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Examines the relationships between five components of students′ quality of learning experience (resources, content, learning flexibility, student‐faculty contact, and involvement) and four criteria of college outcomes (students′ satisfaction with their college experience, perceived performance in college, commitment to their college and students′ grades). The major findings of this study indicate that students′ involvement and learning flexibility are the dominant predictors of all four students′ college outcomes, whereas resources and content are the weakest predictors. In addition, quality of learning experience indicators are effective predictors of students′ satisfaction with their college experience (R⊃2 = 0.27) and grades (R⊃2 = 0.20). Discusses the implications of these findings.

This literature review aims to look at the unique role of community colleges as they address the information literacy needs of their students, who are by nature continuously in transition to and from the institution.

Library science databases and online sources were reviewed for relevant information.

Community colleges are addressing the needs of their various student populations in a variety of ways.

The role of the community college library is underrepresented in the literature. This review provides more information about the unique role that community colleges fill in the higher education ecosystem.

College students and their alcohol use have been the subject of numerous studies over the last three decades and have received an increasing amount of attention (Engs, 1977; Hanson and Engs, 1984; Gadaleto and Anderson, 1986; Downs, 1987; Thompson and Wilsnack, 1987; Janosik and Anderson, 1989; Tryon, 1992). Studies on student alcohol use began appearing in the literature in the mid‐1970's (Penn, 1974; Rouse and Ewing, 1978; Newton, 1978). Subsequent studies (Scheller‐Gilkey, Gomberg, and Clay, 1979; Heritage, 1979; O'Connell and Patterson, 1989) have documented consistently high levels of alcohol consumption and a serious abuse problem on college campuses. Although some studies (Condon and Carman, 1986; Hanson and Engs, 1986) indicate that overall consumption has reached a plateau, Gonzalez (1986) reported that 89% of male students and 86% of female students surveyed drank alcohol, and many suffered from alcohol related problems. Further, both recent survey data (Eigen, 1991) and participant‐observer studies (Moffatt, 1989) suggest that collegiate drinking is a very serious health concern. Moffatt found that to a great extent college students' lives revolved around the acquisition and consumption of alcohol and constituted students' favourite collective activity. Surveys revealed that no other population group in the United States has a more serious drinking problem than does the college student population (Gonzalez, 1986). Both men and women drink more as they progress through the college, and those who drink more also experience more alcohol‐related problems (Gonzalez, 1989).

Academic franchising has provided opportunities for many thousands of students who would otherwise have been excluded from higher education. Yet, despite the continued presence of franchised courses, the approach has been, as far as possible, to make them fit in alongside traditional courses. Reports some of the work carried out by CERLIM at the University of Central Lancashire during the two‐year Library Support for Franchised Courses in Higher Education project, which was part‐funded by the British Library. Notes the differences in provision between college and university libraries and examines the student experience within this context. Identifies weakness in provision and describes the students’ coping strategies. Presents the practical implications of this work as suggestions to library managers for improving practice in the college and university libraries.

At this year's National Union of Students' Technical College Conference an NUS vice‐president, Mr Albert Swindlehurst, suggested that the age of technical college entrants be raised to 18. Such a move, so ran his argument, would put an end to teaching staff over‐ruling the students' unions in colleges where the students were very young, and would remove the present inhibitions on social life caused by the lack of bars where students could gather in convivial fraternities.

School effectiveness has attracted some currency in educational research globally since the 1960s though such studies mostly point to the efforts of principal leadership as the basis for promoting effective schools. However, in the case of Ghana, there is a lack of research conducted in the area, and due to that, this study sought to explore internal public perspectives of what constitutes school effectiveness in the Colleges of Education in the Upper East Region of Ghana.

This study employed the convergent parallel mixed-method design otherwise called concurrent mixed-method design. The population for the study comprised second and third-year students, tutors and leadership of the colleges. In total, 308 respondents constituted the sample size. The breakdown is 257 students in all, 41 tutors and 10 leaders of the colleges. Two instruments, namely, an in-depth interview guide and a questionnaire were used to elicit responses to address the object of this study.

The study revealed that the characteristics of effective schools include the high academic performance of students and a good show of disciplined behavior by both students and staff in the colleges among others.

To the best of our knowledge, during the search for studies conducted on school effectiveness, there is no scientific study done in Ghana highlighting the attributes of effective educational institutions. Most of the studies conducted in the area of educational studies only focused on principal leadership, educational access, participation and equity at the level of pre-tertiary institutions.

First-generation college students in the United States are a unique demographic that is often characterized by the institutions that serve them with a risk-laden and deficit-based model. However, our analysis of the transcripts of open-ended, semi-structured interviews with 22 “first-gen” respondents suggests they are actively deft, agentic, self-determining parties to processes of identity construction that are both externally imposed and potentially stigmatizing, as well as exemplars of survivance and determination. We deploy a grounded theory approach to an open-coding process, modeled after the extended case method, while viewing our data through a novel synthesis of the dual theoretical lenses of structural and radical/structural symbolic interactionism and intersectional/standpoint feminist traditions, in order to reveal the complex, unfolding, active strategies students used to make sense of their obstacles, successes, co-created identities, and distinctive institutional encounters. We find that contrary to the dictates of prevailing paradigms, identity-building among first-gens is an incremental and bidirectional process through which students actively perceive and engage existing power structures to persist and even thrive amid incredibly trying, challenging, distressing, and even traumatic circumstances. Our findings suggest that successful institutional interventional strategies designed to serve this functionally unique student population (and particularly those tailored to the COVID-moment) would do well to listen deeply to their voices, consider the secondary consequences of “protectionary” policies as potentially more harmful than helpful, and fundamentally, to reexamine the presumption that such students present just institutional risk and vulnerability, but also present a valuable addition to university environments, due to the unique perspective and broader scale of vision their experiences afford them.

This chapter reports on findings from a study that explored the experiences of African American young men who graduated from Du Bois Academy, an all-boys public charter secondary school in the Midwestern region of the United States. The chapter considers issues of African American male persistence and achievement and how they are impacted by school culture. Specifically, the author discusses how school culture can help shape these students’ educational experiences and aspirations. Using student narratives as the guide, a description of how Du Bois Academy successfully engaged these African American male students is provided. The students articulated three critical components of school culture that positively shaped their high achievement and engagement: (a) sense of self, (b) promotion of excellence, and (c) community building. The student narratives provided a frame for promoting positive school culture that enhances the educational experiences and academic aspirations of African American male students.

The impact of academic and school-related factors on college readiness, aspirations, and access has been examined frequently within the literature (Barber & Torney-Purta, 2008; Polite, 1994; Taliaferro & DeCuir-Gunby, 2008; Uwah, McMahon, & Furlow, 2008; Wimberly, 2002; Yun & Kurlaender, 2004). Several factors related to school racial composition and perceived school support (Yun & Kurlaender, 2004), school relationships (Wimberly, 2002), gaps in exposure to college preparatory and advanced placement curriculums (Taliaferro & DeCuir-Gunby, 2008), teacher perceptions (Barber & Torney-Purta, 2008), and structural inequalities (Polite, 1994) have been identified as variables that significantly impact the opportunities for African-American children to be exposed to the types of interpersonal relationships and educational experiences necessary for preparing them to succeed in postsecondary education.