Academic support services such as coaching and mentoring programs have shown the most promise, but only when they are implemented in a very proactive manner--when they provide students with personalized follow-up and attention. Unfortunately, these programs are often expensive, making them hard to implement or scale at a regional or national…

In this paper, I discuss the process of redesigning and teaching a mandatory, academic skill building course for students on academic probation at Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU) in Atlantic Canada. The rationale for redesigning the course was to offer an alternative curricular framework, including instructional approaches, to course…

Administrators at a large, public university launched a mandatory success course for freshmen placed on academic probation at the end of their first semester. We compared the rates of course participant and nonparticipant return to good academic standing; persistence to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years; and graduation (within 4 to 5 years). The…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of an enhancement program by examining a cohort of 57 students admitted on probationary status to an MSW program in 2002 and required to participate in the enhancement program. The demographics for students admitted on probation demonstrate that the program is effective in increasing the diversity of the…

This study compares academic policies related to academic good standing, probation, suspension, and expulsion at nine universities over 17 years providing a benchmark to which others can compare. The print and on-line versions of the undergraduate catalogs from 1988-2005 for each of the nine public universities in the southeastern United States…

As part of MDRC's multisite Opening Doors demonstration, Chaffey College, a large community college in Southern California, ran two versions of a program that was designed to improve outcomes among students who are on probation. Both versions offered a "College Success" course, taught by a college counselor, which provided basic…

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy…

In this study, I examined the effectiveness of adding insight-oriented strategies to an intrusive academic-advising approach with students on academic probation. Twenty males and 22 females at a comprehensive private university participated in the study. Students who attended three to eight meetings had a significant improvement in semester GPA…

Institutions of higher education have developed a host of interventions to increase the retention of first-year students whose academic performance is inadequate. This study evaluated the overall effectiveness of an intervention strategy designed for first-year students on academic probation at a mid-western research university. A…

Project Success is designed to help students on academic probation improve their performance so that they can return to good academic standing at their university. This article describes the program so institutions can consider its use in their efforts to address retention issues on their campus. Research that studies the program's effectiveness…

When parents support children in college, does this undermine the incentive to do well? The authors test the hypothesis that parental cash transfers induce college students to commit moral hazard in their studies on a sample of nearly 1300 undergraduates at two Midwestern universities. After controlling for a wide variety of factors influencing…

This report describes the design, implementation, and subjective evaluation of a pilot program, in which graduate practicum students offered short-term counseling to 13 high-risk (academic probation) undergraduate students at Marywood College (Pennsylvania). The counselors-in-training were expected to provide direct counseling services and…

A questionnaire administered to 90 profoundly deaf postsecondary students in the third week of their first academic quarter revealed factors which predicted end-of-quarter probation/suspension correctly for 60 percent of the subjects. Discriminating variables included negative affect regarding their school, negative high school experience, and…

Student discipline problems in some high schools have been exacerbated by external societal problems. This paper presents outcomes of two discipline programs implemented in a small, rural high school. One program involved the creation of a Saturday school for students serving detention. The Alternative Learning Education Center (ALEC) was…

The Escuela Internacional Sampedrana (EIS) in Honduras implemented a new discipline program in its Primary School during the 1996-97 school year. This paper contains findings from three evaluations of the program--an initial analysis, a midyear report, and a year-end report. The first report analyzed the number of suspensions and detentions, as…