Community colleges across the United States face a difficult challenge. On the one hand, they are "open access" institutions, with a mission to serve students from all backgrounds and at varying levels of college readiness. On the other hand, they must uphold high academic standards in order to maintain accreditation and prepare students…

This study compares academic policies related to academic good standing, probation, suspension, and expulsion at nine universities over 17 years providing a benchmark to which others can compare. The print and on-line versions of the undergraduate catalogs from 1988-2005 for each of the nine public universities in the southeastern United States…

A substantial number of university students are placed on academic probation each year, many of whom never succeed in academia. Hence, it is critical to identify who these students are, why they end up on academic probation, and most importantly how best to intervene. To determine this, an empirical study of students on academic probation for the…

This study explored the outcome of academically dismissed students reinstated the semester following academic dismissal at a medium-size Midwestern University. Logistic regression was utilized to identify predictors that may assist academic administrators in making decisions regarding future reinstatement activities. The overall model correctly…

The Federal Pell Grant Program is the nation's largest need-based grant program. While students' initial eligibility for the Pell is based on financial need, renewal of the award is contingent on their making satisfactory academic progress (SAP)--meeting minimum academic standards similar to those proposed in models of performance-based…

This study examined students who successfully applied for reinstatement after being academically dismissed for the first time in order to discover indicators of future success. This study examined 666 students' appeals filed at the DeVry University Kansas City campus between 2004 and 2009. Binary logistic regression was used to discover if a…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) Mission Accomplished! The Development of a Competence-based E-portfolio Assessment Model (Shelley Schuurman, Scott Berlin, Jamie Langlois, and Julie Guevara); (2) The Third Rail of Assessment--Dangerous but Powerful (Dale L. Mort); (3) Video Killed the Radio…

As part of MDRC's multisite Opening Doors demonstration, Chaffey College, a large community college in Southern California, ran two versions of a program that was designed to improve outcomes among students who are on probation. Both versions offered a "College Success" course, taught by a college counselor, which provided basic…

Academic dismissal resulting from poor scholastic achievement is an unfortunate reality at American universities, and one that involves students, faculty, and academic advisers. This chapter analyzes learning outcomes of the academic dismissal process for first-generation college students (FGS) resulting from a year-long study conducted at a…

This study explores the implementation, student satisfaction, and the effectiveness of an online academic support course required for students on academic probation at a mid-sized private institution in the Northeast. Although it is often considered that students on academic probation may not exhibit the typical characteristics associated with…

Many high-achieving students do not question their academic success. They do well and are content with the study skills they have developed to ensure that they achieve their goals. However, these students, whose high schools considered them achievers, experience difficulties and sometimes failure in situations where they had previously experienced…

Retaining and aiding students on academic probation is a concern for all institutions of higher education. Students placed on academic probation by Rockingham Community College (RCC) have been encouraged to participate in an intervention program since the summer of 2006. When treated as an aggregate, the data regarding the program indicates that…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were certain teaching competencies, identified by the state of Oregon and pinpointed by building administrators, which cause the greatest difficulty for new teachers. If there were competencies identified by building administrators as problematic, was there more that teacher education…

Intrusive advising has been frequently used to encourage or require at-risk or probationary students to attend advising sessions. The efficacy of intrusive advising targeted to all students has received little attention. We implemented a case-control experiment with 501 first-year students at a large, urban, state university to test the efficacy…

In this study, I examined the effectiveness of adding insight-oriented strategies to an intrusive academic-advising approach with students on academic probation. Twenty males and 22 females at a comprehensive private university participated in the study. Students who attended three to eight meetings had a significant improvement in semester GPA…