1st Edition

How College Students Succeed Making Meaning Across Disciplinary Perspectives

Edited By Nicholas A. Bowman Copyright 2022
    348 Pages
    by Routledge

    348 Pages
    by Routledge

    Receiving a college education has perhaps never been more important than it is today. While its personal, societal, and overall economic benefits are well documented, too many college students fail to complete their postsecondary education. As colleges and universities are investing substantial resources into efforts to counter these attrition rates and increase retention, they are mostly unaware of the robust literature on student success that is often bounded in disciplinary silos. The purpose of this book is to bring together in a single volume the extensive knowledge on college student success. It includes seven chapters from authors who each synthesize the literature from their own field of study, or perspective. Each describes the theories, models, and concepts they use; summarizes the key findings from their research; and provides implications for practice, policy, and/or research. The disciplinary chapters offer perspectives from higher education, public policy, behavioral economics, social psychology, STEM, sociology, and critical and post-structural theory.

    1. Learning from Disciplinary Perspectives on College Student Success—Nicholas A. Bowman 2. Cataloging Institutional Retention Efforts and Their Empirical Grounding—Jenna W. Kramer, Scott K. Rausch, and John M. Braxton 3)Theories, Findings, and Implications from Higher Education Research on Student Success—Nicholas A. Bowman and Jason C. Garvey 4. Public Policy in Higher Education. Agendas, Solutions, and Impacts on Student Success—Nicholas W. Hillman 5. Behavioral Economics of Higher Education. Theory, Evidence, and Implications for Policy and Practice—Lindsay C. Page and Aizat Nurshatayeva 6. Social Psychological Approaches to College Student Success—Heidi Williams and Mary C. Murphey 7. STEM Student Success. Strategic Learning, Mentored Research, and Structural Change—Becky Wai-Ling Packard and Rachel Hirst 8. Inequality in Higher Education. Sociological Understandings of Student Success—Josipa Roksa, Blake R. Silver, and Yapeng Wang 9. Critical and Poststructural Considerations for College Student Success—Jodi L. Linley, Alex C. Lange, and Nicholas R. Stroup 10. An Interdisciplinary Theory of College Student Success—Nicholas A. Bowman, Milad Mohebali, and Lindsay Jarratt 11. Usingthe Interdisciplinary Theory of Student Success. Implications for Policy, Practice, Research, and Assessment—Lindsay Jarratt, Milad Mohebali, and Nicholas A. Bowman

    Biography

    Nicholas A. Bowman is the Mary Louise Petersen Chair in Higher Education, senior research fellow in the Public Policy Center, and director of the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa. His work uses a social psychological lens to explore key issues in higher education, including student success, equity and diversity, undergraduate admissions, college rankings, and quantitative research methodology. He has written nearly 100 peer-reviewed journal articles that have appeared in outlets such as Review of Educational Research, Educational Researcher, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Sociology of Education, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and Science Advances. He is also an author of the third volume of How College Affects Students, which systematically reviewed over 1,800 studies on the short-term and long-term effects of postsecondary education. Dr. Bowman’s research has also received popular attention through articles in National Public Radio, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and other outlets. He has received the Association for the Study of Higher Education’s Promising Scholar/Early Career Award and the University of Iowa’s Scholar of the Year Award.

    “Nick Bowman is probably the nation’s leading scholar on student success in college. He has pulled together a talented group of authors to focus on the different dimensions of student success. The result is a work that should be required reading for all faculty and administrators concerned about students and the impact of college.”

    Ernest T. Pascarella

    Professor Emeritus of Higher Education and Student Affairs, University of Iowa

    “Essential. Timely. Requisite reading. This interdisciplinary compendium not only provides a theoretical framework to advance our knowledge of college student success, but also serves as an indispensable guide for higher education institutions to anticipate the post-pandemic needs of our students and eliminate the institutional barriers that inhibit their success. How College Students Succeed will help inform practice for years to come.”

    Doneka R. Scott

    Vice Chancellor and Dean for the Division of Academic and Student Affairs, North Carolina State University

    “Identifying how to improve college success for students from underserved groups is one of the most important challenges facing higher education leaders, policymakers, and researchers. This volume recognizes how multiple disciplinary perspectives inform understanding of this vexing problem and potential solutions. By bringing together different theories and frameworks, this volume provides new insights into what we know – and what we still need to know – to enable all students to succeed in college.”

    Laura W. Perna

    GSE Centennial Presidential Professor of Education and Vice Provost for Faculty, University of Pennsylvania