Successful educational outcomes among Asian American college students often obscure the challenges and nuanced educational experiences of Asian immigrant ethnic groups. Therefore, the aim of this study was to better understand the college-going experiences of Chinese and Korean immigrant students by examining the relationship between these…

Based on 22 focus groups conducted at institutions located in a Midwestern metropolitan region, this study explores working, commuting and adult-learner college students' implicit theories about financial aid policy and seeks to understand how students make sense of their own experiences in paying for college. The institutions participating…

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…

This article stems from a grounded theory study of leadership among urban youth. It reports the perspective of students in a college preparation program by examining how they participated in leadership. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and field observations of 20 incoming college freshmen. Students conceptualized…

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…

This study examined longitudinal data by multiple regression analyses to determine personal and institutional characteristics associated with students' openness to diverse perspectives. Students' openness was positively associated with (a) feeling that the university was committed to diversity issues, (b) taking diversity courses, and…

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…

This study investigates faculty members' experiences in a 20-month inquiry project that provided them with structured opportunities to (a) interview students of color about their educational journey, and (b) meet with other faculty members as a collaborative inquiry team to discuss student interview findings. Changes in faculty members were…

Although numerous studies have examined the relationship between college diversity experiences and student outcomes, very little attention has been paid to the mechanism(s) underlying this development. This paper proposes a model of the psychological process through which college diversity experiences affect student attitudes and examines that…

This qualitative study relies on Freire's conception of liberatory praxis to examine White male college students' becoming aware of racism and translating awareness into action. The participants developed racial cognizance via cross-racial contact and course content. They also tended to be open to interrogating racism and racial privilege due to…

College diversity experiences have been praised not only for their role in promoting student growth but also for contributing to future engagement with diversity. However, the evidence supporting this latter claim is quite limited, often relying on cross-sectional analyses. This study examines whether and how students' first-year diversity…

The concept of "student effort" is foundational to such commonly used assessments of institutional effectiveness as the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). However, the current measure of student effort omits intercultural effort, which is particularly salient to the academic…

As a great deal of importance is now placed on student engagement, it is just as imperative to establish the soundness of constructs underlying those survey instruments and benchmarks used in providing indicators of such. This study investigates the dimensionalities of student engagement among community college students as measured by the…

Using standards established for validation research, I review the theory and evidence underlying the validity argument of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). I use the NSSE because it is the preeminent survey of college students, arguing that if it lacks validity, then so do almost all other college student surveys. I find that it…

Relying on data from 37,122 first-year students and 42,285 seniors who participated in the 2006 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement, this study illustrates how student interactions across difference positively affect student perceptions of the campus environment. The magnitude of the effect of these interactions varies…