Asian Americans are generally perceived to be disproportionately enrolled in four-year postsecondary education institutions despite evidence of Asian Americans being concentrated at both two-year and four-year postsecondary education institutions. This perception of Asian Americans has contributed to limited attention to Asian Americans'…

Graduate programs in business and STEM fields face a persistent challenge of recruiting and enrolling domestic Black and Latinx students. As an administrator for one such program, the M.S. in Product Management program, located in the Northeastern United States, I aimed to increase the number of domestic-born Black and Latinx applicants to consist…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student aspirations and other background characteristics with student engagement level in their first year. Despite the knowledge that engagement is influential in student success outcomes, completion rates have not changed in more than thirty years (Gonyea, 2006). Hsieh (2014)…

Internships can be valuable learning experiences, providing opportunities for professional exploration, development, and growth. While 74% of freshmen plan to participate in an internship during college, only 48% of seniors are completing these experiences (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2017a, 2017b). This study examined the ability of…

Student enrollment at community colleges within the U.S. has remained flat or decreased for over a decade (AACC, 2019). Before COVID-19, community colleges had been experiencing a steady decline in enrollment for approximately ten years (Irwin et al., 2021). The purpose was to determine whether demographic, environmental, and academic variables…

Through the power of social media and increased access to mobile technology, our country is witnessing a rise in college student-led protests and mobilizing to try to challenge racism on college campuses (Curwen, Song, & Gordon, 2015). One of the key functions of higher education institutions is cultivating our engaged citizenry (Hurtado,…

Despite roughly 21.2 million veterans living in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), only 2 million service members and their families were eligible for benefits under the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 (American Council on Education [ACE], 2008). Furthermore, less than 1 million beneficiaries received education…

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in competency-based education, a learning modality which is mastery-based, self-paced and focused on demonstrations of knowledge and skill rather than where or how they were attained (C-BEN, 2016; Cuckler, 2016; Tate & Klein-Collins, 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2002). The face of higher…

It is argued that free-tuition higher education increases opportunity for underrepresented students with positive equity implications. Moreover, access to higher education for free expands existing visions of equal opportunity, as it changes aspirations and behavior. In 2015, Tennessee became the first state in the nation to implement a universal…

College decisions are often the result of a variety of influences related to student background characteristics, academic characteristics, college preferences and college aspirations. College counselors recommend that students choose a variety of schools, especially schools where the general student body matches the academic achievement of…

This phenomenological research explored the lived experiences of successful African American men attending a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in the Midwest. The guiding questions for the study were (a) What positive characteristics do successful African American men demonstrate at HBCUs that offset major problems, concerns, and…

Although in recent decades many of the outer Appalachian counties have stabilized economically, the central region of Appalachia continues to have the highest concentration of distressed and at-risk counties in the country. The geographic isolation and cultural characteristics of Appalachian communities have limited their ability to achieve…

Service-learning has roots deep in higher education. Community colleges and service-learning have an organic relationship as they both strive to represent and support their local communities. This study implemented propensity score matching to study the impact of service-learning on student outcomes for community college students. Much of the…

Through this mixed-method study, the researcher investigated social reproduction in a student's decision to follow the Louisiana Career/Basic Core Diploma Path. In 2008-2009, Louisiana's cohort graduation rate was 67.3%, which was well below the national average of 75.5%, ranking Louisiana forty-sixth in the country. This rate led to the…

Community colleges serve as the college of choice for nearly half of all postsecondary students. The role of the community college continues to adapt and change, and the colleges that were once seen as vocational and technical schools now serve as a jumping off point to future educational endeavors and a variety of careers and occupations.…