The "invisible" colleges - private, often church-affiliated institutions with relatively open admissions policies and enrollments under 2,500 - comprise one-third of the four-year colleges in the United States and enroll almost 500,000 students. The author believes that only these colleges can offer their particular students the kind of…

A fair amount of what we know about college students and how they are affected by their college experience has been learned from the data gathered in the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). In this article, CIRP's founder surveys the past, present, and future of the thirty-seven-year-old program. (Contains 12 references.) (GCP)

Examines how the first college year impacted students spiritually and religiously. Overall, students became less religiously active, but were more committed to integrating spirituality into their lives after one year. Further, religiousness and spirituality were highly correlated, although personal characteristics, institutional variables, and…

Examines recognition of the college experiences of African American undergraduates by environmental fit from the perspective of whether students see themselves as marginalized or "mattering." Explores the results of a study of undergraduate students utilizing this "mattering" perspective regarding their views on facets of university life. Examines…

The purpose of this research was to examine the campus experiences of undergraduate and graduate women students at a research university. Although it has been more than 20 years since the term "chilly campus climate" was described in Hall and Sandler's (1984) seminal work, this study found such a climate, in terms of campus safety, still exists…

The NEAIR 2010 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Saratoga Springs, New York conference. Papers in this document include: (1) Collaboration Between Student Affairs and Institutional Research: A Model for the Successful Assessment of Students' College Experience (Michael N. Christakis and Joel D. Bloom); (2) Direct…

The Committee on the Student in Higher Education conducted an 18-month study of various social and psychological influences that shape student attitudes, interests, and activities, and presents several recommendations that it believes could improve the quality of higher education. The report is based on the assumption that the college is a major…

This paper intends to begin a conversation about and suggest some principles for building more inclusive campus communities. The author explains what class culture is, how classism is embedded in everyday practices and why it is important to consider the way class shapes students, faculty, and staff, and in particular the working class. The paper…

Item and scale responses of students in 42 colleges to the College Student Experiences Questionnaire were examined to determine the frequency of student involvement in a variety of college activities. Results suggested that most students were primarily involved in studying and classwork, and did not engage in many extracurricular activities.…

The principal aim of this study was to investigate the impact of type of college, place of residence, and reference group identification on college environmental perception. An attempt was made to measure the variability in terms of college perception that existed among students in the following subgroups: (1) sophomore male students attending 3…

Describes the experiences of 16 African American students who attended four small, predominantly White colleges in the Southern Appalachian region of the United States. The African American community at these small colleges can sometimes be an unforeseen cultural experience especially for Black male and female nonathletes. Qualitative methodology…

A study investigated the extent to which 210 college students' learning orientations were shaped independently and jointly by their academic and nonacademic experiences. Findings indicated that the two kinds of experience each made statistically significant and unique contributions to gains in intellectual orientation after controlling for…

A study compared experiences of nontraditional students at two campus types at Miami University (Ohio): a traditional campus where older students constitute a small minority of the student population, and two branch campuses where there is a substantial number of older students. Results indicate areas in which lack of age diversity may have an…

The accounts of several autobiographers concerning the graduate student experience reveal how students find meaning in their academic apprenticeships. Academic autobiographers, now speaking as teachers themselves. focus on what was given to them by their teachers when they were students. (MSE)

Part of a comparative United Kingdom-Belgium study on adults in higher education, explored learning and teaching experiences of adult students and lecturers. Found that experiences are shaped by factors such as culture of the department, teaching styles of lecturers, and rigors of academic study. Adult students left the university with different…