Digest No. 09 – September 2021 – CIC Digest of Recent Research

Digest No. 09 - September 2021

Helping Students with Disabilities Persist in College

How does access to support services help students with disabilities persist through college? Analyzing the National Longitudinal Study 2 (NSLT-2), a nationally representative longitudinal dataset that included a sample of 2,330 college students identified as having a disability in secondary school, the authors used a quasi-experimental study to find out. The authors discovered that the students who had accessed universally available (e.g., writing and math centers) and/or disability-related supports (e.g., disability services) were significantly more likely to persist through their college experience at either two- or four-year colleges. In addition, retention rates were higher for students who accessed services that were universally available (those that do not require disability disclosure).

How Party Affiliation Influences Educational Policy Choices

How do policymakers at the highest levels of government conceive of the purposes of higher education? What logic do they employ to justify their political decisions? How do they understand and represent different groups of stakeholders in higher education? And how does this influence their willingness to distribute benefits and burdens to these groups? This study addresses these questions through a discourse analysis of over 14 hours of deliberation by the U.S. Congress Committee on Education and the Workforce regarding the 2017 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Study Abroad Leads to Volunteering beyond College

Does participation in undergraduate study abroad experiences lead to post-college volunteer service? Drawing on information provided through careful analysis of data from the Education Longitudinal Study 2002–2012, the author designed and executed a study that unequivocally established this connection. In short, participation in study abroad is strongly associated with volunteering beyond college. This relationship holds even after controlling for a host of demographic covariates, such as race and gender, as well as volunteer-related behaviors, such as high school and college volunteering. The author argues that more students should study abroad.

Improving College Persistence through Text Messaging Campaigns

How does access to information influence retention for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds? This study found that how information is communicated to college students is as important as what is being communicated to them. The purpose of this study was to explore access to information and its relationship to persistence and course credit completion among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Supported by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (WVHEPC) and the Kresge Foundation, the study examined a targeted texting campaign during the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 academic years. The study looked at students transitioning from high school to college; specifically, the study compared students from 14 high schools that were targeted for the campaign to their peers from 14 high schools that were not part of the campaign.

Achieving Representational Equity in Faculty Hiring

What factors stymie efforts to achieve representational equity in faculty hiring? How can faculty move from the interrogation of campus cultures of racism to sustainable, restorative action? And what does movement toward antiracist organizational culture and policy look like from a faculty perspective? This qualitative investigation leveraged cultural historical activity theory to analyze the racial learning and development of faculty members engaged in a series of facilitated inquiry workshops designed to advance racial equity in their institution’s hiring process. The study then identifies vital steps in converting examinations of racist cultural practices into lasting organizational change and transformation for racial equity.

Enhancing Multicultural Education in the Classroom

While many universities have made significant strides in bolstering the structural diversity of their faculty and students as well as the representational diversity embedded in course curricula, a central problem remains: What practical, robust mechanisms exist for enhancing student interactional diversity? How can an institution equip its undergraduates to engage meaningfully and learn across differences? Intergroup dialogue has emerged as a potentially effective contributor to the development of interactional diversity skills; however, that dialogue is usually offered in co-curricular spaces. As a result, students usually must self-select into these experiences, and the skills provided by them are not always available when students encounter multicultural challenges in the curriculum. This single-site, longitudinal, quasi-experimental study examines whether the incorporation of intergroup dialogue with a multicultural curriculum provides an additional benefit to the development of culturally competent outcomes.