Using a regression discontinuity design, we investigate whether a merit-based financial aid program has a causal effect on the first-year grade point average of first-time out-of-state freshmen at the University of Oregon. Our results indicate that merit-based financial aid has a positive and significant effect on first-year collegiate grade point…

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…

While the court-approved use of race in college admissions rests on the ability of institutions to produce educational benefits associated with diversity, existing research provides little practical insight for institutions, particularly with regard to the types of relations that foster such benefits. The authors review current research and…

The question of how states can best use financial policy to achieve their goals is very important for many higher education stakeholders. In this study, the authors use panel data for all 50 states over a 20-year period to examine how state appropriations, need-based grants, and merit-based grants affect student enrollment in college and whether…

Two land-grant institutions, Michigan State University (MSU) and Texas A&M University (TAMU) used funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to partner with the National University of Rwanda (NUR) to support the agriculture faculty in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. In addition, the three institutions…

The purpose of this correlational research was to examine the extent to which community college students' experiences with validation by faculty (Rendon, 1994, 2002) predicted: (a) their sense of integration, and (b) their intent to persist. The research was designed as an elaboration of constructs within Tinto's (1993) Longitudinal Model of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of cultural factors on Filipino American students' sense of belonging in college. The authors utilized structural equation modeling techniques to analyze a single-institution sample of 143 Filipino American undergraduates and estimate the impact of pressure to commit "cultural suicide,"…

Framed within the debate on African American "anti-intellectualism," this study examined a longitudinal sample of 460 African American students' intellectual self-concept and college grades (GPA) through regression analyses resulting from their college experiences. The findings showed that the college environment had a modest influence on African…

This paper examines an often-overlooked contributing factor to minority student collegiate attrition: students' limited knowledge of--and sometimes resistance to--the kinds of academic discursive practices they need to become "full participants" (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in the university setting. Adopting a Vygotskian view of sociolinguistics, we…

In the scholarship of evaluating student assessment, no group does it as well as the Indiana University scholars engaged in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). More than 1,400 institutions employ the NSSE as a tool for better understanding their students' involvement,…

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…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Benchmarks has emerged as a competing paradigm for assessing institutional effectiveness vis-a-vis the U.S. News & World Report. However, Porter (2009) has critiqued it for failing to meet validity and reliability standards. This study investigated whether the NSSE five benchmarks had construct and…

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…

This ASHE presidential address considers the meaning of higher education's public accountability in the U.S. context. American higher education has always been publicly accountable in some sense, but the forms and expectations associated with accountability have changed significantly from colonial times to the present. The address traces the…

The absorptive capacity construct has been examined across various country, interorganization, and organizational level phenomena. This paper presents a framework that adopts the absorptive capacity framework to explain the relationship between creative and innovative performance at the individual level. The framework is illustrated by predicting…