This study tested Pascarella's reconceptualization of Tinto's model of the persistence/withdrawal process for use in a non-residential institution. Subjects (n=372) were college freshmen who had attended freshmen orientation and had completed an opinionnaire both during orientation and at the end of their first year in a medium-sized, urban…

Few challenges involved in forensics coaching are as challenging as finding and maintaining qualified students in the program. Urban commuter colleges possess unique opportunities for developing broad-based, diverse forensics programs. The University of Missouri-St. Louis (UM-St. Louis) provides an example of how directors might take advantage of…

The many different kinds of urban institutions are identified and the state of higher education in urban areas is discussed. The effect of the land-grant colleges movement is described. Three guiding philosophies during the present century about American education are identified: colleges as aristocratic institutions, meritocracy, and…

The retention of five cohorts of first-time freshmen and transfer students who reenrolled for 8 years in a nonresidential urban institution was investigated. Attention was directed to the effects of sex, race, and grade point average on retention, differences in retention for first-time freshmen and transfer students, and the extent to which…

A student survey at a metropolitan university examined priorities of both traditional and non-traditional students; the survey resulted from anxieties expressed by some students about not having a traditional college experience. The administration was trying to decide whether to allocate resources to create a football program within this commuter,…

The ability of Vroom's expectancy motivation theory to predict student satisfaction with the college environment, student participation at school, and student academic performance was studied. Specific objectives of the study were as follows: to test the ability of Vroom's valence model to predict student satisfaction, to test the ability of…

The role of the honors student on the urban, commuter campus is discussed with specific reference to the University of New Orleans. Prompted by a noted decline in the quality of the university's student body, an examination of the honor student population was conducted. Data were compiled from the ACT files and student records of all students who…

Indicators of persistence of nontraditional students at a large commuter state university were studied, and the literature on persistence was reviewed. The literature review covered student variables affecting retention rates, ethnic status and retention, institutional variables affecting persistence, and theoretical models that explain…

Institutional bonding was examined at a public, urban commuter college with exceptionally high attrition and visibly low morale. Changes in bonding and attrition were measured 6 years after a 2-year effort to develop school identity and student feelings of membership. It was found that a simple index of campus morale is provided by level of…

The relationship between community college transfer students' experiences at an urban, doctoral-granting commuter university and their enrollment intentions was studied using Bean and Metzner's conceptual model of attrition for nontraditional students. Of 300 community college transfer students at a state-supported urban university who were…

This speech describes Chicago State University's (CSU) model for encouraging student retention and success and the organizational changes that were necessary to implement the model during a period of fiscal constraints. A description of the institution and its context notes that CSU is a comprehensive, urban, commuter university serving a…

Student satisfaction with the environments of five commuter colleges was studied at an eastern university. A reliable instrument was developed to profile 2,392 students' perceptions of 30 aspects of the college environment. To determine how student characteristics relate to their evaluations of the college environment, eight regression analyses…

Factors contributing to the academic persistence of college students and those factors that may be amenable to institutional control were studied in 1980 at Georgia State University. The academic career of 4,481 students was studied for a 5-quarter period at this nonresidential, urban university. Multiple regression and multiple discriminant…

The most widely accepted classification system of institutions of higher education, the Carnegie system, does not provide any sub-groupings for the category of two-year institutions. This lack of precision has inhibited the understanding of the diversity among and between community colleges, their missions, functions, curricula, students, and…

The influence of family background, including parental education, on college student attrition was evaluated with first- and second-generation American students. A total of 701 enrolled students and those who left before graduation were surveyed at a primarily residential private liberal arts college and at a primarily commuter state-supported…