<p> The purpose of this study is to evaluate employer perceptions regarding the value of internships and to determine the role of company size in internship recruitment and/or placement. This study provides a much-needed employer viewpoint of the role of experiential education in undergraduate and graduate education, as well as offering researchers valuable insight into the needs and hiring practices of employers. Three research questions guided this study: Is there a relationship between company size and internship value in recruitment and/or placement, is there a relationship between company size and the value of internships in recruitment and/or placement opportunities for full-time hiring, and Is there a relationship between company size and perceived value if the prior experience is unpaid? Employer members of the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) were invited to participate; n = 264 with a return rate of 8.51 percent. A correlation research design was used to determine if a relationship existed between large and small companies and their value of experiential education as it relates to hiring. Spearman rho was used to provide the statistical analysis. Empirical results indicated there was a slight correlation among large and small companies in regard to the value they placed on internships as a prerequisite in their field, when considering applicants for fulltime hires, and when evaluating whether the experiential learning experience was paid or unpaid. Additionally, employers indicated that experiential learning opportunities such as internships or co-ops are increasing in value in recruitment and /or placement for their industries. For example, nearly 70 percent of employers indicated internships or co-ops should be a part of graduation requirements for students thus, suggesting the increased value companies are placing on internships. Internships and co-ops have become a standard for industries. Employers suggested the value of experiential learning in the recruitment and placement of applicants is a highly desired component of an applicant's credentials.</p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to assess the effect that different North Carolina state legislation had upon overall student engagement and success in dual enrollment Huskins, Learn and Earn Online, and Concurrent enrollment in comparison to the later Career and College Promise (CCP) dual enrollment program within North Carolina community colleges. </p><p> The questions researched in this study were the following: a. Was there a difference in completion between students who were dually enrolled in North Carolina community college programs in 2008 compared to 2012, as measured by the awarding of a certificate, diploma, or degree, three years from initial enrollment? b. Was there a difference in cumulative grade point average (GPA), total college credits earned, and total courses completed between dually enrolled students in North Carolina community colleges in 2008 compared to 2012, three years from initial enrollment? c. Was there a difference in success indicators specific to gender and minority status between dually enrolled students in North Carolina community colleges in 2008 and in 2012, three years from initial enrollment? </p><p> Dual enrollment student data including student GPA, course completion rates and cumulative course completion, level of credential awarded (certificate, diploma, or degree), gender, and minority status, were retrieved from state-wide student records contained in the Data Warehouse at the North Carolina Community College System Office. Data were analyzed using a combination of chi-squared and t-test statistical tests for significance testing (Mead, 2009). The results suggest that there were higher completion rates and higher GPAs for students who participated in Career and College Promise dual enrollment over earlier programs. It appears that minority students were not negatively impacted by CCP policies, in fact, Hispanic students showed marked improvement in several areas.</p>

<p> This qualitative, phenomenological study will cross-sectionally examine the perceptions of general education teachers through in-person interviews to analyze their personal beliefs for special education students&rsquo; attendance at post-secondary education institutions. Data was collected from general education teachers working at different urban high schools in a Southern California charter management organization. Each of the interviewed teachers are currently responsible, or have been responsible, for the instruction of special education students in their classroom. A total of 6 general education teachers participated in semi-structured interviews that consisted of 10 open-ended questions. Three conclusions were extracted from the findings related to the data collected through the interview process. Firstly, the general education teacher must believe in the potential of the special education student and their ability to attend a post-secondary education institution. Secondly, the school and the charter management organization must provide adequate training and collaboration opportunities to general education teachers in order to provide them with the pedagogical skills necessary to appropriately support special educations students. Thirdly, the special education student must have the self-belief and the self-confidence required to attend a post-secondary education institution after high school graduation. The 3 implications supported by the key findings and conclusions from the study are to explore methods by which general education teachers might better communicate their belief in the potential of all special education students, devise systems in which more meaningful collaboration, communication, and training of general education teachers to instruct special education students can occur, and investigate strategies that general education teachers might implement to improve the self-belief and self-confidence of special education students.</p>

<p> As bullying was eventually labeled an adult problem, research refocused from the child&rsquo;s playground to the adult playground&mdash;the workplace. Schoolyard bullies likely grow into workplace bullies when actions are encouraged or ignored. Though workplace bullying (WPB) research has been conducted in the field of general academia little has been done to study bullying in higher education. In addition to the lack of literature, bullying behaviors have been difficult to define and measure. As a result, narrow operational definitions of WPB have been commonplace. Therefore, WPB has gone largely underreported and targets have been fundamentally underrepresented.</p><p> The purpose of this convergent parallel mixed methods study focused on two areas. One focus was to determine whether faculty to faculty WPB across disciplines in higher education impacted organizational trust and commitment in one private, faith-based university in the southeastern United States. The second focus was on the faculty&rsquo;s perceptions of bullying behaviors.</p><p> From the findings it was concluded: (a) targets of WPB exhibited lower organizational trust following the bullying incident, (b) targets of WPB committed to the organization the same following the bullying incident, (c) targets of WPB exhibited lower job satisfaction, (d) targets of WPB perceived bullying behaviors that were grouped into five themes, and (e) targets experienced effects of WPB that were grouped into four themes.</p><p> Implications for practice include recommendations for researchers, leaders and faculty members in higher education, and policy-makers. The study concludes with specific recommendations for further research.</p>

<p> Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects equal employment opportunity for all, and other California legislation to increase faculty diversity, the disparity between the demographics of California&rsquo;s community college student population and the makeup of the faculty is striking. Specifically, underrepresented minority (URM) students who represent the largest student population at 49%, yet only 22% of faculty are URM. In 1992 the California legislature adopted regulations that allow community colleges to establish Faculty Diversity Internship Programs (FDIP), to &ldquo;promote inclusive efforts to locate and attract qualified graduate students who are members of monitored groups identified by gender, ethnicity, and disability.&rdquo; Despite being passed over 20 years ago, less than half of community colleges have implemented FDIPs. This study used a program evaluation to examine two FDIPs sites. The program evaluation revealed four benefits of participating in FDIP 1) mentorship, 2) teaching experience, 3) professional development, and 3) networking and collaboration opportunities. Barriers and challenges included 1) mentor matching, 2) mentor training, 3) class assignment, and 4) FDIP Coordinator transition. Finally, the program evaluation revealed that although the FDIP does not have a significant impact on increasing faculty diversity, it does have a significant impact on preparing faculty to serve in a diverse community college. The study provides evidence and recommendations for implementing FDIPs as a strategy to increase faculty diversity.</p>

<p> The US Census Bureau reveals the number of families in poverty in the United States in 2014 was 9.5 million, at a rate of 11.6 percent. In the current economic climate, many more families are facing the possibility of eviction, foreclosure and homelessness. Low income families may be able to secure a residence through low-income housing organizations. Orange County Community Housing Corporation is an organization that offers a program in addition to long-term housing in areas such as financial literacy, education, and health. In this setting, tenants may begin to think about more future oriented prospects rather than daily/weekly survival issues. As families become more stable, their perceptions of success and how the program may help them will reveal how services can be tailored more effectively.</p><p> The purpose of this ethnographic study is to discover how participants within Orange County Community Housing Corporation define success. As tenants are involved in the program, program definitions may play a part not only in shaping tenants&rsquo; immediate goals (i.e., finding employment, returning to school), but also their overall perception of success. Tenants&rsquo; definitions of success may also contribute to how the program is shaped. This qualitative study will utilize participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with the overall aim to explore the intersection of tenant and program definitions of success and their convergence towards sustainable outcomes for tenants, which includes averting homelessness and working towards greater &ldquo;self-sufficiency.&rdquo;</p>

<p> More families in the United States are beginning to choose private or homeschool education for children instead of a public school education (Hanna, 2011); therefore, college administrators must begin to evaluate each student&rsquo;s educational background in order to help all students achieve academic success at the college level. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in multi-year college academic performance among public, private, and homeschool graduates who attended a private work college in the Midwest. The variables analyzed consisted of students&rsquo; final high school GPAs and ACT test scores, college cumulative GPAs and work point average (WPA) scores, as well as college graduation rates. Each educational background was examined independently, while also analyzing the varied educational backgrounds against one another and as groups. The results of the homeschool and private school students were not significantly different in all variables tested. The homeschool students maintained a slightly higher average overall; however, both homeschool and private school students&rsquo; scores were consistently higher than students who attended public schools using an equality of variance, ANOVA, and post-hoc analyses for high school cumulative GPA, ACT composite score, college cumulative GPA, and WPA variables. Both homeschool and private school students had a comparable college completion rate; however, public school students had a lower graduation rate. A chi square test of independence was used to determine whether a significant relationship existed between the educational background of students and college graduation. The analyses showed the graduation rate was dependent upon the educational background. Not only did public school students average the lowest percentage in all variables, but they were below the overall average of each variable tested.</p>

<p> This study investigates the legitimacy of policies to import cross-border higher education (CBHE) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study compares two of the UAE&rsquo;s higher education subsystems &ndash; Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah &ndash; to understand how higher education stakeholders in the UAE interpret foreign involvement in higher education and investigate how those interpretations contribute to stakeholders&rsquo; assessments of the legitimacy of the country&rsquo;s CBHE policies. The legitimacy of cross-border higher education policies is a potentially contentious issue because the higher education resources that are imported into host countries under CBHE policies are usually intended to supplement existing higher education systems whose stakeholders may not welcome foreign involvement in higher education. Given the multiple actors and national contexts that are active in the UAE&rsquo;s higher education systems, there are potential legitimacy challenges facing local CBHE policies. The purpose of this study is to explore this area of possible disconnect in the legitimacy of CBHE to more clearly understand how host country higher education stakeholders evaluate the legitimacy of CBHE policies within their own systems and to arrive at a theory of policy legitimacy for cross-border higher education. </p><p> This study approaches policy legitimacy in higher education by investigating how higher education stakeholders evaluate CBHE policies and derives a theory of CBHE policy legitimacy from the study&rsquo;s findings. The following research questions guide the study: </p><p> 1. What are the goals of CBHE policies? How do these goals serve to increase the legitimacy of the higher education subsystem? </p><p> 2. How do resident higher education stakeholders evaluate the legitimacy of CBHE policies? </p><p> 3. How do the findings of this study on legitimacy in a non-democratic environment resonate with existing policy legitimacy theories? </p><p> This qualitative study is a two-case comparison of CBHE policy in the emirates of Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), each of which has implemented CBHE policies in their private higher education sectors. Forty-five higher education stakeholders were interviewed across the two emirates between January and April 2012. Site visits and document analyses were conducted in both cases and an additional 40 higher education actors were interviewed in other UAE higher education systems, providing background context for the two cases analyzed in this study. </p><p> Support was found for the model of CBHE policy legitimacy proposed in the study. Salient components of CBHE policy legitimacy include the procedural elements of legality, decision norms, and representation, as well as normative legitimacy of the policies.</p>

<p> Prior studies have demonstrated that most college dropouts happen at the transition to the third semester of college. Using a state dataset that includes student data for the 2013-2014 time span in the state of Oklahoma, the researcher examined the validity of students&rsquo; background characteristics, high school performance, and financial aid status in predicting first-year college performance and persistence beyond the second semester of college. </p><p> Data from 116,991 degree-seeking first-year students enrolled at research universities in Oklahoma from fall 2013 to fall 2014 were entered in the SPSS software for data analyses, which include both multiple linear regression and multiple logistic regression. </p><p> The researcher finds that students&rsquo; enrollment status and federal Perkins loans do not yield strong predictions of how students will perform academically or whether they will return to the second year of college. For tuition waivers, the associations with college performance and persistence are stronger, but still not significant. In contrast, spring GPA, Oklahoma&rsquo;s Promise, high school grade point average, American College Testing scores, and gender are useful for predicting persistence to the third semester, and have a strong association with their college performance. </p><p> These findings might reflect current efforts by the Federal Government, State agencies, institutions and schools to promote student success, help them pay college tuition, and increase students&rsquo; pre-college performance. </p>

Degree completion is as important as participation in higher education. To date, most of the research on this subject has investigated the association between socio-economic background and academic preparation to explain lower rates or non-completion. This thesis explores the role that individual, institutional and contextual factors have on degree completion chances. The first empirical chapter uses an individual-level longitudinal dataset to study the role that attainment on entry and socio-economic background have on students’ chances of completion. The chapter finds that attainment on entry significantly affects students’ chances of degree completion. It also reveals, however, that attainment on entry does not completely explain the socio-economic differences in degree completion chances in the system. The second empirical chapter examines the role that institutions have on students’ chances of degree completion. Like the first chapter, this one draws on the individual-level longitudinal dataset. Although the analyses discover institutional effects, they show them to have a small effect on the system. The third empirical chapter examines the role that teaching has on the probability that students complete their degrees in higher education. The findings show that teaching has a small but significant effect on students’ chances of degree completion. Teaching effects take place only at the most selective institutions of the system. The final empirical chapter examines the role that unemployment has on students’ decisions to complete a university degree. Using data from the Labour Force Survey, the research finds that higher unemployment rates have a positive effect on students’ chances of degree completion. This thesis contributes to the field by showing that stratification of higher education also translates to degree completion. The results confirm that selectivity and institutional effects are strongly associated. In addition, they show that where the institutional framework is concerned, there is a gradient for class effect in educational outcomes.