Colleges and universities today understand that positive public attitudes about higher education are important because they affect their financial stability and public support of their academic programs. Recent opinion surveys highlight the public's view that colleges should provide more adequate career preparation, while students also see their…

The "Access to Democracy" project has two broad goals. It is an effort to understand community beliefs, attitudes and conditions that shape educational outcomes for community youth, and it is a way to focus community discussions on efforts that support higher educational attainment for residents. This report focuses on the lessons…

Increasing the college enrollment and graduation of minority students will require systemic change in educational institutions. Currently, school systems are not equal in all communities and there exists a widespread lack of awareness of the importance of higher education and visible mobilizing forces in minority communities. Moreover, increasing…

This study examined faculty, student, and community perceptions of the purpose and value of a college education. A total of 536 undergraduates, 121 faculty, 211 members of the community of a metropolitan university completed a survey based on the ACT College Outcomes Survey that focused on educational outcomes and student growth. The results…

A survey examined the attitudes of reading teachers to determine how teachers felt about (1) their undergraduate education in reading and their undergraduate reading instructors, (2) any graduate instructors or professional reading educators, and (3) their own teaching strengths and weaknesses. In addition, the study investigated the attitudes of…

Three retired teachers reflect on their teaching careers, which began in one-room schools in Wisconsin, and discuss their reactions to changes involving the educational level and credentials of teachers, curriculum and technology, teacher expectations of students, and community expectations of teachers. Their positive attitudes challenge…

This report overviews the rationale for conducting an ethnographic study of cultural factors that influence student aspiration in Tremont, a small rural community on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Although Tremont is the poorest community on Mount Desert Island, Tremont students scored as well or better on the Maine Educational Assessment than did…

This document, the third in a series of research reports on student financial aid, examines attitudes of Americans toward borrowing to finance educational expenses between 1959 and 1983. The impetus for the study was interest in the effects of the Federal Government's shift in student aid emphasis from grants to loans during this period. The study…

This paper reports on the techniques developed by Valdosta State College's Department of Modern Foreign Languages to promote interest in the study of foreign languages and culture. The techniques are divided into two major categories: internal and external. External activities include those for the benefit of high school students and teachers and…