Research Sources

The statistics that validate and quantify the problem that my book solves can be found in these studies.

■  Astin, A,.W., Oseguera, L., Sax, L.J., Korn, W.S, (2002) The American Freshman: Thirty-Five Year Trends. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA. 

■  Sax, L.J.,  Hurtado, S., Lindholm, J.A., Astin, A,.W., Korn, W.S, Mahoney, K.M., The American Freshman: National Norms. Based on 289,452 students at 440 of the nation’s baccalaureate institutions, these annual studies track the trends from year to year, going back to 1966.

■ The American Freshman studies are the result of a collaboration of the three premier educational groups in U.S. higher education:

Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the nation’s oldest and largest empirical study of higher education, gathers data from more than 1,800 institutions, 11 million students, and 300,000 faculty.

The American Council on Higher Education, founded in 1918, is the major representative organization for higher education in the United States. It serves as the locus of discussion and decision making on issues of higher education of national importance.

The Higher Education Research Institute is based in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Institute serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in post-secondary education.

■  Astin, A,.W., Oseguera, L., (2005). Degree Attainment Rates At American Colleges and Universities, Revised Edition. Los Angeles: Higher Education Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles. This project is the product of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program and the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA.

■  Keup, J.R. & Stolzenberg, E. B. (2004). The 2003 Your First College Year (YFCY) Survey: Exploring the academic and personal experiences of first -year students (Monograph NO. 40). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition. 

This instrument was produced by a collaborative research team at the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and the Policy Center on the First Year of College, a non-profit, higher education research and change agent center based in Brevard, North Carolina. The Policy Center is an outgrowth of the University of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, which began in 1986.

■  The Chronicle of Higher Education, the weekly news source that reports on issues relevant to higher education, The New York Times of academe.

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