Abstract not available

Abstract not available

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.

This study explores the experience of black professional musicians in higher education through in-depth interviews. It was expected that the interviews would reveal important differences in the experience of black musicians from other artists in academia. Fourteen participants in the Northeastern United States were interviewed about their double careers as professional musicians and faculty members using the methodology of the in-depth phenomenological interview. Those interviewed were: Bill Barron, Marion Brown, Jaki Byard, Stanley Cowell, Clyde Criner, Bill Dixon, Natalie Hinderas, Bill Pierce, Hildred Roach, Max Roach, Archie Shepp, Hale Smith, Frederick Tillis, and Pearl Williams-Jones. Each interview had three parts, (a) the participant's life before he/she started teaching, (b) the participant's life since he/she has been teaching, and (c) what meaning the participant made of the experiences reconstructed and shared in parts a and b. The interviews averaged four hours, were recorded on audio-tape and transcribed to print for analysis and discussion. The material from the interviews is first presented as a series of individual profiles in the artists' own words and, second, as excerpts from the interviews which are included in a discussion of themes derived from the content of the interviews. The findings include: (1) many black musicians were recruited during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and similar positions are no longer available, (2) some musicians are unwilling to curtail their composing, performing, and recording, which is the source of their artistic recognition, in order to teach full-time, (3) many musicians feel that their value to academia has not been recognized, that they are an underused resource, (4) those artists planning to continue teaching were those who accept the full-time demands of the teaching position, although they still see themselves as performers first, (5) most of the participants feel the potential of black music and of black studies in higher education are still unrealized, and (6) the methodology of in-depth interviewing was well suited to the nature of the study.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / In this research project, the small sample of students displays varying experiences as they engage in the practical curricular tasks in Obstetrics. Their responses indicate the challenges they face which are exacerbated by uncertainty particularly when the university’s chosen values contrast with those confronted in the broader context in which any curriculum operates.

College students' worldviews and (non)religious beliefs continue to evolve and become more nuanced. Thus, it is crucial that college students make meaning of diverse worldview perspectives and recognize the accompanying inequitable experiences that others encounter because of their worldviews. In promoting research on critical consciousness in their 2018 call for proposals, the Association for the Study of Higher Education invited educators to consider, not only how students engage across differences, but how they recognize, make meaning of, and act upon social inequities. To expand topics of pluralism and interworldview dialogue in higher education, it is important to investigate the phenomenon of critical consciousness in relation to worldview inequities. The purpose of this study was to explore how critical consciousness involving worldview inequities took shape for 15 undergraduate college students (aged 18-24) at one institution, William & Mary. Though some scholars have offered findings regarding students' and administrators' development of critical consciousness, there is not much research focused on how critical consciousness takes shape (i.e., how it is produced in time and space) for students regarding worldview inequities (Vagle, 2018, p. 150). In this study, I used a theoretical borderlands perspective, tenets of intersectionality theory, and a qualitative, post-intentional phenomenological (PIP) methodology. Data sources included two semi-structured interviews with each student participant, student-generated reflections over a two-week period, and my own post-reflexive journaling. Findings from this study are depicted through a primary tentative manifestation (momentarily recognizable aspects of phenomena), which I named emotionality, and two figurations that elucidate how critical consciousness took shape for students in this study.

Abstract not available

No description available.

No description available.