Are today's undergraduates getting more for their money, given the rising costs of higher education? Based on student perceptions, this report offers a mixed response. In the areas that matter most to students--the quality of instruction and academic advising--student satisfaction has not changed noticeably over the past five years. Yet students…

The psychodynamics of learning and teaching at a time of changing funding arrangements and priorities are explored and discussed through students' accounts of their experience of university. The contextual, organizational and socio-political characteristics implicated in these psychodynamic processes are considered. Among the psychodynamic issues…

Findings are presented from a study of undergraduate students' experiences of understanding in first-year engineering. At the end of their first year of study 86 Swedish students of electrical engineering and computer science were asked to reflect in writing on their experiences of studying and learning. Fifteen of them also took part in…

Wireless data communications in form of Short Message Service (SMS) and Wireless Access Protocols (WAP) browsers have gained global popularity, yet, not much has been done to extend the usage of these devices in electronic learning (e-learning). This project explores the extension of e-learning into wireless/handheld (W/H) computing devices with…

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 hypothesis for this research was that the higher the level of academic satisfaction, the more likely it is for alumni to be involved with the university. Alumni involvement was defined as alumni giving and/or alumni participating with their alma mater within the last three years. There were 1,608 alumni from a large state university who…

Based on a sample of 532 undergraduates at a Southeastern U.S. university, Big Five and narrow personality traits were examined in relation to a measure of satisfaction with specific domains of college experience (College Satisfaction) and a measure of General Life Satisfaction. Four of the Big Five traits--Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,…

Having grown up in an age of rapidly developing electronic communication technology, today's students come to higher education with high levels of comfort and familiarity with computer-mediated communication (CMC, hereafter). The students' level of comfort with CMC, coupled with CMC's promises of enabling supplemental class discussion as well as…

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…

In this paper, the authors report some of the salient findings of a large-scale, four-year national study, conducted at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, entitled "Factors Influencing College Science Success" (FICSS), which surveyed college students who enrolled in first-year biology, chemistry, and physics courses…

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 experiences of students in an online learning community were explored in this qualitative case study using social presence theory as an interpretive lens. Participants included five undergraduate students in a certificate program at a large Midwestern university. Students who felt a sense of community online most highly valued the friendship…

After acknowledging the general ignorance concerning the changes which occur in American undergraduates who study off-campus, either domestically or internationally, the authors describe various studies which have attempted to assess off-campus educational experiences. (Editor)

This paper explores how students adjust to life at universities outside their home countries. Much of the current body of research was conducted prior to the 9/11 tragedy and focuses primarily on studies within a single U.S. institution. This project expands the boundaries by including multiple institutions from around the globe post-9/11. The…

A survey was conducted to determine the effect on academic performance, if any, of employment on undergraduate college students. A questionnaire was sent to professors at 3 four-year colleges on Long Island (New York); various day classes were randomly selected. The final sample of n=257 represented approximately a 30 percent response. The…