First-generation college (FGC) students start schools of higher education with lower academic skills and critical thinking skills (Terenzini et al., 1996) that impact their academic success and prospects of earning academic degrees (Davis, 2010; Katrevich & Aruguete, 2017). Diverse interactional experiences with students from different racial…

The purpose of this study was to assess differences in four-year persistence and graduation rates between students who participated in a research-based academic first-year seminar (n = 385) and a matched quasi-control group who did not (n = 385). Although research has consistently identified positive outcomes for students who participate in these…

Gender disparities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) faculty composition remain a major issue in U.S. higher education. Specifically, the underrepresentation of women of color has been described as a crisis. We developed the Workplace Climate and Persistence Scale (WCPS) for STEM faculty to assess departmental-level…

Research on the dearth of teachers of color has focused on disparities in college enrollment, completion, and academic major. The present study examines whether disparities may begin earlier. Analyses of nationally representative longitudinal data show that students of color are 2 to 4 percentage points less likely to hold teaching career…

The concept of 'professional boundaries' -- widely used in sectors where professional relationships between adults are regulated -- has not commonly been drawn on in higher education (HE) to understand and denote appropriate relationships between faculty or staff and students. Nevertheless, in recent years the question of how to regulate sexual…

In recent decades, education leaders and researchers have increasingly sought to disaggregate key higher education outcome data--graduation rates, attainment, employment, and income--by race and ethnicity in order to uncover and narrow equity gaps. The same is true, recently, for affordability, especially as it relates to the differential impact…

Many institutions adopted test-optional policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that nonstandardized parts of the application may play a more influential role in admissions. Our research team examined extracurricular activities reporting in more than six million applications submitted from the Common Application dataset and found that…

John Henryism (JH), named after the American folk hero John Henry, is a construct characterised by a behavioural predisposition for high-effort coping with psychosocial stressors. While it has been rigorously studied in the health sciences, little empirical research has focused on how JH emerges within educational contexts, specifically during…

Objective: In a random sample of undergraduate students, we aimed to: (1) establish the prevalence of choking and being choked; (2) examine demographic and situational predictors of being choked, and (3) examine demographic and situational predictors of choking someone. Participants: 4168 randomly sampled undergraduates at a large public U.S.…

Objective: This study examined the prevalence of food insecurity (FI) among students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Southeastern United States. Participants: Students attending four HBCUs (N = 351) completed an anonymous Web-based survey. Methods: Food insecurity was assessed using the 2-item Hunger Vital…

Research has shown that undergraduate research experiences can have substantive effects on retaining students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, it is impossible to provide individual research experiences for every undergraduate student, especially at large universities. Course-based undergraduate research…

This joint study by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project points to important differences between the four-year and six-year completion rates for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduates who received bachelor's degrees. It investigates four-year and six-year college completion trends for 2004-14 CPS…

Following insights gleaned from a previous study the authors conducted, and to encourage greater transparency in the quantitative research design of higher education studies, the authors tested which institution-level variables found within the activism literature can be retained when modeling student activism behavior at multiple levels (Morgan,…

Decolonisation is a socio-political movement which challenges Eurocentrism and post-colonial notions of power. This has numerous implications for higher education institutions (HEIs), where the content and delivery of curricula may be seen as products of colonial legacy. The decolonisation agenda has increasing support from students, the academy,…

This study employed design-based logistic regression to examine the extent to which attending a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) magnet high school, school demographics, and student-level factors explain a student's intent to declare a STEM major in the first semester of college. The results show only student-level factors…