The publication of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's influential new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," the findings of which were summarized in an article by the same authors in the March/April "Change," has caused a national furor centering around their multi-institutional findings that the…

Liberal arts colleges have prided themselves on providing students with a quality undergraduate education among a scholarly community who are interested in their holistic development. Past research has found students who attended liberal arts colleges more frequently experienced Chickering and Gamson's (1987, 1991) good practices in undergraduate…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), one of the most widely used annual surveys of undergraduates in the country, is specifically designed to assess the extent to which college students are engaged in empirically vetted good practices in undergraduate education. One of the major assumptions of the NSSE is that in measuring the extent…

Despite substantial efforts across postsecondary education to increase minority participation in study abroad, the homogeneity of study abroad participants remains largely unchanged (Desoff, 2006; Shih, 2009). This study applies an integrated student choice model (Perna, 2006) to identify differences between white and minority (African-American,…

Contends that the resources/reputation approach, which uses proxy variables to measure university quality, and the alumni outcomes approach, which may simply reflect institutional recruitment practices, are fundamentally flawed. Maintains that the effective educational practices approach is a major step forward; suggests that a combination of the…

Using the principles of good practice in undergraduate education defined by Chickering and Gamson (1987, 1991), this study examined the role of institutional type in African-American students' experiences. Controlling for confounding influences, students attending historically Black colleges reported significantly greater levels of good practices…

Academic selectivity plays a dominant role in the public's understanding of what constitutes institutional excellence or quality in undergraduate education. In this study, we analyzed two independent data sets to estimate the net effect of three measures of college selectivity on dimensions of documented good practices in undergraduate education.…

Using multi-institution data and a longitudinal, pretest-posttest design, this study investigated the impact of honors programs on student experiences of good practices in undergraduate education as well as cognitive development in the first year of college. We found students in honors programs advantaged in terms of the good practice measures…

This study estimated separately the unique effects of three dimensions of good practice and the global effects of a composite measure of good practices on the cognitive development, orientations to learning, and educational aspirations of students during their first year of college. Analyses of longitudinal data from a representative sample of…

A national sample of college students who initially aspired to be, or later became, physicians was used to determine the influence of precollege characteristics, college origins, and the academic and social experience of college. Major effects on attainment were college characteristics and academic experience. (Author/MLW)

The following five common myths about college education are examined: (1) that institutional reputation reflects educational quality; (2) that traditional teaching methods are proven effective; (3) that good teachers are good researchers; (4) that faculty influence students only in class; and (5) that student academic and nonacademic experiences…

Researchers estimated the net effects of liberal arts colleges on 19 measures of good practices in undergraduate education grouped into seven categories. Analyses of 3-year longitudinal data from five liberal arts colleges, four research universities, and seven regional universities were conducted. Net of a battery of student precollege…

The value-added approach to the assessment of student outcomes examines actual or inferred changes in students' performance over time. It also attempts to separate the net effects of instruction from previous ability or simple maturation. Others may have different definitions of this concept, and this vagueness causes problems. Suggested ways to…