High impact educational practices are active learning strategies that benefit learning outcomes, increase student engagement, and support student retention. This study examines the retention and persistence impact of student philanthropy, an active learning approach that engages students with the community by incorporating a philanthropy component…

Certain student populations including youth formerly in foster care, first-generation college students, those with mental illness and substance abuse issues, and racial and ethnic minority students, face persistent challenges to their pursuit of college education, contributing to low graduation rates compared to their peers. This article details…

The contributions in this collection provide important answers and compelling evidence that honors programming does contribute something above and beyond what honors students themselves bring to the educational experience. While many of the chapters rely on analytic methods that are more widely used in some fields than in others, authors have…

This study provides an overview and a snapshot of new student orientation (NSO) and new student e-orientation (NSEO) programs, with a focus on the content and feature analysis of the NSEOs. It offers an overview of currently available NSO programs of 100 randomly selected community colleges from a master list of nearly 900 community colleges in…

Preparing students for transfer to a four-year college or university is a core function of community colleges. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System (KCTCS), which is comprised of 16 colleges with over 70 campuses, plays a major role in promoting student mobility between the two-year and four-year sectors of postsecondary education…

High-impact educational practices (HIPs) have long been central to honors pedagogy. From undergraduate research to service learning, study abroad, internships, and writing-intensive courses, these practices shape the honors educational experience and influence retention successes in honors. These practices also inform the synergy between honors…

Over the past decade, SREB state policy-makers have focused on actions to reduce dropout rates and increase high school graduation rates. Some policy-makers have suggested that raising their state's compulsory attendance age (often called the dropout age) to require students to stay in school until age 17 or 18 is an important step. However,…

Fewer than one-third of degree-seeking, full-time freshmen in the nation's public four-year institutions graduate in four years. To help raise this rate, SREB examined many strategies that public institutions are using to help more students earn bachelor's degrees, with particular attention to students in regional colleges and universities who…

In 1997, policymakers in Kentucky enacted perhaps the most sweeping higher education reform legislation of any state in the past two decades. Kentucky's Postsecondary Education Improvement Act (House Bill 1) has been heralded by many higher education leaders across the U.S. as one of the great success stories--a rare instance when a state's…

In 2009, Excelencia in Education launched the Ensuring America's Future initiative to inform, organize, and engage leaders in a tactical plan to increase Latino college completion. An executive summary of Latino College Completion in 50 states synthesizes information on 50 state factsheets and builds on the national benchmarking guide. Each…

There has been a wealth of research conducted on the national epidemic of high school dropouts spanning several decades. It is estimated that the class of 2009 cost the nation $335 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetimes (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2009). The citizenry of the country suffers not only because of…

In the first decade of the 21st century, the nation, the states, and colleges and universities began to grapple with the challenges of globalization, changing demography, the implications of the digital era, and of a less expansive public sector. Although not a transformative period for higher education, the decade saw significant innovations in…

It's all about the mission at Berea College. Founded on a Utopian dream, Berea has been doing diversity longer than any school in the South. Berea College isn't a product of the civil rights movement. Not even close. The school pre-dates Reconstruction. In fact, at 150 years old, the first integrated, co-educational school in the South pre-dates…