Academically Adrift Part 5

57. Kevin Carey, A Matter of Degrees: Improving Graduation Rates in Four-Year College and Universities (Washington, DC: The Education Trust, 2004), 6a"7. See also William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at Americaas Public Universities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

58. Nicolas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Ferrar Straus and Giroux, 1999).

59. Research on secondary schools suggests that a cla.s.sroomas intellectual composition affects studentsa performance, particularly for those of lower ability. See Yehezkel Dar and Nura Resh, aCla.s.sroom Intellectual Composition and Academic Achievement,a American Educational Research Journal 23 (1986): 357a"74. Similarly, extensive research on tracking implies that more flexible and inclusive systems can increase overall achievement as well as decrease gaps across students from different tracks. See for example, Adam Gamoran, aThe Variable Effects of High School Tracking,a American Sociological Review 57 (1992): 812a"28.

60. John Bound, Michael Lovenheim, and Sarah E. Turner, aUnderstanding the Decrease in College Completion Rates and the Increased Time to the Baccalaureate Degree.a PSC Research Report No. 07-626 (Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, 2007).

61. Clifford Adelman, The Toolbox Revisited: Paths to Degree Completion from High School through College (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2006).

62. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Community College Students: Goals, Academic Preparation, and Outcomes, NCES 2003-164 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2003).

63. Remarks of President Barack Obama, prepared to address the joint session of Congress, February 24, 2009 (Washington, DC: White House Press Office).

64. Rosenbaum, Beyond College for All, 99.

65. Ibid., 102.

66. Ibid., 101.

67. Paul Attewell and David Lavin, Pa.s.sing the Torch: Does Higher Education for the Disadvantaged Pay Off Across the Generations? (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007).

68. For a description of the warehousing function of schooling, see Pamela Walters, aThe Limits of Growth: School Expansion and School Reform in Historical Perspectivea in Handbook of the Sociology of Education, ed. Maureen Hallinan (New York: Springer Publishers, 2006), 247a"48.

69. Collins, The Credential Society.

70. Samuel Lucas, aEffectively Maintained Inequality: Education Transitions, Track Mobility and Social Background Effects,a American Journal of Sociology 106 (2001): 1642a"90; and Theodore Gerber and Sin Yi Cheung, aHorizontal Stratification in Postsecondary Education: Forms, Explanations, and Implications,a Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 299a"318.

71. As cited by Peter Schmidt, aFormer Top Official at Education Dept. Criticizes How it Approached College Access,a The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 9, 2009, http://chronicle.com/news/article/5767/former-top-official-at-education-dept-criticizes-how-it-approached-college-access.

72. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Descriptive Summary of 2003a" 2004 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Three Years Later, NCES 2008-174 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2008).

73. Josipa Roksa et al., Policies for Promoting Gatekeeper Course Success for Students Needing Developmental Education in Virginiaas Community Colleges (New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, 2009).

74. HERI, The American College Teacher.

75. For examples see William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); and William Bowen, Matthew Chingos, and Michael McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at Americaas Public Universities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

76. John Bound, Michael Lovenheim, and Sarah E. Turner, aWhy Have College Completion Rates Declined? An a.n.a.lysis of Changing Student Preparation and College Resources.a NBER working paper No. 15566 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2009).

Chapter 3.

1. Mary Grigsby, College Life through the Eyes of Students (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009), 54.

2. Ibid., 55.

3. Chapter 4 provides an extended discussion of studentsa time use.

4. Alexander Astin, What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited (San Francisco: Jossey-Ba.s.s, 1993), 398.

5. Vincent Tinto, Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 50.

6. Astin, What Matters in College, 410.

7. Tinto, Leaving College, 210.

8. For a recent example, see George D. Kuh et al., Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter (San Francisco: Jossey-Ba.s.s, 2005); and George D. Kuh et al., a.s.sessing Conditions to Enhance Educational Effectiveness: The Inventory for Student Engagement and Success (San Francisco: Jossey-Ba.s.s, 2005). Moreover, see the discussion of project DEEP (Doc.u.menting Effective Educational Practice) at: http://nsse.iub.edu/inst.i.tute/?view=deep/index.

9. Tinto, Leaving College, 132.

10. Astin, What Matters in College, 226a"28.

11. James Coleman, The Adolescent Society (New York: Free Press, 1961).

12. Mizuko Ito et al., Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (Chicago: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2008), 2.

13. Loren Pope, Colleges that Change Lives: 40 Schools that will Change the Way You Think about Colleges (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 3.

14. Ibid., 6.

15. Ibid., 255.

16. Ibid., 228.

17. Tim Clydesdale, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 162.

18. In the presented a.n.a.lyses, these measures are standardized with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.

19. See Astin, What Matters in College; and Tinto, Leaving College.

20. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Descriptive Summary of 2003a"04 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Three Years Later, NCES 2008-174 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2008), 83a"84.

21. Young K. Kim and Linda J. Sax, aStudent-Faculty Interaction in Research Universities: Differences by Student Gender, Race, Social Cla.s.s, and First-Generation Status,a Research in Higher Education 50 (2009): 437a"59; and George D. Kuh and Shouping Hu, aThe Effects of Student-Faculty Interaction in the 1990s,a Review of Higher Education 24 (2001): 309a"32.

22. For an argument on the imperative of focusing on the highest ability students under oneas charge, see W. E. B. Du Bois, aThe Talented Tentha in The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negroes of To-day, ed. Booker T. Washington (New York: J. Pott & Company, 1903), 31a"74.

23. Specifically, our a.n.a.lyses control for studentsa gender, race / ethnicity, parental education, parental occupation, two-parent home, sibling size, region, urbanicity, high school racial composition, and academic preparation (including high school GPA, number of AP courses taken, and SAT / ACT scores).

24. Mark Davies and Denise B. Kandel, aParental and Peer Influences on Adolescentsa Educational Plans: Some Further Evidence,a American Journal of Sociology 87 (1981): 363a"87. Citing a review by Kenneth Spenner and David Featherman, aAchievement Ambition,a Annual Review of Sociology 4 (1978): 373a"420.

25. Maureen T. Hallinan and Richard A. Williams, aStudentsa Characteristics and the Peer-Influence Process,a Sociology of Education 63 (1990): 122a"32.

26. Barbara J. Banks, Ricky L. Slavings, and Bruce J. Biddle, aEffects of Peer, Faculty, and Parental Influences on Studentsa Persistence,a Sociology of Education 63 (1990): 208a"25.

27. Hallinan and Williams, aStudentsa Characteristics and the Peer-Influence Process,a 123.

28. Students were asked whether they agreed or disagreed (on a seven-point scale) with the statements. In the presented a.n.a.lyses, student responses are standardized to a scale with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.

29. Specifically, students from families with parents who had a graduate education had 0.34 standard deviation higher reports of peer expectations and 0.27 standard deviation higher reports of peer support than students from families with only high-school-educated parents.

30. The R-squared of a model predicting reports of peer high expectations increases from 0.076 to 0.224 when inst.i.tutional-level fixed effects are added; the R-squared on a model predicting reports of peer support increases from 0.046 to 0.188 when inst.i.tutional-level fixed effects are included.

31. Rebekah Nathan, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 101. Rebekah Nathan is a pseudonym.

32. See also, Steven Brint and Allison M. Cantwell, aUndergraduate Time Use and Academic Outcomes: Results from UCUES 2006.a Research and Occasional Paper Series (Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, 2008); and National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), Experiences that Matter: Enhancing Student Learning and Success (Bloomington, IN: Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University Bloomington, 2007).

33. Grigsby, College Life through the Eyes of Students, 116.

34. Nathan, My Freshman Year, 112a"13.

35. Ibid., 119.

36. The R-squared increased from 0.074 to 0.138 when school-level fixed effects were added.

37. NSSE, Experiences that Matter, 42.

38. Ernest L. Boyer, College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 85.

39. Ibid., 85.

40. Ibid., 84.

41. Grigsby, College Life through the Eyes of Students, 112.

42. See for example, Juan Carlos Calcagno and Bridget Terry Long, aThe Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance.a NBER Working Paper Series no. 14194 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2008).

43. Alexander Astin, aThe Changing American College Student: Thirty Year Trends, 1966a"1996,a Review of Higher Education 21 (1998): 115a"35.

44. Sarah E. Turner and William Bowen, aThe Flight from the Arts and Sciences: Trends in Degrees Conferred,a Science 250 (1990): 517a"21.

45. Steven Brint, aThe Rise of the Practical Artsa in The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University, ed. Steven Brint (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 222.

46. Turner and Bowen, aThe Flight from the Arts and Sciences,a 517.

47. William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 5.

48. Ibid., 9.

49. Barbara Schneider and David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation: Americaas Teenagers Motivated but Directionless (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

50. Nathan, My Freshman Year, 114.

51. Clydesdale, The First Year Out, 163a"64.

52. Valen E. Johnson, Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003), 2a"3.

53. Noel Perrin, aHow Students at Dartmouth Came to Deserve Better Grades,a Chronicle of Higher Education, October 9, 1998, 68; as cited in Johnson, Grade Inflation, 5.

54. Johnson, Grade Inflation, 188f.

55. For racial / ethnic differences in course-taking among a recent cohort of students attending selective inst.i.tutions, see Camille Charles et al., Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 24a"33.

56. The R-squared increases from 0.147 to 0.310 when inst.i.tutional-level fixed effects are added to the model.

57. Damon, The Path to Purpose, 8 58. Grigsby, College Life through the Eyes of Students, 56.

59. Nathan, My Freshman Year, 100.

60. Stephanie A. Clemons, David McKelfresh, and James Banning, aImportance of Sense of Place and Sense of Self in Residence Hall Room Design: A Qualitative Study of First-Year Students,a Journal of the First-Year Experience 17 (2005): 73a"86.

61. George D. Kuh, Robert M. Gonyea, and Megan Palmer, aThe Disengaged Commuter Student: Fact or Fiction?a Commuter Perspectives 27 (2001): 2a"5; Ernest T. Pas carella et al., aCognitive Effects of Greek affiliation During the First Year of College,a NASPA Journal 33 (1996): 242a"59; and Ernest T. Pascarella et al., aCognitive Impacts of Living on Campus versus Commuting to Collegea (University Park, PA: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning and a.s.sessment, 1992).

62. Pascarella et al., aCognitive Impacts of Living on Campus,a 11.

63. Nathan, My Freshman Year, 80.

64. Grigsby, College Life through the Eyes of Students, 60.

65. Nathan, My Freshman Year, 48.

66. Steven Brint and Mathew Baron Rotondi, aStudent Debt, the College Experience, and Transitions to Adulthooda (paper presented at the annual meeting for the American Sociological a.s.sociation, Boston, July 31a"August 4, 2008).

67. Jenny Stuber, aCla.s.s, Culture, and Partic.i.p.ation in the Collegiate Extra-Curriculum,a Sociological Forum 24 (2009): 889.

68. Ibid.

69. Susan R. Jones and Kathleen E. Hill, aUnderstanding Patterns of Commitment: Student Motivation for Community Service Involvement,a Journal of Higher Education 74 (2003): 516a"39; and Helen M. Marks and Susan R. Jones, aCommunity Service in the Transition: Shifts and Continuities in Partic.i.p.ation from High School to College,a Journal of Higher Education 75 (2004): 307a"39.

70. Alexander Astin et al., aHow Service Learning Affects Studentsa (Higher Education Research Inst.i.tute, University of California Los Angeles, 2000).

71. Brint and Rotondi, aStudent Debt.a 72. Labor market partic.i.p.ation in our sample is lower than the national average, but reasonably comparable to that of traditional-age students in four-year inst.i.tutions (see table A1.3 in methodological appendix). However, students in our sample are working fewer hours, which would be expected given that we are relying on volunteers who were willing to dedicate a considerable amount of time to the CLA a.s.sessment.

73. American Council on Education, aMissed Opportunities Revisited: New Information on Students Who Do Not Apply for Financial Aid.a American Council on Education Issue Brief (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, Center for Policy a.n.a.lysis, 2006).

74. Jacqueline E. King, aCrucial Choice: How Studentsa Financial Decisions Affect Their Academic Successa (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, Center for Policy a.n.a.lysis, 2002).

75. Kevin Dougherty, aFinancing Higher Education in the United States: Structure, Trends, and Issues.a Address to the Inst.i.tute of Economics of Education, Peking University, May 25, 2004, 21, http://www.tc.columbia.edu/centers/coce/pdf_files/c9.pdf.

76. Brint and Rotondi, aStudent Debt,a 5.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid., 15.