An approach/avoidance behavioral model of college student attrition

We used approach/avoidance theory to develop a conceptual model of student attrition that we estimated using 262 first- and second-year students at a major midwestern research university. We found that we could use psychological theories to enhance our understanding of the retention process; that psychological and sociological factors accounted for 37 percent of the variance in student attrition; and that institutions can enhance retention by developing programs that increase appropriate academic and social approach behaviors and reduce avoidant behaviors.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Pittsburgh, PA, November, 1994.     

Exploiting structural information for semi-structured document categorization

This paper examines several different approaches to exploiting structural information in semi-structured document categorization. The methods under consideration are designed for categorization of documents consisting of a collection of fields, or arbitrary tree-structured documents that can be adequately modeled with such a flat structure. The approaches range from trivial modifications of text modeling to more elaborate schemes, specifically tailored to structured documents. We combine these methods with three different text classification algorithms and evaluate their performance on four standard datasets containing different types of semi-structured documents. The best results were obtained with stacking, an approach in which predictions based on different structural components are combined by a meta classifier. A further improvement of this method is achieved by including the flat text model in the final prediction.     

The Bachelor of Arts: slipping into the twilight or facing a new dawn?

Undergraduate students have historically engaged with the humanities and social sciences through the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree programme. Recent experiences suggest that the relevance and the value of the degree to the modern world is now being challenged: populist press questions the value of the humanities to the modern knowledge economy; public funding for teaching in the social sciences and humanities in higher education has been slashed in the UK and elsewhere; humanities and social sciences schools and departments in the USA, New Zealand and Canada rationalised and restructured; BA programmes in some Australian universities closed. All seems to suggest that the sun is setting on the BA. This paper argues that, in Australia at least, these actions have been made on the basis of a flawed understanding of contemporary BA programmes. It asserts that the contemporary BA is a very different creature to that of even the recent past. The paper offers a new definition of the contemporary Australian BA degree programme developed as a result of a comparative historical analysis research study across 39 Australian institutions. It extends an argument that perhaps the time is right for a re-examination of what is meant by ‘BA’ – before we declare the degree a relic of the past.     

So how big is big? Investigating the impact of class size on ratings in student evaluation

Australian universities have a long history of use of student satisfaction surveys. Their use has expanded and purpose changed over time. The surveys are often viewed as distorted by external influences such as discipline context, class size and year level of participants. This paper reports on the results of a large-scale investigation interrogating the influence of class size on student satisfaction ratings. The investigation was conducted at a large, comprehensive, research-intensive Australian university. It drew on the data from a survey administered to all students in all units of undergraduate and postgraduate study conducted across the university over four semesters. Data were collated into four class size categories. This categorised data were subjected to statistical analyses. This paper discusses the approach taken, the results of the analysis and their implications for student evaluation of teaching and learning.