As colleges and universities strive to increase persistence and aid students in reaching graduation, they are utilizing alternative communication strategies like text messaging. Behavioral economics researchers suggest personalized, regular nudges can help college students make decisions that positively impact their college career and keep them on…

To date, most research on sense of belonging in higher education has relied upon between-person correlations (e.g., Murphy and Zirkel in Teach Coll Rec 117(12):1-40, 2015; Ostrove and Long in Rev High Educ 30(4):363-389, 2007). In the current study, first- and continuing-generation college students (N = 280) reported their sense of belonging and…

Despite the growing evidence of informational interventions on college and major choices, we know little about how such light-touch interventions affect the gender gap in STEM majors. Linking survey data to administrative records of Chinese college applicants, we conducted a large-scale randomized experiment to examine the STEM gender gap in the…

While there is general consensus that students are more or less participants in their educational experiences, the relationship between student participation and satisfaction has not been extensively examined in higher education literature. Looking to participation research in other literatures serves as a starting point for exploring this link.…

Using structural equation modeling, this study examined the effects of peer environments on collegiate interracial friendship and how such effects vary by students' race. The results show that the peer environment of Greek life mediated the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship in college, in that students…

Vincent Tinto originally asserted, "… it is the individual's integration into the academic and social systems of the college that most directly related to his continuance in that college" (Tinto, "Review of Educational Research" 45(10): 89-125, 1975), yet the rates of college degree attainment are still stagnant.…

Academic dishonesty (cheating) has been prevalent on college campuses for decades, and the percentage of students reporting cheating varies by college major. This study, based on a survey of 643 undergraduate engineering majors at 11 institutions, used two parallel hierarchical multiple regression analyses to predict the frequency of cheating on…

This study examined the interaction between college students' attachment orientation and mentors' relational style in the prediction of students' behaviors and perceptions in academic mentoring and of their subsequent academic achievement. Ninety college students were administered the Adult Attachment Interview and their professors-mentors…

Three consequences of class size variation are examined: (1) The average class size experienced by students is directly related to the amount of variation in class size; (2) Overall student attendance is inversely related to the amount of variation in class size; and (3) overall student participation time is directly related to the amount of…

Four issues are examined: (1) the distribution of the four Clark-Trow student types among a sample of post-activist students; (2) intercorrelations between the four types; (3) the degree to which students' perceptions of the prevailing type relates to their own typological self-descriptions; and (4) factors affecting student self-classification.…

Academic cheating behavior by university students was surveyed using the randomized response technique and by conventional anonymous questionnaire methods. Underreporting is concluded to be a serious problem with anonymous questionnaires. (Author/MLW)

A survey of 1,793 students at nine state universities found cheating was influenced by a number of characteristics of individuals, including age, sex, and grade point average, and contextual factors, including level of cheating among peers, peer disapproval of cheating, fraternity/sorority membership, and perceived severity of penalties for…

Five research principles are proposed to increase the utility of studies of college student culture: attempting to discover how group membership mediates member behavior and contributes to valued outcomes of college; using best practices of qualitative research; using flexible cognitive frameworks when collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data;…

A study investigated college students' (n=226) academic help-seeking behavior under task-involved and ego-involved classroom conditions, students' attributions for failure, and two types of help source (instrumental, in which the student finds his own solution, and executive, in which a solution is disclosed). Implications for classroom teaching…

Relationships among student background, initial commitments, social integration, academic integration, and predisposition to transfer were investigated with Hispanic (N=422) and White (N=147) students enrolled in six southwestern community colleges. Ethnic background had no relationship to predisposition to transfer. (Author/MLW)