College Students’ Cognitive and Affective Attitude Toward Higher Education and Their Academic Engagement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damianus Abun
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Academic Engagement ◽  
Affective Attitude

The (Mis)Uses of Race in Research on College Students: A Systematic Review

JCSCORE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-41
Author(s):  
Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Student Affairs ◽  
Educational Outcomes ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Higher Education Journals ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Race has been one of the most controversial subjects studied by scholars across a wide range of disciplines as they debate whether races actually exist and whether race matters in determining life, social, and educational outcomes. Missing from the literature are investigations into various ways race gets applied in research, especially in higher education and student affairs. This review explores how scholars use race in their framing, operationalizing, and interpreting of research on college students. Through a systematic content analysis of three higher education journals over five years, this review elucidates scholars’ varied racial applications as well as potential implicit and explicit messages about race being sent by those applications and inconsistencies within articles. By better understanding how race is used in higher education and student affairs research, scholars can be more purposeful in their applications to reduce problematic messages about the essentialist nature of race and deficit framing of certain racial groups.

Moving Up without Losing Your Way

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Morton
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
College Experience ◽  
Career Opportunities ◽  
Community Finding

Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this book looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. The book reframes the college experience, factoring in not just educational and career opportunities but also essential relationships with family, friends, and community. Finding that student strivers tend to give up the latter for the former, negating their sense of self, the book seeks to reverse this course. It urges educators to empower students with a new narrative of upward mobility—one that honestly situates ethical costs in historical, social, and economic contexts and that allows students to make informed decisions for themselves. The book paves a hopeful road so that students might achieve social mobility while retaining their best selves.

scholarly journals Student governments in Chinese higher education: reflection on college students’ and student cadres’ political trust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Huang ◽  
Panpan Yao ◽  
Fan Li ◽  
Xiaowei Liao
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Power Distribution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Chinese Higher Education ◽  
Student Government ◽  
Party Membership ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party

AbstractThis paper documents the structure and operations of student governments in contemporary Chinese higher education and their effect on college students’ political trust and party membership. We first investigate the structure and power distribution within student governments in Chinese universities, specifically focusing on the autonomy of student governments and the degree to which they represent students. Second, using a large sample of college students, we examine how participating in student government affects their political trust and party membership. Our results show that student government in Chinese higher education possesses a complex, hierarchical matrix structure with two main parallel systems—the student union and the Chinese Communist Party system. We found that power distribution within student governments is rather uneven, and student organisations that are affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party have an unequal share of power. In addition, we found that students’ cadre experience is highly appreciated in student cadre elections, and being a student cadre significantly affects their political trust and party membership during college.

Examining Psychosociocultural Influences as Predictors of Black College Students’ Academic Self-Concept and Achievement

2020 ◽  
pp. 009579842097979
Author(s):  
Samuel T. Beasley ◽  
Shannon McClain
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Academic Engagement ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Black College ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Black College Students ◽  
Grade Point ◽  
Racial Centrality ◽  
Positive Direct

Using the psychosociocultural framework, this study concurrently examined the influence of psychological (academic self-concept and academic engagement attitudes), social (caring student-faculty relationships), and cultural variables (racial centrality and perceived university environment) on the academic achievement of Black college students. Participants were 247 Black collegians recruited from a large, Southwestern predominately White institution. Results of structural equation modeling largely supported hypothesized relationships between variables, accounting for 16% of the variance in grade point average (GPA), 75% of the variance in academic engagement, and 29% of the variance in academic self-concept. Results revealed two positive direct paths to GPA: (a) racial centrality and (b) academic self-concept; academic self-concept had a key role in facilitating indirect effects on academic engagement and GPA. Findings highlight multiple noncognitive predictors that can facilitate Black students’ academic functioning. Research and practice implications of these findings are outlined.

scholarly journals What sparks academic engagement with society? A comparison of incentives appealing to motives

2021 ◽  
pp. 095042222199406
Author(s):  
Eva Sormani ◽  
Thomas Baaken ◽  
Peter van der Sijde
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Engagement ◽  
Career Advancement ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Third Mission ◽  
Research Support ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Subject Design ◽  
Joint Research Project

The pressure on higher education institutions (HEIs) to realize third mission activities continues to grow, intensifying the search for incentives to motivate academics to engage with stakeholders outside their HEI. Previous studies have found limitations in intrinsically motivating academic engagement; therefore, this study investigates the extrinsic regulation of motivations via incentives. The authors identified a broad range of incentives for third mission activities, belonging to four motivation categories: pecuniary incentives, career advancement, appreciation and research support. Drawing on self-determination theory, incentives (nudges and rewards) are empirically compared in a between-subject design with a sample of 324 academics from the business and economics disciplines. The analysis showed that nudges affect business and economics academics’ intention to engage with society in a joint research project. Furthermore, these academics responded well to incentives concerned with the research support motivation category. The findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the relevance of marginal incentives—nudges—in implementing appropriate incentives in HEIs.

A critical approach to academic, community, and family literacies of first-generation college students in Latin America

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lina M. Trigos-Carrillo
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Latin America ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
First Generation College Students ◽  
Community Cultural Wealth ◽  
Cultural Wealth ◽  
The Social ◽  
First Generation College

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In this study, I investigated the social practices related to reading and writing of first-generation college students and their families and communities in Latin America from a critical sociocultural perspective (Lewis, Enciso and Moje, 2007). This embedded multiple-case study was conducted in Mexico, Colombia, and Costa Rica. Using an ethnographic perspective of data collection (Bernard, 2011; Lillis and Scott, 2007) and the constant comparative method (Heath and Street, 2008), situational analysis (Clarke, 2005), and within and cross-case analysis (Yin, 2014), I analyzed specific literacy events (Heath, 1982) and literacy practices (Street, 2003) in social context. First, I argue that access to the academic discourse and culture is one of the main barriers first-generation college students faced, although they constructed strong social support systems and engaged in rich literacy practices that involved critical action and thinking. Second, I found that, in contrast to the common belief that socially and economically nonmainstream college students were deficient in literacy, these students and their families possessed a literacy capital and engaged in complex and varied literacy practices. Using their literacy capital, first-generation college students and their families and communities procured the preservation of cultural identity, resisted the effects of cultural globalization, served the role of literacy sponsors, and reacted critically to the sociopolitical context. These literacy practices constituted a community cultural wealth for the families and communities of first-generation college students. I argue that a positive approach towards first-generation college students' identities and their community cultural wealth is necessary in curriculum, instruction, and policy if universities are truly committed to provide access to higher education to students from diverse backgrounds. Finally, I investigated first-generation university women's gender identities, discourses, and roles as they navigated the social worlds of the public university and their local communities in Mexico, Colombia, and Costa Rica. While dominant discourses and roles associated with women reproduced the machismo culture in the region, these group of first-generation university women contested, challenged, and resisted those roles, discourses, and identities. From a Latin American feminist perspective, I argue that bonds of solidarity and communal relations are values that resist the negative effects of global capitalism in marginalized bodies. In particular, public universities, women's supporters, emancipatory discourses, and situated critical literacies played a critical role in improving gender equality in higher education in Latin America. This study contributes to a better understanding of the literacy practices in situated social contexts and informs the ways in which more equitable college instruction, policy, and practices can be developed and promoted.

Students’ Sense Making of Higher Education Policies During the Vertical Transfer Process

2021 ◽  
pp. 000283122110030
Author(s):  
Lauren Schudde ◽  
Huriya Jabbar ◽  
Eliza Epstein ◽  
Elif Yucel
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
College Students ◽  
Community College ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Education Policies ◽  
Vertical Transfer ◽  
Higher Education Policies ◽  
State Transfer ◽  
Subsequent Behavior

More than a third of students enter higher education at a community college; most aim to earn a baccalaureate. Drawing on sense-making theory and longitudinal qualitative data, we examined how community college students interpret state transfer policies and how their interpretations influence subsequent behavior. Data from 3 years of interviews revealed how students adjudicate between multiple intersecting policies. The higher education context, where institutions provided competing signals about policies, left students to navigate complex messages to achieve their transfer goals. Students’ approaches to understanding transfer policies primarily followed one of two patterns: adopting policy signals as step-by-step procedures or adapting and combining policy signals to create a customized transfer pathway. Both approaches had important implications for students’ transfer outcomes.

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