Purpose is an indicator of healthy human development and believed by some theorists and educators to be an important outcome of college. The aim of this study was to test the potential for assessing purpose using a person-centered analysis, thereby providing more individual-specific understanding of students' purpose development, and second by…

Gender-Sexuality Alliances (GSAs) are school clubs for LGBTQ+ youth and peer allies to support one another. This eight-week weekly diary study considered whether a youth's positive and negative affect during a given week could be predicted by experiences in their most recently attended GSA meeting. Ninety-nine GSA members (M[subscript age] =…

Objective: To assess the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on college students' stress, life satisfaction, and college experiences and investigate sources of resilience. Participants: 1,042 students from 11 U.S. colleges and universities. Methods: Longitudinal study with surveys in winter 2018-2019 and fall 2021. Interviews with 54 survey respondents,…

Public discourse often frames the value of undergraduate education in financial terms--credentialing and increased earning power. Students must prepare to be self-supporting, but are financial prospects their only important goals? We asked 1,500 students from 11 U.S. colleges to write about their goals, the reasons their goals were important, and…

This study provides an overview and a snapshot of new student orientation (NSO) and new student e-orientation (NSEO) programs, with a focus on the content and feature analysis of the NSEOs. It offers an overview of currently available NSO programs of 100 randomly selected community colleges from a master list of nearly 900 community colleges in…

This brief reviews state plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education as of October 1, 2017. It focuses on three key topics for early learning in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): setting clear goals and policy priorities for early learning, integrating early learning into school improvement, and supporting early childhood educator…

Part-time faculty teach approximately 58% of U.S. community college classes and thus manage learning experiences for more than half (53%) of students enrolled in community colleges (JBL Associates, 2008). Often referred to as "contingent faculty," their work is conditional; the college typically has no obligation to them beyond the…

This report summarizes preliminary and exploratory research conducted by the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Institutes for Research on urban school systems participating in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The study is one of the first large-scale analyses…