Many college athletes suffer career-ending injuries that leave them with expensive medical bills and lost scholarship opportunities. California's 2012 student athlete bill of rights mandated that the state's universities continue to care for college athletes by providing access to medical care and equivalent scholarships even if they were injured…

Self-reported positive effects of peer mentoring for mentors and mentees have included enhanced academic performance, greater sense of belonging, and retention, among other widely accepted benefits of the intervention. However, minimal quantitative or mixed methods research has focused on mentoring staff who design, implement, and therefore…

The COVID-19 pandemic created lingering challenges related to enrollment and made transparent the need for institutions to examine processes and remove enrollment barriers. Higher education may be perfectly poised to implement deep and lasting change that could result in increased access and improved retention. As student populations become…

Mission statements have become increasingly important for the accreditation of business universities and colleges. Thus, understanding similarities and differences in the content of business school mission statements is especially timely. The mission statement is also the first component of the strategic management process. It provides the…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how learners describe what factors lead learners to abandon a learning strategy and adopt another learning strategy and how the new learning strategy differs from previously learned and implemented learning strategies to reduce the extraneous cognitive load on a single science,…

As campus leaders called students, faculty, and staff back to in-person courses and student activities after the COVID-19 global pandemic, they were faced with employee retention challenges, burnout, recruitment limitations, and the changing nature of on-campus learning; there is ongoing discourse around these challenges and the extent to which…

Academic drift has been a central concept in the study of higher education for the past half-century, with higher education scholarship locating the phenomenon in fieldwide status competition dynamics stemming from the postwar massification and neoliberalization of higher education. In this paper, I explore the origins and evolution of academic…

The purpose of this quantitative causal-comparative study was to determine the frequency of marijuana use by California university students based on gender and ethnicity. This study was important because marijuana is the most used illicit substance in the United States, and there is limited research regarding the demographic characteristics of…

This study utilized critical leadership praxis (CLP) (Pak & Ravitch, 2021) framework in an intrinsic case study of Institutional Effectiveness/Institutional Research (I.E./I.R.) leaders within the California State University (CSU) system to explore how data-informed decision-making processes incorporate the understanding of varying…

Financial aid plays a significant role for many students when deciding to pursue a postsecondary education. The California State University (CSU) prides itself on making education available and affordable, and about 80% of attending students are receiving financial aid (California State University, n.d.-e). With so many students relying on aid,…

From 2016-2023, College Futures Foundation supported several California State University (CSU) campuses to partner with California community colleges in their regions to increase the number of students transferring from community colleges and completing bachelor's degrees at the CSU. In an effort to learn more about this work, College Futures…

For rural students, finding one's voice and identity on a college campus and developing a sense of belonging are important for engagement and degree persistence. Rural affinity groups can create a feeling of comfort or connection that affirms students' place identity and can lead to a more successful college experience. Additionally, an organized…

This multi-site, embedded case study drew on qualitative data to uncover how Black Student Unions (BSUs) within a large California university system bridged or buffered Black student experiences. The central purpose of this case study was to gain an understanding of the Black students' experiences within the BSU, framing the overarching research…

The undocumented student experience has been a topic of interest for educational institutions since the passing of AB 540 in 2001 and has become an increasingly prevalent phenomenon amid emergent legislation, ever-changing political climates, and the rise of Dream Centers and undocumented student liaisons across higher education systems. However,…

To prepare students for the 21st century, it is necessary for all students to have equitable access to technological resources, such as laptops and internet service. Despite efforts to eliminate barriers to accessing technology, digital equity gaps still remain. This study used critical narrative inquiry to understand the racialized experiences of…