The Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) was launched in 2007 as a companion survey to the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). In its first two years, close to 140,000 entering first-year students at 197 institutions across the United States and Canada have participated in BCSSE. Now in its third year, BCSSE continues…

The percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years in the United States has remained between 65 and 70% since the late 1960s. Despite various educational reforms, the number of students who are at-risk of dropping out of high school has remained constant, increasing in some years and decreasing in other years. Two…

The recent decision of Poland to introduce a mandatory starting age for early language learning from the very beginning of schooling can be viewed as part of both a global and a specifically European trend. Current statistics indicate that since 1990 approximately 60% of the nation-states of the European Union have reduced mandatory starting ages…

Using national jobless data and education statistics, this study examines the systemic association between Korea's youth unemployment trend and the workforce supply structure in which the youths' educational attainment patterns plays a key role. Focus is given to how type and length of education are correlated with employability. The findings of…

According to government data, even though manufacturing in general continues to shrink as a proportion of the U.S. economy, domestic high-tech manufacturing has been expanding, and with it, the need for skilled workers. Hence high school students are taking at the Manufacturing Technology Academy (MTA), a 4-year-old dual-enrollment program on the…

This study compares the educational aspirations of college freshmen students in public and private two-year colleges around the nation. Surveying a sample of over 13,000 first-time, full-time students from a national database elicited the following results: about half of students at public and private two year colleges aspired to obtain the…

Describes various attempts at mentoring for new faculty at Washtenaw Community College. Suggests seven characteristics of a mentoring program for faculty new to a two-year college: it should be systematic, positive, egalitarian, confidential, faculty-based, flexible, and supported by the institution. (RS)

Two years in West Virginia, college filing cabinets were stacked high with articulation agreements. College faculty members were traveling to and from area high schools in an effort to develop and finalize articulation agreements; all part of the process. And to what end? Less than 1 percent of students in the state were taking advantage of the…

Many professors and graduate students finishing their Ph.D.'s at the University of California at Berkeley scoffed at the idea of a post at a liberal-arts college. To them it was considered an acceptable choice only if none of the jobs at research universities came through. Liberal-arts colleges were viewed merely as teaching institutions and did…

This booklet contains questions that are intended to serve as a starting point for asking meaningful questions about the quality of the first year of college so that a two-year college campus can enhance the learning, satisfaction, and retention of new college students. The previous edition considered the first-year experience for both two-year…

This study included an analysis of the trend of performance indicators for the technical college sector of higher education in South Carolina. In response to demands for accountability and transparency in higher education, the state of South Carolina developed sector specific performance indicators to measure various educational outcomes for each…

This article presents the results of a spring 2004 survey of state higher education agency officials on the current status of the transferability of two-year degree occupational programs, designated as the AAS degree in most states. Included in the discussion is the issue of transferable general education in these degree programs, the development…

The recent global economic downturn is causing U.S. workers and employers to look to the educational system for skills that will allow them to thrive when the economy recovers. Education alone cannot save the economy. Much larger forces are at work, such as international equity and debt markets, the banking crisis, and the deflation of consumer …

Advocates using the adolescent novel as a source of independent reading material in the two-year college reading program with adults with low reading skills. Includes an annotated bibliography of 23 appropriate novels available in paperback. (MKM)

Through a new working group, tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are playing a critical leadership role in addressing some of the most difficult climate-related problems now facing the planet. Because of their unique cultural character, TCUs have an important voice. The American Indian and Alaska Native Climate Change Working Group was formed…