Stretching Every Dollar: The Impact of Personal Financial Stress on the Enrollment Behaviors of Working and Nonworking Community College Students

ABSTRACT

Using 1,400 survey responses collected from two large urban community college systems in Texas, this study examined how students’ financial habits, stress, and well-being influenced their enrollment behaviors. Working students, compared to their nonworking peers, reported significantly lower levels of overall financial well-being. After controlling for other relevant predictors of persistence, regression results showed that students with lower financial well-being and higher financial stress were more likely to doubt their ability to complete college. Results for the restricted sample of working students revealed a strong relationship between a student’s financial well-being and stress. These students also reported having to reduce their semester course load and/or stopping out for a semester in order to work more hours to pay for expenses. These findings suggest that initiatives aimed at helping students improve their financial literacy and money management skills may be an effective, yet underutilized, way to improve retention rates at community colleges.     

Community violence and early childhood language development: The moderating role of maternal efficacy and satisfaction

This paper estimates the acute effect of community-level homicides on early childhood language development and explores the moderating role of maternal efficacy and satisfaction in Chile. It uses data from the 2017 wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of Chilean Children (N = 1194, M_age: 52.8 months, 52% girls). Children in municipalities with homicides 1 month before the Peabody Picture Vocabulary assessment scored between 0.18 and 0.41 SDs lower compared to children in the same municipality but for whom homicides happened after the assessment. On average, higher maternal satisfaction appears to have a protective effect, though it dissipates in the most violent municipalities. Evidence that higher maternal efficacy protects children from the negative effects of violence is inconclusive.     

ArchiBabel: Tracing the Writing Architecture Project in Architectural Education

Though much recent scholarship has investigated the potential of writing in creative practice (including visual arts, drama, even choreography), there are few models in the literature which discuss writing in the context of architectural education. This article aims to address this dearth of pedagogical research, analysing the cross‐disciplinary Writing Architecture Project based in the undergraduate course of Queens University Belfast's School of Architecture. Over the course of four years, teaching staff, in partnership with the university's Learning Development Service, technicians and specialist librarians, have addressed an unfortunately persistent struggle for both architecture students and professionals alike to research and construct argument in written form. The article examines the current problem as identified in the literature before analysing the efficacy of the variety of teaching methods used in the Writing Architecture Project, with conclusions about the project's success and continuing challenges.