiple community colleges, multiple 4-year institutions) and across levels (e.g., movement back and forth between community colleges and 4-year institutions). These “swirling” patterns of enrollment are widely recognized by scholars of higher education, but they remain poorly understood. In this study, I employ data that address 89,057 first-time students in the California community college system to answer a number of key questions concerning lateral transfer between community colleges, which, according to prior research, constitutes one sizeable component of student “swirl”. Building on the very limited work on this topic, I examine whether the reported high prevalence of lateral transfer holds true under a more stringent operational framework than that employed in prior work. I explore whether lateral transfer is primarily an artifact of students enrolling simultaneously in multiple community colleges, sometimes called “double-dipping”. I investigate the timing of lateral transfer from several different perspectives to determine how lateral transfer fits in students’ progress and development. Finally, I probe the relationship between students’ level of academic investment in their current community college and the risk of lateral transfer.     

Postsecondary education for students with learning disabilities

Increasingly, students with learning disabilities are attending community colleges and traditional 4-year colleges and universities. This article presents the results of a review of the literature on services available or recommended for students with learning disabilities. The results suggest that postsecondary institutions have begun to provide a wide array of services to these students. There is little empirical evidence, however, on the effectiveness of those services. An agenda for future research is also discussed.     

The Status of Women and Minorities Among Community College Faculty

This article uses data from the 1993 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty to examine the status of women and minorities among faculty employed at public 2-year colleges nationwide. A variety of outcomes are considered including: employment status, salary, rank, and tenure status. The analyses show that human capital, structural, and market characteristics appear to explain the observed differences in the employment experiences of women and men faculty at public 2-year colleges and some, but not all, of the observed racial/ethnic group differences. When compared with the results of other research, this study suggests fundamental differences in the reward structures for faculty at public 2- and 4-year institutions. Implications of the analyses are discussed.     

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.     

A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Modularized,Computer-Assisted,Self-Paced Approach to Developmental Math

Abstract

Community colleges are a large sector of postsecondary education. In 2016–2017, the United States had nearly 1,000 public 2-year postsecondary institutions (community colleges), serving almost nine million students, representing 39% of all undergraduates. The majority of entering community college students require developmental (or remedial) math. Success rates in the developmental math course sequence and college more broadly are discouragingly low. Policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike are eagerly searching for reforms to improve success rates, but there is a dearth of causal evidence on the effectiveness of most proposed reforms. We sought to answer the following question: what effect does a modularized, computer-assisted, self-paced approach to developmental math (compared with a more “traditional” direct-instruction course alternative) have on students’ likelihood of completing the developmental math course sequence? Findings from a randomized controlled trial (n =1,403) are presented. The program was well implemented; however, we did not find evidence that this approach was superior to the “traditional” math class. Although these results are disappointing, they are important because modularization and self-paced computer-assisted instruction are popular reforms.     

High School Students’ Accuracy in Estimating the Cost of College: A Proposed Methodological Approach and Differences Among Racial/Ethnic Groups and College Financial-Related Factors

High school students’ accuracy in estimating the cost of college (AECC) was examined by utilizing a new methodological approach, the absolute-deviation-continuous construct. This study used the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) data and examined 10,530 11th grade students in order to measure their AECC for 4-year public and private postsecondary institutions. The findings revealed that high school students tended to overestimate the cost of college, especially 4-year public in-state tuition. Second, this investigation explored AECC differences across racial/ethnic groups. Lastly, this research examined how AECC differed based on racial/ethnic and college financial-related factors (importance of cost on college enrollment, knowledge of and intent to complete FAFSA, and eligibility for financial aid). This examination is important because it is the first critical analysis of AECC and is timely given the data were collected immediately after the Great Recession.     

The effect of articulation agreements on community college transfers and bachelor’s degree attainment

For more than a century, community colleges have provided a postsecondary education alternative to the traditional, 4-year university. Enrolling disproportionate numbers of both disadvantaged and nontraditional students, the community college sector has seen unparalleled gains in enrollment over the past few decades. Along with these increases in enrollment, there has been a shift in focus toward transfer to 4-year institutions, as well as the development of articulation agreements. Established in order to ease the transfer process from community colleges to 4-year colleges/universities—for those students interested in obtaining a bachelor’s degree—these agreements currently exist in more than 30 states. Via two-level, hierarchical linear modeling, this article examines the student and school level characteristics of community colleges that affect transfer and bachelor’s degree attainment rates. Also examined is the impact of articulation agreements. Ultimately, while articulation agreements are not found to yield a significant effect on transfer rates, they are found to have significant, positive effects on bachelor’s degree attainment rates.     

High School Economic Composition and College Persistence

Using a longitudinal sample of Texas high school seniors of 2002 who enrolled in college within the calendar year of high school graduation, we examine variation in college persistence according to the economic composition of their high schools, which serves as a proxy for unmeasured high school attributes that are conductive to postsecondary success. Students who graduated from affluent high schools have the highest persistence rates and those who attended poor high schools have the lowest rates. Multivariate analyses indicate that the advantages in persistence and on-time graduation from 4-year colleges enjoyed by graduates of affluent high schools cannot be fully explained by high school college orientation and academic rigor, family background, pre-college academic preparedness or the institutional characteristics. High school college orientation, family background and pre-college academic preparation largely explain why graduates from affluent high schools who first enroll in 2-year colleges have higher transfer rates to 4-year institutions; however, these factors and college characteristics do not explain the lower transfer rates for students from poor high schools. The conclusion discusses the implications of the empirical findings in light of several recent studies that call attention to the policy importance of high schools as a lever to improve persistence and completion rates via better institutional matches.     

Bachelor’s Degree Completion Across State Contexts: Does the Distribution of Enrollments Make a Difference?

Growing accountability pressures, accompanied by a lack of readily accessible measures of institutional performance, have led to an increasing focus on graduation rates. Although previous research has illuminated myriad factors influencing students’ likelihood of educational success, it has not paid adequate attention to how state contexts may shape student outcomes. I build on the small but growing body of research exploring the role of state characteristics in facilitating student success in higher education. Controlling for a range of state and individual attributes, I examine how one aspect of the state context––the distribution of enrollments in 2 vs. 4-year public institutions––is related to bachelor’s degree attainment of students attending public 4-year colleges and universities. The results suggest that the larger the proportion of students attending community colleges in a state, the higher the probability of bachelor’s degree attainment at public 4-year institutions. This appears to be a product of student sorting: the presence of community colleges facilitates sorting of students into higher education in a way that is associated with higher degree completion at public 4-year institutions. These findings have important implications for research on student outcomes and policies aimed at evaluating the performance of public 4-year institutions.     

An investigation of the linkage between technology-based activities and STEM major selection in 4-year postsecondary institutions in the United States: multilevel structural equation modelling

Among the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), much attention has been paid to the influences of math- and science-related learning contexts on students’ STEM major selection. However, the technology and engineering learning contexts that are linked to STEM major selection have been overlooked. In response, a nationally representative sample of young adults in the US was used to investigate the relationship between technology-based activities and students’ STEM major choices in 4-year postsecondary institutions. Multilevel structural equation modelling (ML-SEM) revealed that the frequent use of video or computer games was related strongly to students’ STEM major selections in 4-year postsecondary institutions, after taking into account demographic characteristics and math achievement scores. The results provide evidence that promoting technology-rich learning environments is a significant factor in motivating students to pursue STEM careers.     

A portrait of remedial instruction: faculty workload and assessment techniques

Remediation in postsecondary education continues to be an issue that is hotly debated by institutional leaders and state policymakers. The National Center for Education Statistics [The National Center for Education Statistics. (2003). Remedial education at higher education institutions in fall 2000. PEQIS. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.] estimates that 98% of public 2-year and 80% of public 4-year institutions offered at least one remedial course. The need for remedial courses is also demonstrated by the growing number of students who enroll each year. Studies that examine students and placement are found in the literature, but few examine the faculty who teach in remedial programs [Boylan, H., Bonham, B. S., Jackson, J., & Saxon, D. P. (1995). Research in Developmental Education, 12(1), 42–52.]. The purpose of this study was to examine faculty who teach remedial courses. In particular, we were interested in faculty workload and the assessment techniques employed by faculty based upon type and level of institution. More specifically, data was analyzed using the NSOPF: 99 database on faculty at 2-year and 4-year institutions as well as faculty at private and public institutions. Some comparisons between faculty teaching remedial courses and nonremedial courses are presented.     

Success in Community College: Do Institutions Differ?

Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to 4-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina’s community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a 4-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? Although we find variation along both dimensions of success, we also find that part of this variation is attributable to differences in the kinds of students who attend various colleges. Once we correct for such differences, we find that it is not possible to distinguish most of the system’s colleges from one another along either dimension. Top-performing institutions, however, can be distinguished from the most poorly performing ones. Finally, our adjusted rates of success show little correlation either to measurable aspects of the various colleges or to the metrics used by the state.