Professional preparation involves the dissemination of technical knowledge (knowledge and skill necessary to practice profession) as well as fundamental knowledge (professional values, personal attributes, and behaviors expected of professionals). Athletic training education is in the process of extensive entry-level education reform, and while there has been significant emphasis on the technical knowledge expectations of program graduates, there has not been an emphasis on fundamental knowledge expectations. In the midst of entry-level education reform, including the restructuring of the clinical education experience, a close examination of the student's perspective of the old clinical education experience is warranted. With the restructuring of the clinical education requirement, entry-level athletic training education could be losing, or significantly decreasing, a unique aspect of its education process that may have provided a vital pathway for the dissemination of fundamental knowledge to its future professionals. This study used in-depth interviewing and qualitative analysis to determine what recent program graduates learned in fundamental knowledge, and what types of learning experiences elicited such learning. Six employed recent program graduates participated in two ninety-minute interviews. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Fundamental knowledge learned included: an understanding of professional roles and responsibilities; a sense of collegiality; a professional identity; socialization into the profession; self-confidence and independence; empathy and compassion; reliability and responsibility; the ability to develop relationships with a variety of personnel; decision-making skills and quick thinking skills; and being part of a team. Learning experiences that elicited these types of learning included: mentoring relationships with supervising ATC's; having a variety of clinical experiences; independent learning experiences; increased clinical expectations and responsibilities; and clinical experiences involving the day-to-day care of student-athletes. The participants of this study struggled with fundamental knowledge issues as they entered the workplace, yet felt comfortable with technical knowledge skills. The findings of this study serve to enlighten athletic training educators to, (1) the need of professional preparation involving technical as well as fundamental knowledge, and (2) the importance of the clinical education experience in delivering such knowledge.

Female-headed families of Hispanic origin have the highest poverty rate of all ethnic groups in the United States. Within this group of Hispanics, Puerto Rican families suffer most from high rates of poverty with 52.1% of Puerto Rican youth younger than 18 living below the poverty line (United States Census Bureau, 2001). These figures are directly related to low educational levels and high dropout rates among Puerto Rican females (Canedy, 2001; United States Department of Commerce, 1999). This study explores the experiences of 16 Puerto Rican women accessing higher education in an alternative program in the United States. In order to explore the experiences of my participants, I use in-depth interviewing from a phenomenological perspective (Seidman, 1998). The study's findings show a lack of school support and curricular guidance for Puerto Rican women in secondary school in the United States, and a tendency toward internalized failure among participants. Inadequate assessment of bilingual speakers combined with negative perceptions of bilingual Spanish/English speakers in United States schools also account for deficient academic outcomes for Puerto Rican female students. Results of this study also show a correlation between family disjunction and negative school outcomes. High pregnancy rates among Puerto Rican teenagers were also contributors to school drop out and push out behaviors. Most women in this study who went on to a respectful, high-level, critical thinking alternative higher education course in the humanities (New Roads to College) showed remarkable growth personally and academically. Findings show an increase in literacy and school motivation for their extended family members as well. The study points to many recommendations for schools and policy makers who are educating Puerto Rican women in United States schools.

The purpose of this study was to gain insights into the undergraduate senior year of college. Through the use of in-depth, phenomenological interviewing, four college seniors shared their previous experiences with life transitions and described how they were experiencing their final year as undergraduates. This study described the experiences of the participants and explored these questions: (1) What is the senior year of college like? (2) What are the challenges that students face in their senior year? (3) How does the undergraduate experience and cope with this transition? (4) Are the experiences in the senior year consistent with transition theory and inclusive of a liminal stage? The exploration of these types of questions sought the deeper meaning of the senior year experience and how it impacts the undergraduate. The results of this study were consistent with existing literature that identifies the undergraduate senior's two primary challenges as securing post-college employment and deciding where to live after college. The significant findings of this study emerged through examining the senior year as its own unique slice of the undergraduate experience. In doing so, it become evident that the participants' experiences during their senior year reflected the first-two stages of Schlossberg's theory of adult transitions, and identified much of the senior year as a liminal state. Additionally, what surfaced from the participants' insights was how the liminal experience of the participants was strongly influenced (positively and negatively) by two factors—(1) the individual's success in securing a post-college life and (2) friends. This study also demonstrated that the experiences of these participants, while not representative of all college seniors, call for further concentrated research of the undergraduate senior year experience, with emphasis on the impact of friends on this life transition.

This study explores the often conflicting assumptions that the public and practitioners make about American higher education. In particular, it proposes that we have allowed much of these assumptions to assume the status of myth. The consequence is an imprecision in higher education: it is seen as both training for jobs and at the same time providing us with a heightened aesthetic and moral sense. This is rarely true. The review of the literature of the history of higher education reinforces this confusion. Curricular shifts are recorded with very little examination of the consequences they may have on the institution, itself; new missions, goals, and purposes are added with little concern for the overall effect this process of accretion may have. In the last 100 years, discipline, majors, and other academic responses have occurred to meet the training needs of industry; the atmosphere and goals of the arts, literature, and science are highly professional, as well. The consequences for higher education include trivialization of courses and majors, isolation of units within the universities, learning that exists only in-order-to acquire narrow skills or credentials, and a continuing rationalization of the connection with the marketplace. There is a lack of critical self-analysis by the institutions. Proposals for reform have, on occasion, been advanced in recognition of this proliferation of purpose. However, the trend in American higher education seems to be moving ever closer to vocationalism, in spite of proposed reforms. This movement is being effected at the expense of general or liberal education. The consequences of this trend do not seem to be a major concern in most educational circles, or to be fully understood. The study concludes that an important, even vital part of higher education is being sacrificed to the utilitarian ideal. This reality may force a rethinking of our myth; perhaps, even a reform of our educational ideal.

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Regarded as the backwaters of European higher education in the early nineteenth century, prereformed Oxford and Cambridge have received scant treatment by writers who are more sympathetic with the goals of the ultimately successful university reformers. To an extent this inattention to Oxford

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The purpose of this study was to assess the degree of handicap experienced by management and marketing transfer students in the School of Business Administration at the University of Massachusetts who had completed the introductory course in their major at the public community college from which they had transferred. The School, accredited by the AACSB (American Assembly of Schools of Business Administration), follows policies which stipulate that no credit be given for certain business courses taken prior to the junior year unless member schools could demonstrate that transfer students were not disadvantaged by having done so. All transfer students entering SBA between 1969 and 1976, and who majored in management or marketing were included in the study. They were sorted into two groups depending upon the locus of enrollment in the introductory course in their major. Using SPSS, the records of the two groups were compared to see if significant differences could be found either in terms of overall grade-point average, or grade-point average in the major. There were two other phases to the study. One was to analyze the predictive validity of courses in certain skills areas on subsequent academic performance. Another was to compose the academic performance of all transfer students in the study with a random sample of native students. The study concluded that students from public sector community colleges in Massachusetts were not handicapped by having completed these introductory courses at the junior colleges. The grade-point averages of transfer students who had done so were not significantly different than those of transfer students who completed the introductory courses at the University. The study also concluded that grades in economics and mathematics courses completed at the community college were valid predictors of academic success at the University, but that this relationship did not exist with English courses. Native students outperformed transfer students in overall grade-point average, but averages in the major were virtually identical for both groups.

A five-year longitudinal study of attrition was done using as subjects 303 first-time, traditional-age freshmen at a small private college in Western Massachusetts. The relationships of grant aid, preferential aid (provided on the basis of talent or merit), work aid, and loan aid to persistence were examined in a multivariate study which included the variables of socioeconomic status, major field of study, ability measures, high school rank, sex, state of residence, participation in high school athletics or activities, religious preference, date of registration, grade point average, and resident or commuter status. Persisters had higher high school rank, registered earlier, had higher grade point averages, tended to be women, had specific majors at the time of enrollment, and had stated religious preferences. The hypotheses that work assistance and preferential aid are positively related to persistence were supported in a series of discriminant function analyses. The hypothesis that loan aid is negatively related to persistence was partially supported by the multivariate analyses, but this finding may be confounded by changes in Guaranteed Student Loan regulations which occurred 3 years into the study. The hypothesis that grant aid is positively related to persistence was not supported in the mulitvariate analyses. The consistent finding of other studies is that grant assistance is positively related to persistence, but these studies fail to separate grant assistance (based on need) from preferential aid (based on merit). The results of these other studies may be due to the confounding of need-based and merit-based aid. The results of the study are limited to first-time, traditional-age freshmen at the research site. Nevertheless, the current trend toward increasing amounts of loans and proportionately less grant and work assistance should be reexamined in light of the results. Suggestions for future research on the relationship of financial aid variables to persistence include separation of preferential aid into assistance based on academic merit from assistance based on athletic or other talent, and the addition of a variable related to quality of participation in high school activities.