Making the Transition to Four-Year Institutions: Academic Preparation and Transfer

In this study, we examine the role of academic preparation in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions. We address two specific questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can positive experiences in community colleges diminish the role of inadequate academic preparation? The results, which are based on analyses of Florida's unit record data of first-time community college students, indicate that a substantial proportion of students who enter community colleges academically unprepared do indeed transfer to four-year institutions. Moreover, successful completion of intermediate outcomes—such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate degree—enhances students' probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation is limited: successful completion of even the most demanding intermediate outcomes does not alleviate the negative consequences of entering higher education unprepared. The policy implications of these findings are discussed

Promjena snježnih uvjeta gorskoga i pretplaninskoga vegetacijskoga pojasa Velebita

Količina snježne oborine mijenja se po pojedinim razdobljima. Povećanje temperature zraka, kao jedno od obilježja klimatskih promjena, osobito utječe i na snježne uvjete. Cilj je ovoga istraživanja bio analiza trenda broja dana sa snijegom i kretanje maksimalne visine snijega te usporedba srednjega broja dana i maksimalne visine snijega s višegodišnjim prosjekom 1981–2010. i s prijašnjim podacima opisa klime. Istraživanje je provedeno na dvjema meteorološkim postajama (Baške Oštarije i Oltari) u gorskom vegetacijskom pojasu te na meteorološkoj postaji Zavižan u pretplaninskom vegetacijskom pojasu. Analiza je trenda napravljena Mann-Kendallovim testom. T-testom je uspoređen broj dana sa snijegom i maksimalna visina snijega s višegodišnjim prosjekom (referentnim nizom) i podacima iz opisa klime vegetacijskih pojasa 1948–1960. godine. Prosječan broj dana sa snijegom (≥ 1 cm) u gorskom vegetacijskom pojasu na meteorološkoj postaji Baške Oštarije iznosio je 66, na meteorološkoj postaji Oltari iznosio je 91 dan, a u pretplaninskom vegetacijskom pojasu na meteorološkoj postaji Zavižan iznosio je 158 dana. Maksimalna visina snijega u gorskom pojasu prosječno je iznosila 60,09 cm, odnosno 78,25 cm, dok je u pretplaninskom pojasu bila 165,04 cm. Za meteorološku postaju Oltari, u gorskom vegetacijskom pojasu, statistički je značajan trend smanjivanja broja dana sa snijegom ≥ 1 cm. Na Zavižanu, u pretplaninskom vegetacijskom pojasu, ustanovljen je statistički značajan trend smanjivanja broja dana sa snijegom ≥ 1 cm, ≥ 10 cm i ≥ 30 cm visine. Na Zavižanu je recentni prosječan broj dana sa snijegom od ≥ 1 cm do ≥ 30 cm bio značajno niži u odnosu na višegodišnji prosjek 1981–2010. Prema rezultatima pojedinačnoga t-testa broj dana sa snijegom (> 1 cm) i maksimalna visina snijega (cm) značajno su manje na području obaju vegetacijskih pojasa u odnosu na razdoblje 1948–1960. godine

Finding a Fit: Biological Science Doctoral Students’ Selection of a Principal Investigator and Research Laboratory

In the laboratory-based disciplines, selection of a principal investigator (PI) and research laboratory (lab) indelibly shapes doctoral students’ experiences and educational outcomes. Framed by the theoretical concept of person–environment fit from within a socialization model, we use an inductive, qualitative approach to explore how a sample of 42 early-stage doctoral students enrolled in biological sciences programs made decisions about fitting with a PI and within a lab. Results illuminated a complex array of factors that students considered in selecting a PI, including PI relationship, mentoring style, and professional stability. Further, with regard to students’ lab selection, peers and research projects played an important role. Students actively conceptualized trade-offs among various dimensions of fit. Our findings also revealed cases in which students did not secure a position in their first (or second) choice labs and had to consider their potential fit with suboptimal placements (in terms of their initial assessments). Thus, these students weighted different factors of fit against the reality of needing to secure financial support to continue in their doctoral programs. We conclude by presenting and framing implications for students, PIs, and doctoral programs, and recommend providing transparency and candor around the PI and lab selection processes

Time-to-Credit Gender Inequities of First-Year PhD Students in the Biological Sciences

Equitable gender representation is an important aspect of scientific workforce development to secure a sufficient number of individuals and a diversity of perspectives. Biology is the most gender equitable of all scientific fields by the marker of degree attainment, with 52.5% of PhDs awarded to women. However, equitable rates of degree completion do not translate into equitable attainment of faculty or postdoctoral positions, suggesting continued existence of gender inequalities. In a national cohort of 336 first-year PhD students in the biological sciences (i.e., microbiology, cellular biology, molecular biology, develop-mental biology, and genetics) from 53 research institutions, female participants logged significantly more research hours than males and were significantly more likely than males to attribute their work hours to the demands of their assigned projects over the course of the academic year. Despite this, males were 15% more likely to be listed as authors on published journal articles, indicating inequality in the ratio of time to credit. Given the cumulative advantage that accrues for students who publish early in their graduate careers and the central role that scholarly productivity plays in academic hiring decisions, these findings collectively point to a major potential source of persisting underrepresentation of women on university faculties in these fields

Postdocs’ Lab Engagement Predicts Trajectories of PhD Students’ Skill Development

The doctoral advisor—typically the principal investigator (PI)—is often characterized as a singular or primary mentor who guides students using a cognitive apprenticeship model. Alternatively, the “cascading mentorship” model describes the members of laboratories or research groups receiving mentorship from more senior laboratory members and providing it to more junior members (i.e., PIs mentor postdocs, postdocs mentor senior graduate students, senior students mentor junior students, etc.). Here we show that PIs’ laboratory and mentoring activities do not significantly predict students’ skill development trajectories, but the engagement of postdocs and senior graduate students in laboratory interactions do. We found that the cascading mentorship model accounts best for doctoral student skill development in a longitudinal study of 336 PhD students in the United States. Specifically, when postdocs and senior doctoral students actively participate in laboratory discussions, junior PhD students are over 4 times as likely to have positive skill development trajectories. Thus, postdocs disproportionately enhance the doctoral training enterprise, despite typically having no formal mentorship role. These findings also illustrate both the importance and the feasibility of identifying evidence-based practices in graduate education

Strategies for Promoting Gatekeeper Course Success Among Students Needing Remediation: Research Report for the Virginia Community College System

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) is engaged in a strategic planning process to improve performance beyond the goals in Dateline 2009, the system’s current vision and plan. A key objective is to encourage colleges to improve retention and academic success for students, particularly the substantial numbers who arrive unprepared for college-level work. Specifically, the VCCS seeks to improve the rates at which underprepared students complete developmental coursework and advance to take and pass college courses, particularly the initial college-level, or “gatekeeper,” math and English offerings. The VCCS asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, to conduct analyses to inform its efforts to improve student outcomes. In response, CCRC designed a study to address the following question: What student characteristics, course-taking patterns, and other factors are associated with higher probabilities that students who require remediation will take and pass college-level math and English? The dataset used by CCRC, provided by the VCCS, contained information on 24,140 first-time college students who enrolled in a VCCS college in summer or fall 2004. It included information on student demographics, institutions attended, placement test scores and placement recommendations, transcript data on courses and grades, and information on educational attainment (including transfer to four-year institutions and certificates and associate degrees earned). Students were followed for four years, through the 2008 summer term. CCRC examined a range of educational outcomes, including: whether students took and passed development courses and gatekeeper English and math, the number of terms they were enrolled, the number of credits they accumulated, and whether they earned educational awards (certificates and associate degrees) or transferred to four-year institutions. This report presents the main findings from CCRC’s study and outlines suggestions for steps that the VCCS and its member colleges might take to improve completion of gatekeeper courses by the many students who enter the state’s community colleges poorly prepared to succeed in college-level work

Intra-generational social mobility and educational qualifications

AbstractThe relation between intra-generational social class mobility of parents and their children's subsequent educational qualifications, and the implications of this relation for educational stratification, is explored by fitting statistical models to data from two UK longitudinal datasets: one based on the UK Census (ONS LS) and the 1970 birth cohort study (BCS70). Children whose parents are upwardly mobile gain higher educational qualifications than their peers in their class of origin, but obtain lower qualifications than their peers in their class of destination. The reverse pattern is observed for the downwardly mobile. These results mirror those obtained for the relation between adult intra-generational social mobility and a number of widely used measures of health. The implications of the findings for different explanations of the social class gradient in educational attainment are examined. The findings provide greater support for theoretical explanations of educational inequalities that are based on differences in economic circumstances between social classes than they do for explanations based on social class variations in the levels of cultural capital and aspirations. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the overall pattern of results from these analyses is unchanged after statistically controlling for levels of parental education. The findings also have methodological implications for measuring the social class gradient in attainment and qualifications

The worldwide trend to high participation higher education: dynamics of social stratification in inclusive systems

Worldwide participation in higher education now includes one-third of the age cohort and is growing at an unprecedented rate. The tendency to rapid growth, leading towards high participation systems (HPS), has spread to most middle-income and some low-income countries. Though expansion of higher education requires threshold development of the state and the middle class, it is primarily powered not by economic growth but by the ambitions of families to advance or maintain social position. However, expansion is mostly not accompanied by more equal social access to elite institutions. The quality of mass higher education is often problematic. Societies vary in the extent of upward social mobility from low-socio-economic-status backgrounds. The paper explores the intersection between stratified social backgrounds and the stratifying structures in HPS. These differentiating structures include public/private distinctions in schooling and higher education, different fields of study, binary systems and tiered hierarchies of institutions, the vertical ‘stretching’ of stratification in competitive HPS, and the unequalising effects of tuition. Larger social inequalities set limits on what education can achieve. Countries with high mobility sustain a consensus about social equality, and value rigorous and autonomous systems of learning, assessment and selection in education

Towards a model of contemporary parenting: The parenting behaviours and dimensions questionnaire

The assessment of parenting has been problematic due to theoretical disagreement, concerns over generalisability, and problems with the psychometric properties of current parenting measures. The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive, psychometrically sound self-report parenting measure for use with parents of preadolescent children, and to use this empirical scale development process to identify the core dimensions of contemporary parenting behaviour. Following item generation and parent review, 846 parents completed an online survey comprising 116 parenting items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a six factor parenting model, comprising Emotional Warmth, Punitive Discipline, Anxious Intrusiveness, Autonomy Support, Permissive Discipline and Democratic Discipline. This measure will allow for the comprehensive and consistent assessment of parenting in future research and practice