The use of merit criteria in awarding institutional aid has grown considerably and, some argue, is supplanting need as the central factor in awarding aid. Concurrently, the accountability movement in higher education has placed greater emphasis on retention and graduation as indicators of institutional success and quality. In this context, this…

Nearly all quantitative analyses in higher education draw from incomplete datasets-a common problem with no universal solution. In the first part of this paper, we explain why missing data matter and outline the advantages and disadvantages of six common methods for handling missing data. Next, we analyze real-world data from 5,905 students across…

Knowledge is presently limited on experiences and outcomes at four-year Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and emerging HSIs. Multiple regression analyses, performed on data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, illuminate how background characteristics and student experiences at four-year HSIs, emerging HSIs, and non-HSIs…

Some higher education leaders have suggested that colleges and universities could generate state support if they were more productively engaged in addressing societal needs. This multi-case study examines how community engagement is expressed and understood at institutions that vary in their expected levels of state appropriations. The findings…

This article provides a synthesis of literature on the conceptualization of students as customers and connects the rise of this understanding of students to the expansion of free-market logic into higher education. It details the ways in which the customer orientation appears to be incongruent with the educational lives of college students, and…

The persisting gender pay gap favoring men among college graduates is a puzzle given women's remarkable success in postsecondary education. This article examines income disparities among recent college graduates by intersecting gender and social class and evaluating the relative importance of fields of study and institutional selectivity.…

Various commissions and reports have called on colleges and universities to better prepare students for participation in a democratic society. A limit of such reports is that they often fail to consider how students might be categorized relative to their shared patterns of civic behaviors. Relying on alumni survey data from American College…

Researchers can deepen investigations of college teaching and learning by attention on how students construe a lesson's subject matter and on how teachers make sense of and respond to their students' subject-matter thinking in the moment. While it is possible to examine teaching and learning minus subject-matter depth, doing so obscures…

Increasingly, regional and/or teaching colleges and universities are striving to assert themselves as national or international research universities. Although such shifts represent significant implications for faculty members, few works address the faculty perspective or experience with this change. In this qualitative, interpretive paper, I…

This article proposes a new paradigm to understand recent government policies that pose new barriers to student participation and divert students out of public higher education. We explain how the classic diversion paradigm, exemplified by Clark (1960) and Brint and Karabel (1989), is unable to account for this new form of student diversion. We…

When Jake Baker wrote a violent, sexually themed story about one of his classmates and emailed it to a friend, the case that ensued highlighted how new technologies have created fresh ways for students to harass, oppress, or be oppressed by others. This article examines concepts of violence and cultural imperialism oppression, primarily as defined…

This study examines the sensemaking processes of new college presidents to understand how they develop plausible, working descriptions of the campus and come to understand their role. Semi-structured interviews were completed with 18 presidents who were organizational outsiders and first-time presidents. As newcomers, presidents were found to act…

Using Schein's (1992) framework of cultural change, this study examined two institutions of higher education that have achieved or attempted a cultural change to understand if and how to develop a culture of work-life balance for faculty and staff. The results identified a narrative of eligibility that arose from the discourse of faculty…

This study investigates how students' views toward undocumented immigrants' access to public education change during college. A multilevel analysis among a national sample of 12,388 undergraduates, drawn from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program's (CIRP) Freshman Survey and College Senior Survey, revealed that significant…

The purpose of this study is to examine socioeconomic differences in the interpersonal factors that influence college access among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). Data on 1,460 AAPIs from the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS: 02/06) were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. Findings suggest that parental…