Credit momentum policies, or performance-based financial aid policies, have become increasingly popular among policymakers seeking to improve degree completion rates. This paper examines Indiana's 30-credit-hour completion policy on first-time, full-time students who receive the Twenty-First Century Scholars (TFCS) Promise Program. Using…

Student self-perception is related to persistence in science. Yet how self-perception develops over time is less clear. We examined student self-perception trajectories and their relationship with gender, persons excluded due to ethnicity or race (PEER) status, and first-generation college student (FGCS) status across a yearlong introductory…

We examine how the racial wealth gap interacts with financial aid in American higher education to generate a disparate impact on college access and outcomes. Retirement savings and home equity are excluded from the formula used to estimate the amount a family can afford to pay. All else equal, omitting those assets mechanically increases the…

Objective: This research seeks to understand food insecurity experiences among students at a large public university in the southern United States. Participants: Participants consented and completed an online survey disseminated on campus in April-May 2021 (N = 418). The participants sampled were predominantly undergraduate (78.2%), females…

Objective: To identify social determinants of mental health embedded within college students' living and learning conditions. Participants: Participants included 215 mostly undergraduate (95%) business students at a diverse, urban west coast public university (48% women; mean age 24). Methods: Participants completed an online self-report survey…

This essay highlights a collaborative approach to teaching a university course on community-based research while working with a variety of community partners. As part of a broader research project, the course involved faculty from a range of disciplines as well as community sponsors from public and private sectors. Working with a complex array of…

The attainment gap in Higher Education outcomes between under-represented ethnic minority groups and the white student body is a problem at a variety of institutions around the UK, requiring immediate and sustained interventions and actions. The issue will not be solved by specific interventions and changes in practice but instead will require a…

In this article, we draw from a larger qualitative study to examine how racial encounters are experienced for three non-Black members in a university-based historically-Black student organization. Using the idea of community-as-difference, we present three findings that break open assumptions about racial coexistence: the importance of being…

The racial differences in student loan debt must be interpreted through a lens of wealth building inequality. Black individuals in particular are negatively affected by official and unofficial policies that create barriers to building wealth. Financial aid policies then exacerbate this inequality with an Expected Family Contribution (EFC) formula…

Dysconscious racism is generally defined as the unquestioned acceptance of culturally dominant norms and privileges, with three categories used to describe college students' reasoning for enduring racial inequity. These range from the historical determinism of slavery to racially exploitive standards inherent in American society. However, few…

For many, college is a period of transition, marked with acute stress, threats to success, and decreases in self-efficacy. For certain groups of students, the risk of these poor outcomes is elevated. In this study, 348 students from a large residential university in the western United States were surveyed to understand the role of psychological…

Once on the fringes of higher education, online learning is now mainstream. Today, there are fewer entirely online or entirely face-to-face students; increasingly, college students are taking courses in a variety of instructional formats. How might this new reality of diverse modalities affect student success? Does a greater or lesser proportion…

Overview: This study examines the complex effects on families when mothers reenroll in school at any level. The population of mothers in school--especially in college--is large and predominantly composed of women of color (Reichlin Cruse et al. 2019; Anderson 2022). Though there is a mounting emphasis on increased education and skills in the…

The study examined the associations between individual and social contextual factors and academic performance among Multiracial and White college students. Individual factors included depression, anxiety, psychosocial stress, and access/interaction with supports and social contextual factors included sense of belonging and perceived discrimination…

A lack of empathy for victimized individuals has been cited as a reason for why bystanders fail to intervene when they witness bullying. However, limited research has addressed how different empathic and compassionate responses could account for diverse bystander behaviors. In this study, we investigated the unique associations of empathic…