Institutional Transfer and the Management of Risk in Higher Education

This study explores the circumstances, behaviors, and understandings that lie at the root of student decisions to reverse transfer (transfer from a four-year institution to a two-year institution). In particular, the authors focus on how students experience and respond to the risks induced by an accumulation of inadequate guidance, misaligned goals, misinformed decisions, and the academic and financial challenges inherent in their college trajectories. Based on qualitative analyses, the authors conclude that the reverse transfer process is inherently an attempt to grapple with the creation, interpretation, and management of the risk of dropping out of college without a four-year degree. Assuming that all students from disadvantaged backgrounds begin college at a four-year school at least somewhat at risk of non-completion, the authors compare the reasons why some are more or less exposed to such risk relative to others of similar circumstances, and how some successfully manage risk in a way that leads to four-year college persistence while others confront risk in a way that leads to reverse transfer

Cultivating hope through creative resistance: Puerto Rican undergraduates surviving the disasters of climate and colonization

This article details what occurred during a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project involving Puerto Rican undergraduates who at first focused their analysis on how their experiences with Hurricane Maria could be framed as resiliency and then eventually adopted a framework of resistance to further capture their actions, stances, and practices in response to government neglect. The YPAR generative process facilitated this emergence of resistance by beginning with the presentation of a cultural artifact and then helping students to use creative and artistic means to critically reflect on their experiences and the ways that not just resiliency, but also resistance captured their analysis of the actions of the people and government actors both immediately after the hurricane and in the long recovery that followed

Students' Perceptions of Academic Efficacy and School Supports: A Mismatch with School Demographics

This exploratory study aimed to (a) identify students beliefs about their abilities and school environments to achieve their college and career aspirations, (b) group schools by students perceptions, and (c) contrast this grouping with grouping by school-level demographics. This secondary analysis examined items from the County Youth Survey administered to 11th-graders (N = 3,751) at 17 local schools. School size and racial and socioeconomic statistics comprised the publicly available data. Principal components analysis identified 17 college and career readiness items representing two dimensions of student perceptions: School Supports and Academic Efficacy. Cluster analysis revealed that schools grouped by these dimensions differed substantially from the demographic groupings