Background: Previous research has indicated that placing emphasis on communal goals within the field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education can yield beneficial learning outcomes. However, there remains a relative dearth of investigation into the factors that contribute to the success of STEM education programs…

Student retention has been a serious issue for many community colleges globally for several decades. In a community college in Jamaica, persistence rates have been steadily declining within the last several years. The purpose of this study was to investigate students' experiences with the pre-college program that was designed to prepare students…

The Suburban Boulevard Community College (SBCC), a pseudonym, has been experiencing a low persistence rate among first-year full-time students. Further, a gap in practice exists where college administrators at the SBCC were not assessing first-year students' level of college readiness as a likely predictor of low persistence. The study was…

University is a critical timepoint for students in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career pathway. Gender differences in the persistence of STEM students have been established, with female students more at risk for attrition from this career pathway. While the persistence of undergraduate STEM students has been a focus…

The main goals of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) are to achieve primary education for all school children aged 6-14; reduce gender, regional and social spaces, and complete 100% retention of school children. Although, some obstacles and lacunas are pointed out here and there. Therefore, this paper attempted to analyze infrastructure facilities,…

Purpose: First-generation students (FGS) experience numerous challenges during their studies because of their background attributes and lack of social capital required to navigate institutions of higher learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of perceived social support and a sense of belonging on academic persistence…

The mission of America's community college system is to provide access, responsiveness to community, and equity (Troyer, 2015). In response to increasing competition and evolving student preferences, more and more community college courses are being offered fully online. As of fall 2019, 70% of community college students were taking at least one…

When attending predominately residential universities, commuter students are the minority and typically have poorer outcomes than residential peers. Research demonstrates commuter students identify factors impacting on their persistence and success, include time taken to commute, lack of social integration and a poor sense of belonging. In…

This article focuses on the need identified by African Canadian students for a "racial oasis" -- a physical space designed to increase their exposure to positive racial identities -- which can support them in developing a community of support among peers who understand the effects of anti-Black racism, and to identify strategies for…

Purpose: This study aims to advance the understanding on individual variations in PhD candidates' personal interest in their doctorate and supervisory and research community support, and several individual and structural attributes potentially having an impact on the profiles. Design/methodology/approach: The authors explored the interrelationship…

A significant number of university students are leaving their institutions before completing their degrees. The present research project applied embeddedness theory, from organizational research, to understand student retention in a tertiary student population, and develop a quantitative instrument that measured university student embeddedness. In…

Establishment of online communities in distance education has been linked to improved engagement, retention, and learning outcomes. This study investigates how online community building was fostered in the text-based Discussion Board (DB) and multimodal VoiceThread (VT) in one of the postgraduate units offered by Open Universities Australia.…

Annually, approximately one million students drop out of college or university. About 43% of first-time, full-time students at public universities graduate within six years. This is a completion crisis according to some education leaders. Student support initiatives like learning communities are promising. This quantitative study investigated the…

High dropout rates, delay, and dissatisfaction among PhD students are common problems in doctoral education. Research shows that many different factors are associated with doctoral success, but these factors have not often been studied simultaneously. Moreover, characteristics of the PhD project are mostly neglected. In this study, we investigate…

School alienation is a complex phenomenon that has recently attracted considerable attention from psychologists because of the negative consequences that may result from it, such as poor academic performance, learning difficulties, school disengagement, behavioral problems, and withdrawal from the educational system, which interfere with students'…