The purpose of this study was to estimate the marginal costs of instruction in several types of public colleges and universities in the United States. If marginal costs vary with enrollment size or differ from average costs, then inadvertent changes in the financial status of those institutions are likely to accompany changes in their enrollments, granted current funding patterns. Long-run total cost functions were developed within a microeconomic framework. The unit of analysis was the institution. A variety of additive and multiplicative functions were tested, as no particular functional form was assumed to be correct a priori. The dependent variable was instructional expenditures; the primary independent variables included lower, upper, and graduate division enrollments, while control variables included average faculty salary, a state price index, sponsored research expenditures per faculty, dummy variables for whether the institution is in a formula-funding state and whether it is a traditionally black institution, and a program vector consisting of the proportion of degrees earned in a representative set of curricular areas. The primary data source was the 1977-78 Higher Education General Information Survey published by the National Center for Higher Education Statistics. The cost functions were estimated using ordinary least-squares regression. Four types of institutions offering primarily a baccalaureate or higher degree and three types of two-year institutions were analyzed. The estimated marginal cost curves were interpreted as reflecting average institutional efficiency. Cost behavior differed considerably by type of institution and by student level with respect to the estimated marginal costs at mean enrollment and the variability of estimated marginal costs across the range of observed enrollments, i.e., the shape of the marginal cost curves. Overall, the results of the study support the concern that current funding patterns for public higher education, with their reliance on average costs, may yield other than intended results when enrollments change substantially; but this implied incongruence varied by institutional type and by student level within institutional types.

This study measured annual income, unemployment, job satisfaction, and socioeconomic status of selected respondents to the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) for the period of 1972-1979. Groups chosen for study included those who did not attend college, those who attended a two-year college but did not receive a degree, and those who completed a two-year degree by 1974, two years after high school graduation. The two-year college graduates were further subdivided into those completing academic programs and those who completed vocational programs. Mean comparisons using the two-tailed t-test of the employment indices for each group have been provided for each of the years of the study. Also, both direct and stepwise discriminant analyses have been applied to the 1979 employment data in order to determine the relative contribution of the employment variables to group differentiation. An attempt has been made to control for student background variables (parental socioeconomic status, aptitude, and motivation) in the discriminant analyses. Canonical coefficients of each discriminant function along with the corresponding Wilks Lambda have been provided. There were several important findings in this study. Results indicated that no real income differences existed among the three major education groups, but following graduation, vocational graduates outearned academic graduates in each year of the study. Two-year college attenders and graduates exhibited significantly less unemployment than the nonattenders. Vocational graduates found employment more readily than academic graduates during the first years following graduation. Job satisfaction among the two-year college graduates was generally higher in the areas of working conditions, job security, use of past training, pride and respect received, and in the job as a whole. Job status as measured by the Duncan Socioeconomic Index showed progressively higher status positions held by the respondents with more education. Job status for positions held by vocational and academic graduates yielded no real differences. This study provides evidence for the success of the occupational education function of two-year colleges. Both academic and vocational graduates generally exhibited higher employment returns than those who did not attend college or those who left college before completion of a degree.

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The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation. The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit of a moving target as the Obama administration recently passed a reprieve. This reprieve, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Process (DACA) does not confer any legal status or open any future path to citizenship. It does, however, grant eligible applicants a work permit, and the opportunity to travel, work, and attend school with a sense of security. The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the perceptions and understandings of undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth and their pursuits of higher education in. It is primarily concerned with the educational issues and opportunities facing these students. This research explores the impact of Hispanic/Latino students' perceptions of legal status barriers on their educational attainment experiences. The different opportunities and obstacles present in access to post-secondary education for undocumented Hispanic/Latino students residing in the United States are examined. This study focuses on the time period just after high school graduation, a critical stage in these students' lives, when undocumented status is particularly consequential. Knowledge about students' perception of their educational progress sheds light on their educational attainment experiences; it illuminates important factors associated with their individual educational experiences. Interactions with teachers, school authorities, their parents, siblings, peers, and other authority figures could be described in connecting personal interpretations and emotional responses to specific events in their lives that they feel helped or hindered their educational progress. Knowing how undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth identify and understand the factors that facilitate or impede their navigation of post-secondary education, will further inform educators and researchers alike. This study offers the possibility of identifying additional factors for educators, researchers, and our communities that hinder or facilitate the educational navigation and success of undocumented students. This type of research is significant as this marginalized population lives and works within the American society; the successes and struggles of these students impacts the United States as a whole. Moreover, these students possess amazing potential; we need to better understand and serve this population in order to both improve their life experiences, and to benefit from their input and abilities.

The values and beliefs involved in Islam maintain that religion is embedded in everyday life. Students from countries which subscribe to the tenets of Islam may have a difficult time adjusting to the secular society of the U.S. This study is concerned with the interrelationships among events perceived as stressful, the ways of coping with stress that are reported as most often used, and the reported level of satisfaction with living in the U.S. for the Muslim Arab international students in this study. A four page survey questionnaire was used as the instrument. The questionnaire was filled out by 102 Muslim Arab international students regarding the areas of stressors, coping strategies, satisfaction with living in the U.S., and individual descriptors. None of the hypotheses were supported with statistically significant results. Of the subjects, 83% reported that they did not receive any intercultural pre-sojourn training. Presently, pre-sojourn intercultural training does not aid in reducing the stressful situations experienced by these subjects (Hypothesis 1). The frequency of emotion-focused coping does not decrease when the perceived effectiveness of presojourn intercultural training increases (Hypothesis 2). Limited knowledge and standardized research in this area may contribute to the lack of success of intercultural training. Additional time spent living in the U.S. does not reduce the communication-related stressors Muslim Arab students experience (Hypothesis 3). Although research indicates the longer people live in a foreign culture, the more they learn the rules and norms and therefore become acculturated (Samovar and Porter, 1988), the additional considerations a Muslim Arab international student may have to deal with could override the positive effects of time. The frequency of emotion-focused coping does not substantially decrease the longer amount of time a student has lived in the U.S. (Hypothesis 4). stress is a part of any student's life. For Muslim Arab international students living in the U.S., the basic value system provided by the belief in Islam appears to be related to coping with stressful situations (Hypothesis 5). However, the results were not significant. As the variety of coping strategies increases, the variety of stressors does not decrease (Hypothesis 6). Rather, as the variety of stressors increases, so too does the variety of coping strategies. It appears that students who experience more stressors respond by using more coping strategies. Satisfaction was correlated with neither coping strategies nor stressors. One would expect satisfaction to be positively related to coping strategies (Hypothesis 7), but there was no relationship. One would also expect satisfaction to be inversely related to stressors (Hypothesis 8), but there is no relationship. Satisfaction was measured by the extent to which subjects would want to remain in the U.S., and if they would recommend a loved one to study in the U.S. Based on the highly obligatory social structure that exists in many Middle Eastern countries, contemplating remaining away from one's family and friends may not have been acceptable. Difficulties associated with living in the U.S. as an international student may have also led subjects to report they would not recommend a loved one to study in the U.S. In conclusion, there are three important results that can be drawn from this study. First, with respect, at least, to the Muslim Arab international students in this study, there is no way to empirically discriminate between different categories of stressors or different categories of coping strategies. Second, denial and wishful thinking are not effective coping strategies. Third, direct problem solving is clearly the most effective way for the Muslim Arab international students in this study to cope with stressors while living in the U.S.

The current educational reform movement mirrors reform recommendations of the past fifty years. The response of institutions of higher education to these recommendations has been limited. Some attribute this poor record to a variety of factors including a lack of understanding of the process of change, a lack of understanding of the complexity of organizations, a failure to address the constraints inherent in systems of higher education, and a failure to address the cultural characteristics of schools, colleges, and departments of education. There are a limited number of studies of teacher education as it attempts to respond to calls for reform. Studies incorporating multiple perspectives, various systems levels, and a variety of theoretical frames are even more limited and yet organizations can best be understood when consideration is given to the complex interacting forces that go to make up the systems. This study examined one state system of higher education's attempt to strengthen the preparation of teachers. It incorporated multiple perspectives by utilizing four theoretical frames to provide a focus on the changes at the various system levels. The structural, political, human resources, and symbolic frames were incorporated and reflected by the formal power structure, the informal power structure, the attitudes, and the organizational culture(s). The failure of some levels of the organization to utilize a multi-frame perspective and the resulting implications for change are addressed. This study found that the formulation of policy is an interaction of organizational structures, politics, and individuals. The culture of a given organization gives meaning to the way the organization addresses change, how individuals play both their formal and informal roles, and determines, in significant ways, the potential for substantive change.

This study examined the relationship between ten selected characteristics and persistence in different types of four-year institutions. The characteristics examined were divided into three separate clusters: personal (sex, race, religion), environmental (socioeconomic status, parents' educational level, number of children in the family), and academic (aptitude, high-school grades, size, and program). The data were extracted from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. The Carnegie classification was used to segregate four-year institutions of higher education into six major categories. Persistence in higher education was defined and examined in two different ways. In the first instance a persister was a student who enrolled in a particular institution in the fall of 1972 and graduated or continued his/her enrollment in the same type of institution according to the Carnegie classification on a full- or part-time basis through the fall of 1976. In the second instance a transfer student was defined as a student who persisted over the four-year period but moved his/her enrollment to an institution in other than the original Carnegie classification. First, data were gathered to examine the rates of student persistence. The resulting information was presented in tabular format. The second objective focused on the analysis of the relationship of the selected characteristics with persistence among and within the six classifications of institutions. The relationship of the selected characteristics and the distribution of persisting students among the six categories were analyzed. Different types of college-attendance patterns (persist, transfer, dropout) were isolated. These groups were compared using chi-square to determine significance of the comparisons. The findings were highlighted by the following statements. The recruitment and retention of black students in Research and Doctoral-Granting Universities were found ineffective. There was little difference between males and females in overall persistence rates. An association existed between religion and persistence in certain types of institutions illustrated by a strong overall persistence rate for Jewish students. High socioeconomic status students had a greater opportunity at institutional mobility by transferring into other classifications and then persisting in larger proportions than students in the low and medium range. As parental education levels increased so did the persistence rates of offspring. Aptitude and high-school grades were found strongly associated with persistence, however, different patterns were found in different institutional classifications.

This dissertation was written with the intent to determine the effectiveness of a community college program for Native American students. The procedure consisted of the following steps: (1) design of a survey instrument, (2) collect and collate the survey, (3) review literature with specific emphasis in programs designed for minorities and programs designed for Native American students in higher education, and (4) summarize the findings, and make recommendation to integrate into a reconstructed program that will improve and revitalize Native American students' recruiting, retention and graduation rates at the community college level, and prepare Native American students for university transfer. The major findings in this study are: (1) 95% of all the students enrolled at this particular college had a clear vision of their educational goals, (2) 80.2% of all the students enrolled in college were planning to prepare for a career, (3) most Native American students depend on financial assistance from several sources, (4) approximately half of all Native American students were underprepared for college, (5) less than 50% of the students surveyed actually got involved in special programs to aid them in college, and (6) the demographics of these students were quite similar to the non-Native American counterpart. Recommendations for these students include: (1) strengthen the educational foundation of these students while they are in K-12th grades, (2) in addition to providing financial assistance to these students, colleges need to set up a better support system in terms of transportation, work-study/jobs and housing, (3) when recruiting students, the student should be able to prove through assessment scores that they are able to benefit from a college education, and (4) transfer strategies must be part of the Native American program.

This study is an analysis of trends in public higher education and their probability and desirability for the 1970's as perceived by persons in positions of leadership in public higher education. The purposes of this study were (1) to identify the major trends in public higher education in the United States, (2) to assess the opinions of persons in positions of leadership in the public four-year colleges and universities in Texas, (3) to determine if there were significant differences in opinions of the probability and desirability of trends for the 1970's, and (4) to develop projections of the most probable and the most desirable trends for the 1970's.

In developing a construct of organization for higher education, this study is designed to describe the historical development of college and university organizational structures and supporting theory, to describe higher education's contemporary organizational structures and supporting theory, to determine from writings on complex organizations their applications to organizational structures and supporting theory in higher education, to synthesize from the search of literature a consistent theory of organizational structures and supporting theory for higher education institutions, and to develop a higher education organizational construct composed primarily of principles of organizational structure. This study explores theory of organization as it pertains to colleges and universities. Heuristically conceived, the study is reflective and developmental in nature.