How College Students Succeed: Making Meaning Across Disciplinary Perspectives [1 ed.] 9781642671322, 9781642671339, 9781003445159

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Learning from Disciplinary Perspectives on College Student Success
2 Cataloguing Institutional Retention Efforts and Their Empirical Grounding
3 Theories, Findings, and Implications from Higher Education Research on Student Success
4 Public Policy in Higher Education: Agendas, Solutions, and Impacts on Student Success
5 Behavioral Economics of Higher Education: Theory, Evidence, and Implications for Policy and Practice
6 Social Psychological Approaches to College Student Success
7 Stem Student Success: Strategic Learning, Mentored Research, and Structural Change
8 Inequality in Higher Education: Sociological Understandings of Student Success
9 Critical and Poststructural Considerations for College Student Success
10 An Interdisciplinary Theory of College Student Success
11 Using the Interdisciplinary Theory of Student Success: Implications for Policy, Practice, Research, and Assessment
Editor and Contributor Biographies
Index

Citation preview

H OW C O L L E G E S T U D E N TS S U C C E E D

HOW COLLEGE STUDENTS SUCCEED Making Meaning Across Disciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Nicholas A. Bowman

First published 2022 by Stylus Publishing, LLC. First Edition, 2022 Published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The CIP data for this title is pending. ISBN 13: 978-1-64267-132-2 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-64267-133-9 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-00-344515-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003445159

To Sammy, who appreciated and loved all people of various disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives

CONTENTS

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LEARNING FROM DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS

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Nicholas A. Bowman 2

CATALOGUING INSTITUTIONAL RETENTION EFFORTS AND THEIR EMPIRICAL GROUNDING

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Jenna W. Kramer, Scott K. Rausch, and John M. Braxton 3

THEORIES, FINDINGS, AND IMPLICATIONS FROM HIGHER EDUCATION RESEARCH ON STUDENT SUCCESS

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Nicholas A. Bowman and Jason C. Garvey 4

PUBLIC POLICY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Agendas, Solutions, and Impacts on Student Success

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Nicholas W. Hillman 5

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION Theory, Evidence, and Implications for Policy and Practice

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Lindsay C. Page and Aizat Nurshatayeva 6

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS

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Heidi E. Williams and Mary C. Murphy 7

STEM STUDENT SUCCESS Strategic Learning, Mentored Research, and Structural Change

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Becky Wai-Ling Packard and Rachel A. Hirst 8

INEQUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION Sociological Understandings of Student Success

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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 vii

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10 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY THEORY OF COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS

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Nicholas A. Bowman, Milad Mohebali, and Lindsay Jarratt 11 USING THE INTERDISCIPLINARY THEORY OF STUDENT SUCCESS Implications for Policy, Practice, Research, and Assessment

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Lindsay Jarratt, Milad Mohebali, and Nicholas A. Bowman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank many people who helped make this book possible. All of the upcoming chapters draw substantially from the efforts of numerous scholars who have contributed to an impressive wealth of research and theory on college student success. This book is largely an attempt to bring together and make sense of their substantial work. I would also like to thank Nick Hillman from the University of Wisconsin and David Brightman from Stylus Publishing for their contributions to the early development of the structure and content of this book. In addition, I appreciate the insights of the students and faculty from the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education: Brian An, Carly Armour, Cassie Barnhardt, Katie Broton, Solomon Fenton-Miller, Molly Hall-Martin, Lauren Irwin, Nayoung Jang, Lindsay Jarratt, Shinji Katsumoto, Jeff Ching-Fan Lai, Alex Lange, Jodi Linley, Gordon Louie, Milad Mohebali, Ernie Pascarella, SuYeong Shin, Nick Stroup, and Nikki Tennessen. Finally, I appreciate the many, many (perhaps millions of ) students who participated in the research that informed the chapters in this book. None of this would be possible without their contributions to our understanding and their own efforts to realize their postsecondary aspirations.

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1 LEARNING FROM D I S C I P L I N A RY PERSPECTIVES ON COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS Nicholas A. Bowman

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eceiving a college education has perhaps never been more important than it is today. The substantial long-term benefits of receiving an undergraduate degree include improved earnings, job satisfaction, mental well-being, physical health, civic engagement, general knowledge, lifelong learning, and even intergenerational benefits for one’s children (see Hout, 2012; Mayhew et al., 2016). Although higher education contributes to far more than economic gains, the employment prospects of college graduates have become particularly crucial with the ongoing automation of workingclass jobs that used to provide a strong living wage. Postsecondary degree attainment also contributes to broader public or societal benefits, such as the quality of community and civic life, appreciation of diversity and difference, increased tax revenues, and greater workforce productivity (see Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1998; McMahon, 2009). Unfortunately, many college students never achieve their goal of receiving a postsecondary degree or certificate. Among students who first attended a U.S. college or university in fall 2013, only 60% of degree-seeking students graduated from any institution within 6 years (Shapiro et al., 2019). Although this figure is troubling, it also masks considerable variation across students and institutions. Only 54% of Hispanic males and 42% of Black males received a degree within 6 years, along with 43% of all students who began attending a 2-year public college and 39% who started at a 4-year for-profit college. Such disparities reflect the substantial structural barriers encountered by students for whom U.S. higher education was not originally designed and who 1

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continue to face considerable challenges in today’s colleges and universities (related to their identities, precollege academic preparation, family and workplace responsibilities, and other attributes). Students who start college and drop out face additional challenges, as overall student loan debt has reached over $1.5 trillion (Federal Student Aid, 2020), so these former students must pay back these loans without the financial benefits that a postsecondary degree often provides. As a result of high attrition rates, colleges and universities invest substantial time, effort, and resources into efforts to bolster student success. U.S. public 4-year institutions spend an average of $9,780 per full-time-equivalent student on academic support, student services, and other institutional support; this total is in addition to direct expenditures on instruction (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). In addition, private, nonprofit, 4-year institutions spend close to twice that amount on student support and services ($18,300 per full-time-equivalent student). Institutional success initiatives can take the form of a variety of programs and services that may be offered to all students, focused on students within a particular major or field(s) of study, directed toward key subgroups of students (e.g., first-generation students, racially minoritized students), or a combination of these (e.g., women in science and engineering). A substantial amount of research has explored the factors that may contribute to college student “success,” which is generally defined in terms of college adjustment, grades, retention, persistence, and graduation. Researchers in various fields of study have explored this broad topic, but this work often occurs in rigid disciplinary silos. Psychologists who study college student success typically read, build upon, and cite the work of other psychologists; economists do the same with other economists, and so on. Even systematic reviews of the scholarly literature, which have the potential to cast a broad net for finding relevant studies, tend to yield papers that primarily reflect the disciplinary and/or theoretical perspectives of the authors.

The Approach of This Book The purpose of this book is to bring together the vast knowledge about how college students succeed into a single place. It includes seven chapters from authors who have each examined a considerable body of literature from their own discipline, field of study, or perspective. Specifically, each of these chapters (a) describes the theories, models, and concepts that these researchers frequently use; (b) synthesizes the key topics and findings from this research; (c) highlights critiques and gaps in the existing literature; and (d) provides

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implications for practice, policy, and/or research. To set the stage by considering current practices in colleges and universities, chapter 2 provides a systematic review of college student success interventions that were recently covered in two major higher education news sources—The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. After the seven content chapters, chapter 10 integrates these findings and perspectives into a single interdisciplinary theory of college student success, and chapter 11 provides detailed implications based on this interdisciplinary framework. Each of the primary content chapters focuses on one of the following areas: higher education, public policy, behavioral economics, social psychology, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), sociology, and critical and poststructural perspectives. The chapter topics were designed to maximize the coverage of research on college student success while also minimizing the overlap among chapters. For example, no single chapter focuses on economics as a whole, because economic concepts, theories, and findings appear in the public policy and behavioral economics chapters. No single chapter covers all of psychology; the STEM chapter discusses cognitive and educational psychology, the social psychology chapter also provides some personality psychology research, and behavioral economics has a strong focus on psychological decisionmaking processes. Research from cultural studies and anthropology also appears in the critical and poststructural perspectives chapter. The compilation of diverse sources of research and theory into a single book will provide crucial insights for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers alike. People from all of these groups tend to be primarily trained within—and draw their ideas from—one discipline or field of study, so this comprehensive book will provide new insights into perspectives and findings that will hopefully inform readers’ own thinking and actions. For instance, which higher education practices or policies are most effective at promoting student success? Which constructs or mechanisms are shared across several disciplines (and therefore likely constitute useful ways of thinking about relevant issues)? What are the notable gaps and limitations in knowledge that exist across disciplines? And what is happening in other fields of study that can inform one’s own work? This compilation seeks to answer these questions and more. This book is designed for anyone who cares about college student success, including researchers, policymakers, college administrators, college faculty, instructors of coursework on this topic, and even the general public. This volume could serve as a required reading for graduate and undergraduate courses on higher education, college students, and student success. It could also be used as a “common read” for discussion among postsecondary staff, administrators, and/or faculty.

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Overview of Content Chapters Chapter 3 provides an overview of research in higher education, which is a field of study with a long-standing history that also draws upon theories and concepts from other disciplines. It argues for the presence of two waves of college student success theories, and it describes the massive literature on college student success in terms of five broad categories of potential influences: institutional characteristics, college environments, high-impact practices, student supports, and institutional policies and practices. Chapter 4 offers an overview of the public policy-making process, and it discusses relevant economic theory. It then synthesizes public policy research; after doing so, it notes that this work frequently conducts evaluations of policy effectiveness and tends to overlook other stages of the policy-making process (e.g., agenda setting and formulation, policy design and implementation). Chapters 5–7 all draw upon psychology to some extent. Chapter 5 explores behavioral economics, which challenges traditional economic perspectives by embracing the ways in which human behavior and decision-making contain systematic biases. After discussing this disciplinary foundation, the chapter reviews research that frequently seeks to use insights from behavioral economics to bolster students’ college enrollment and their success while in college. Chapter 6 focuses directly on social psychological research, and it argues that students’ meaning-making plays a central role in shaping their college success. The chapter proposes three key questions or concerns that many students have, and it synthesizes research on efforts to influence students’ meaning-making through short, cost-effective strategies. Chapter 7 explores student success within STEM, because STEM postsecondary research is often independent from research on students in general. The chapter explores concepts, theory, and research from three key STEM topics: becoming a strategic STEM learner, participating in mentoring research as a way to join a STEM community, and enacting structural change within and across institutions to improve STEM outcomes. In addition to the use of psychology, much of the research covered in these three chapters seeks to reduce or eliminate long-standing disparities across socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, gender, and other identities. The final two content chapters place the strongest emphasis on issues of inequality and injustice in college outcomes. Chapter 8 argues that sociological research on college student success largely focuses on inequality, and it explores societal structures as the root cause of these disparities. The chapter is therefore organized into two key theoretical traditions in this research (status attainment and social reproduction), as well as two broad dimensions of inequality (socioeconomic and race/ethnicity/gender). Chapter 9 uses

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critical and poststructural perspectives to trouble dominant notions of college student success. The chapter provides a broad overview of critical and poststructural theories, and it offers examples of how scholars using such frameworks analyze students with minoritized identities as well as systems of oppression. The authors draw attention to the tensions of using such theories to conceptualize, study, and reimagine college student success.

References Federal Student Aid. (2020). Federal student loan portfolio. https://studentaid.gov/ data-center/student/portfolio Hout, M. (2012). Social and economic returns to college education in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 379–400. Institute for Higher Education Policy. (1998). Reaping the benefits: Defining the public and private value of going to college (ED420256). Author. https://files.eric .ed.gov/fulltext/ED420256.pdf Mayhew, M. J., Rockenbach, A. N., Bowman, N. A., Seifert, T. A., & Wolniak, G. C. (with Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T.). (2016). How college affects students: Vol. 3. 21st century evidence that higher education works. Jossey-Bass. McMahon, W. W. (2009). Higher learning, greater good: The private and social benefits of higher education. Johns Hopkins University Press. National Center for Education Statistics. (2020). Postsecondary institution expenses. Author. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cue.asp Shapiro, D., Ryu, M., Huie, F., Liu, Q., & Zheng, Y. (2019). Completing college 2019 national report (Signature Report 18). National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

2 C A TA L O G U I N G INSTITUTIONAL R E T E N T I O N E F F O RT S AND THEIR EMPIRICAL GROUNDING Jenna W. Kramer, Scott K. Rausch, and John M. Braxton

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ollege student persistence constitutes a sizable, long-standing issue with implications for both individual students’ success and institutional stability. Roughly 40% of 1st-year students enrolled at a 2-year college and roughly one-quarter of 1st-year students in 4-year colleges and universities depart at the end of the 1st year (ACT, 2018). Colleges, universities, and postsecondary systems seek to understand and confront underlying challenges that impact student persistence in order to bolster outcomes for individual students and the student population on the whole, as well as to maintain stable enrollments, balance their institutional budgets, and maintain public perceptions of institutional quality (Braxton et al., 2004). The problem of college student persistence requires both scholarship focused on the development of an understanding of the factors that contribute to student persistence as well as the development of forms of institutional action by individual colleges and universities to improve institutional retention rates. We focus attention in this chapter on institutional action to improve student persistence. Hagedorn (2005) offered a useful distinction between retention and persistence. Hagedorn stated that retention is an institutional measure, whereas persistence is a student measure. Put differently, institutions retain students and students persist. Accordingly, institutions’ efforts to increase their retention rates depend on increasing the persistence of their students. 6

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Our study focuses on cataloguing and theoretically grounding the highly visible initiatives developed by colleges and universities to improve student persistence, and thus institutional retention. We built a database of institutional student retention efforts profiled by major periodicals of higher education, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed, and answered two questions: What are the settings and features of institutional retention efforts that are profiled by major periodicals in the field? To what extent are profiled institutional persistence interventions grounded in the existing research? The answers to these questions are important to the at-times tenuous connections between research and practice and the degree to which innovations in practice represent the theoretical underpinnings and empirical evidence in the field. We catalogued the population of institutional retention efforts profiled by articles in the named periodicals from August 2015 to August 2018 and considered the degree to which the features of the programs resonate with the research base on student retention. Overall, we hope that the approach we use in this chapter provides colleges and universities with a guide to the variety of theoretically and empirically grounded forms of action they may take toward the improvement of student retention. In the next section, we describe the template we used to ground the profiled institutional retention initiatives.

Template for Empirical Grounding of the Profiled Retention Initiatives The revised theory of student persistence in residential colleges and universities and the theory of student persistence in commuter colleges and universities constitute the two primary theories we used in our efforts to empirically ground components of institutional actions to improve student retention we describe in this chapter. Braxton et al. first posited these theories in their volume Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure (2004). Subsequent tests of both theories indicate empirical support for them (Braxton et al., 2014). In addition, tests of these two theories in historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) also afford empirical support. More specifically, Baker et al. (2021) tested the revised theory of student persistence in residential colleges and universities at residential HBCUs and found empirical support for the theory. In their test of the theory of student persistence in commuter colleges and universities in commuter HBCUs, Baker et al. (2020) also found empirical support for the theory. Thus, empirical support for both theories justifies their selection for our efforts to empirically ground components of institutional actions to improve student retention described

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in this chapter. Figures 2.1 and 2.2 graphically depict these two theories. However, we will also define the theoretically derived concepts pertinent to the research findings used in our empirical grounding of components of the institutional student retention efforts we describe in this chapter. Figure 2.1. Theory of student persistence in commuter colleges and universities. External Environment Finances Support Work Family Community

Student Entry Characteristics Motivation Control Issues Self-Efficacy Empathy Affiliation Needs Parental Education Anticipatory Socialization

Initial Institutional Commitment (IC-1)

Internal Campus Environment

Persistence

Academic Integration

Subsequent Institutional Commitment (IC-2)

Academic Communities Active Learning Learning Communities Institutional Environment Cost Institutional Integrity Institutional Commitment to Student Welfare

Figure 2.2. Revised theory of student persistence in residential colleges and universities. Initial Goal Commitment (GC-1) Student Entry Characteristics Family SES Parental Education Academic Ability Race Gender High School Academic Achievement

Initial Institutional Commitment (IC-1)

Subsequent Institutional Commitment (IC-2)

Institutional Commitment to the Welfare of Students Institutional Integrity Communal Potential

Ability to Pay Proactive Social Adjustment Psychosocial Engagement

Social Integration

Persistence

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In addition to these two theories, we also used conditions for college student success empirically delineated by Kuh et al. (2005). Their research centered inquiry on the properties and conditions common to those colleges and universities that achieve higher-than-predicted levels of student engagement and graduation. Their research team conducted two visits to the campuses of 20 selected colleges and universities that have higher-than-predicted levels of student engagement and graduation. They reviewed documents, visited classrooms and laboratories, observed faculty and staff meetings, and spoke with more than 2,700 people. Through the campus visits and review of pertinent documents, the research team identified six properties and conditions common at each of the 20 Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP) colleges and universities (Kuh et al., 2005), including (a) a “living” mission and “lived” educational philosophy, (b) an unshakeable focus on student learning, (c) environments adapted for educational enrichment, (d) clearly marked pathways to student success, (e) an improvement-oriented ethos, and (f ) shared responsibility for educational quality and student success (for greater detail, see Part Two of Kuh et al., 2005). We explored the degree to which these six properties are reflected in the profiled retention interventions.

Data Collection and Analysis We set out to evaluate the theoretical and conceptual empirical grounding of institutional retention efforts and consider the theoretical suitability of the trend toward “stitching together multiple solutions” to promote 1st-year success (Field, 2018, para. 7). We endeavored to do so by inventorying, reviewing, classifying, and analyzing articles published over a span of 3 years, from August 2015 to August 2018, in two top higher education periodicals, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. We chose this method and these sources because reporting in periodicals, particularly from these two popular outlets in the field, is often the first way in which innovative practices are shared between campuses. News-style articles share background information and details about programs well in advance of when the results of rigorous implementation and evaluation analyses are available for distribution. This sharing of programmatic information constitutes a first line of dissemination and diffusion of innovation in the field. Our search terms of retention and persistence within these publications returned 2,071 and 3,239 results overall for the search period of August 2015 to August 2018. We scanned the titles and previews of all returned articles and read in full articles that reported on relevant matters (292 for retention and 279 for persistence). Some articles did not profile specific initiatives,

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but rather described in general terms promising practices or trends. When creating the dataset, we limited eligible entries by program coverage and by collapsing to a single entry for any given institutional retention effort. We limited our definition of persistence programs to those interventions that were targeted at matriculated students, rather than on boosting success (and perhaps yield) of potential students. When an initiative was profiled in more than one article, we collapsed its coverage into a single database entry. We compiled an inventory of the eligible initiatives profiled, tracking institution name, program name, implementation years, and a description of the program. We used the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (n.d.) database Institution Lookup, Penn Center for MSIs (2018) list of institutions, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to identify the sector, control, size, enrollment total, degree of residentiality, minority-serving institution (MSI) status, geographic location, and urbanicity of setting of the institution that implemented the initiative. We used institutional websites to seek publicly available information on implementation years and program details. In the analysis phase, the research team discussed the nature of the programs in the database and developed a framework for their categorization. We determined that the profiled programs focused on improving student persistence through advising, financial supports, academic supports, social supports, or multifaceted programming. Once we agreed upon the categorization of the programs, we examined descriptive trends and overarching themes by program type.

Findings Following the data methods outlined previously, we created a database of 99 unique programs. In this section, we report on our findings regarding the settings and features of institutional retention efforts that are profiled by major periodicals in the field and the extent to which they are grounded in the existing research. We report our analyses alphabetically by the individual program types (academic supports, advising, financial supports, and social supports), concluding with multifaceted programs. We profile representative programs covered in periodical articles in order to capture in greater detail the provisions of representative initiatives by type.

Academic Supports Twenty academic support programs were profiled in the periodicals during the time period under examination. More than half (N=12) of the academic

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support programs were implemented at 2-year institutions. Three-quarters were implemented at public institutions, and just over half (N=11) were implemented at large individual institutions. More than half of the programs were implemented at primarily nonresidential or nonresidential individual campuses or multicampus systems. Of the profiled academic support interventions, 70% were implemented at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Just over half (N=11) appeared in urban settings, and the profiled programs were largely concentrated in the South (N=7) and West (N=5). The lone for-profit college-implemented institutional retention program in the database was an academic support program. The major themes that emerged from the academic interventions were instructional innovation and the use of technology. With regard to instructional innovation, there was an emphasis on active, student-driven learning. For example, the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has implemented “Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upsidedown Pedagogies” (SCALE UP) classrooms that are intended to better promote active learning in larger class environments. SCALE UP classrooms are designed to promote collaborative work, and instructors are encouraged to give students topics to investigate in teams while the instructor floats throughout the classroom. The classrooms are for larger class sizes, accommodating up to 90 students, but are intended to be structured as classwide work and discussion. NJIT’s Office of Digital Learning manages the booking of the SCALE UP classroom and provides consultation regarding pedagogical adjustment for faculty looking to use the space. At Georgetown University, the Designing the Future(s) of the University initiative brings together individuals from around the university to advance educational innovation. The profiled initiative develops project-based minor fields of study to allow students to craft their own curricula outside of the confines of a formal class. This self-directed learning aims to equip Georgetown students with competencies and orientations that will breed success in the 21st-century marketplace. Technology also played a central role in the profiled academic interventions for student persistence. At Strayer University, the for-profit institution implemented a formal system for monitoring students’ interactions with the learning management software (LMS) and the AI-chatbot to inform academic coaching. In order to better support the institution’s online students, Strayer’s student services coaches have access to analyses of LMS interactions and questions that students raise with the university’s AI-chatbot, Irving, which is accessible from every Strayer webpage. The University System of Maryland has increased the scope and scale of various university centers that support teaching and learning with technology. The Teaching and

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Learning Transformation Center works with faculty from across the university in a variety of different capacities, running virtual workshops (e.g., Managing Teamwork Online or Asynchronous Web Polling With Turning Technologies; see also Teaching and Learning Transformation Center, n.d.), fellowship programs, and mentoring programs, many of which are geared toward implementing active learning pedagogy using technological tools. These academic interventions find empirical grounding in an unshakeable focus on student learning, one of the six conditions for college student success delineated by Kuh et al. (2005). Experimentation with engaging pedagogies such as active learning and electronic technologies constitutes one of the key dimensions of this particular condition for college student success (Kuh et al., 2005). Moreover, these academic interventions also demonstrate an institutional concern for the growth and development of their students, one of the defining attributes of the empirically grounded theoretical concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare (Braxton et al., 2014). The specifics of this grounding have been described previously in this chapter.

Advising Our database contains 30 programs that focused on advising. The profiled advising programs were primarily implemented at individual public colleges (N=24; 80%), but there were also programs at private, not-for-profit institutions (N=3) and public college systems (N=3) that were profiled by the publications during the time period in question. Most of the profiled programs were implemented at 4-year institutions, with 20 at individual 4-year schools and two at 4-year systems. There were only eight 2-year college programs profiled, with seven at individual institutions and one at a 2-year college system. The bulk of featured programs were implemented at schools with at least 10,000 students (N=20) and in primarily nonresidential settings (N=15). However, when taken together, there were nearly as many programs at primarily residential (N=8) and highly residential (N=4) institutions represented. There was some variation in the geography, urbanicity, and student population of sites of profiled advising programs. The bulk of the profiled programs that focused on advising were in the southern region of the country (N=16), with five in the Midwest, three in the Northeast, and five in the West. The two most common settings by urbanicity were large cities (N=7) and small cities (N=7). There were also five programs profiled in midsized cities. The vast majority of programs profiled were implemented at PWIs (N=24). There was one program at an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI)/Hispanic-serving institution

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(HSI) system, one at an AANAPISI/predominantly Black institution (PBI) system, and one at a PBI. A number of primary models emerged across the profiled advising programs, including academic coaching, guided pathways, and targeted advising. Four academic coaching programs were profiled in the returned periodical articles (University of Oklahoma, Florida State University, Indiana University-Bloomington, and the University of North Carolina). These programs target “at-risk” students and focus on keeping them enrolled through graduation (Anft, 2018). Three of the profiled advising programs (at Community College of Baltimore County in Maryland, the California Community College System, and Arapahoe Community College in Colorado) offer “guided pathways.” An important feature of the guided pathways model is explicit mapping of course sequence pathways to students’ end goals. Under this programmatic model, institutions create clear coursework maps for every program they offer, making these maps available in multiple locations so that students will understand what courses are required to complete a program or qualify for transfer. Institutions may improve student buy-in and success by helping students to choose and enter a pathway, keeping them on a path, and ensuring that they are learning. Colleges help new students discover programs, reflect on potential careers, and cultivate academic plans. If, while on a guided pathway, students struggle or raise concerns about their progress to faculty, alert systems bring these issues to advisor’s attention so they can provide the appropriate support. In the interest of ensuring that students are learning along their pathways, programs are designed around a logical set of learning outcomes rather than as an assortment of courses. Five of the profiled advising interventions leveraged enhanced or targeted advising (implemented at Virginia Tech, Southern Utah, Abilene Christian, Georgia State University, and the Board of Regent Schools in Georgia). Traditionally known as intrusive advising, proactive advising is characterized by institution-initiated contact with students in order to achieve a specific goal (Ohrablo, 2017). These targeted initiatives are designed to intervene before a student encounters trouble and have the objectives of demonstrating concern and care for students, strategically providing information, and helping students avoid problems (Ohrablo, 2017). For example, in 2017, Georgia State University (GSU) advisors tracked every student at GSU for more than 800 analytics-based risk factors on a daily basis, conducting over 54,000 total in-person interventions with students and sending over 100,000 personalized intervention emails during one academic year (Renick, 2018). Advisors observed when students registered for courses and let them know

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immediately if they signed up for a class that did not fit into their degree programs. Advisors monitored academic performance as early as 3 weeks into each term, evaluated final grades, and intervened with students whose performance in prerequisite courses put them potentially at risk of struggling in their next-level classes. GSU’s AI-enhanced chatbot facilitated the answering of more than 250,000 student questions about registration, financial aid, and academics in an average response time of 7 seconds. Abilene Christian University (ACU) uses a program called “cluster advising,” where advising is facilitated in affinity groups or in an academic course. For example, at ACU, an advisor with a background in the STEM fields will speak with students who are majoring in biochemistry, biology, chemistry, or other STEM fields. Meanwhile, a former coach advises majors in exercise kinesiology and nutrition. Through major area–specific advising, advisors become experts in specific major degree plans and can best support degree completion and placement. The majors for which an individual advisor is responsible are listed on the university’s advising website to facilitate contact with the appropriate advisor for majors that students may be considering. Two profiled interventions leveraged an internet application (Civitas) for degree mapping and real-time understanding of degree progression. Both Arizona State University and Austin Community College incorporated the online application into their advising programs to allow students to better see classes, time involved in outside commitments, and money needed to finish their degrees or programs. The Civitas model integrates and analyzes data collected on students across campus in order to create institution-specific predictive models that alert advisors and coaches about student performance. These institutions integrate data tracked through online course management and consumer tracking software, such as SalesForce, with the Civitas platform in order to inform analysis and respond to student need. The underlying goals of the advising programs resonate with the supported theoretical concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare (Braxton et al., 2014). The core-defining attribute of this concept entails the demonstration by a college or university of its abiding concern for the growth and development of its students (Braxton et al., 2014). This concept plays an indirect role in the persistence of 1st-year college students in both private religiously affiliated residential institutions and state-supported commuter colleges and universities. In residential colleges and universities, commitment of the institution to student welfare is positively associated with both social integration and subsequent institutional commitment, whereas in commuter colleges and universities it is positively associated with student perceptions of their academic and intellectual development as well as their subsequent institutional commitment (Braxton et al., 2014). Likewise,

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the subsequent institutional commitment of students attending residential HBCUs is also associated with student perceptions of the commitment of their institution to the welfare of its students (Baker et al., 2021). Moreover, these advising programs also find support in one of the six conditions for college student success delineated by Kuh et al. (2005)—clear pathways to student success. Clearly demarcated routes to student success through advising sessions or online course registration management support this particular condition for college student success (Kuh et al., 2005).

Financial Supports We found that 12 financial support programs were profiled in the periodical articles. Three-quarters of the profiled financial support programs were implemented at 4-year institutions, at public institutions, at large institutions, and at PWIs (N=9 each). Half of the financial support programs were implemented at highly (N=4) or primarily residential (N=2) institutions. Two-thirds of the programs were implemented in urban settings (N=8), with the rest in suburban settings. A plurality of the programs were implemented in the South (N=5), with the West and Northeast (N=3 each) also receiving substantial representation. Three themes that emerged across the financial interventions in support of student persistence were food scholarships, emergency “retention” grants, and targeted grants for particular populations in need. For example, San Jacinto College and Lone Star College in Texas provide access to grocery gift cards, as well as fresh and nonperishable food for students. They gain access to the foodstuffs through a partnership with the Houston Food Bank (Carlson, 2016). GSU’s Panther Retention Grant Program has been much lauded for the microgrants that it awards in emergency situations to keep students enrolled. Most students request money to cover gaps in their tuition bills, and the average grant award to keep students enrolled is $900 (Carlson, 2016). The periodicals also profiled persistence grant interventions that target particular vulnerable populations. In the Colorado state higher education system, there is direct aid available for homeless students in the form of gift cards to cover necessities not covered by other forms of aid. At Western Michigan University, the Seita Scholars Program provides financial supports for students who were in foster care as youth (Biemiller, 2016). Seita Scholars recognizes that this student population may be overwhelmed and have difficulty seeking resources on the large campus; administrators of the program reported in the profile that demand exceeded expectation nearly fourfold (Biemiller, 2016).

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These financial support programs demonstrate the commitment of the sponsoring institutions to the welfare of their students. These programs communicate to students the high value the institutions place on their students as individuals, one of the key attributes of the empirically supported concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare (Braxton et al., 2014). More specifically, those programs that focus on vulnerable groups of students resonate with Tinto’s (2012) assertion that financial support looms particularly important when low-income students experience financial difficulties. Such financial support provides an example of support as one of the conditions for student success identified by Tinto (2012).

Social Supports Overall, we found that the articles featured six programs that focused on social supports. These interventions were implemented at both public institutions (N=4) and private not-for-profit institutions (N=2). The majority of the profiled social supports programs were implemented at 4-year institutions (N=4) and at schools of at least 10,000 students (N=5). These institutions were often in the South (N=4) and in urban areas (N=3, large city; N=1, small city). Four of the profiled social supports persistence interventions were implemented at primarily nonresidential institutions. Two-thirds of the profiled programs were at PWIs (N=4). Overall, there were far fewer social supports programs profiled in the persistence interventions articles than the other types of programs. When examining the structure and content of the programs, a number of themes emerged. All of the profiled social supports programs had a student-centered approach and a focus on the development of belonging and community. For example, at the University at Texas-Austin, sparked by new state legislation around mental health awareness, a task force created a video about students navigating difficult life events for UT Austin and other Texas colleges to use (Brown, 2016a). Blackfeet Community College in Browning, Montana, uses the Blackfeet society model as part of an effort to reinforce students’ sense of belonging and community. There are eight societies on campus, all named for animals important in Blackfeet culture. The societies offer social support and make some financial provisions for struggling students (Field, 2017b). Some social support programs have an explicit focus on mental health. For example, after Northwestern University students urged the institution to provide more resources, the university added a mental health session to new student orientation. True Northwestern Dialogues is mandatory for all new

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students and uses a combination of outside speakers, resource presentations, and student voices to destigmatize mental health and have incoming students reflect on their support networks and become familiar with campus resources (Brown, 2016a). The focus on the development of belonging and community in social support programs finds empirical grounding in the theoretical concept of social integration. Social integration reflects student perceptions of their degree of social affiliation with others and their degree of congruency with the attitudes, values, and norms of the social communities of a college or university (Tinto, 1975). Social integration is positively associated with subsequent institutional commitment in residential PWIs (Braxton et al., 2014) and residential HBCUs (Baker et al., 2021). However, we note that programs that center on the development of belonging and community in commuter colleges and universities encounter obstacles to success that spring from the poorly defined and ill-structured social communities that prevail at such institutions (Braxton et al., 2014). This is supported in the research literature by the negative association between the need for social affiliation and student persistence in commuter HBCUs (Baker et al., 2020); students with a high need for social affiliation may depart such institutions because of their unfulfilled social needs. Commuter institutions that provide some support for social integration may increase students’ sense of belonging and mitigate the risk of student departure. The attention that some social support programs place on student mental health echoes the empirically supported concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare. Student mental health programs demonstrate to students the high value their institution places on its students as individuals, which stands as one of the key attributes of the empirically supported concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare (Braxton et al., 2014). This concept plays an indirect role in the persistence of 1st-year college students in both private residential institutions and state-supported commuter colleges and universities. More specifically, commitment of the institution to student welfare is positively associated with both social integration and subsequent institutional commitment in private residential PWIs, whereas in commuter colleges and universities it is positively associated with student perceptions of their academic and intellectual development as well as their subsequent institutional commitment (Braxton et al., 2014). In residential HBCUs, a positive linkage exists between the commitment of the institution to student welfare and subsequent institutional commitment (Baker et al., 2021).

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Multifaceted Initiatives Thirty-two of the profiled persistence programs were multifaceted; these programs incorporated more than one of our previously profiled categories of support. Multifaceted initiatives within these periodicals were implemented primarily at public institutions (N=22), with the remainder of profiled programs taking place at private, not-for-profit colleges and universities (N=10). The overwhelming majority were offered at individual 4-year institutions (N=27) or 4-year systems (N=1). Roughly 56% were offered at large schools, roughly 19% were offered at medium sized schools, and 25% were offered at small schools; 41% were offered at primarily nonresidential schools (N=12, individual institutions; N=1, system), 25% at primarily residential (N=8), and 34% at highly residential schools (N=11). The schools were pretty evenly spread out geographically, with the western region having the greatest representation at 25%. In addition, 53% were located in urban areas and 28% in the suburbs. Roughly 19% of profiled multifaceted programs were implemented at MSIs (N=6). Over one-third of the multifaceted programs (N=11) had a housing component. For example, one article highlighted the award-winning Endicott College Keys to Degrees program that was first implemented in 2004. The program, designed for single parents, offers students subsidized childcare, a $25,000 scholarship, free parking, free meals for children in the dining hall, and two bedrooms in a residence hall suite for the price of one (Field, 2017a). Endicott’s program is an example of multifaceted persistence programming with shelter and food-related wraparound services that aims to meet the basic needs of a particular population of students in order to increase their chances of graduating. Endicott has collaborated to replicate the program at other institutions, including Portland State, Eastern Michigan, Dillard, and St. Catherine universities. Such programs tend to be small and intensive—for example, providing individual counseling and academic support in addition to financial assistance. Due to their burden on staff and cost per student, multifaceted programs with a housing component often are not open to all students. Many times, students have to apply to participate and must meet eligibility criteria, including, in some cases, age limits for parents or children. Many other multifaceted programs offer other living expense support services. Such programs offer food, toiletry, rental, and utility assistance. One such program is Humboldt State University’s (California) program, called “Oh Snap” (Carlson, 2016). Oh Snap runs a food pantry and, during the growing season, a farm stand where students can get free fruits and vegetables. On Saturdays, the university provides a shuttle to local grocery stores and a county food bank, and on Wednesdays students can take cooking lessons

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(Carlson, 2016). This program also communicates to students the high value the institution places on its students as individuals, one of the key attributes of the empirically supported concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare (Braxton et al., 2014). Moreover, this particular program also affords financial support for vulnerable students. The types of financial support provided by this program exemplify support for students, one of four conditions for student success identified by Tinto (2012). Seven of the profiled schools offered cohort programs designed to connect students with similar backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures to each other and the institution. Two examples of cohort programs are San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco’s Metro College Success Program and the University of Connecticut’s Scholastic House of Leaders in Support of African American Researchers & Scholars (ScHOLA²RS) House Living and Learning Community for Black Men. The Metro College Success Program recruits local San Francisco high school students to apply for more than 10 academies on a first-come, first-served basis if they are low-income, first-generation, or from an underrepresented minority group. Cohort programs often incorporate social supports, advising supports, and other financial and wraparound services. Some programs combine these student services with a curriculum that stresses social justice as a way to increase student retention and completion (Smith, 2018). The ScHOLA²RS House at the University of Connecticut provides academic and social supports for men who identify as African American or Black; scholars are encouraged to be involved in diversity and inclusion efforts and community service endeavors in the broader UConn community (Brown, 2016b). Multifaceted programs find resonance with one of the defining attributes of the empirically supported concept of commitment of the institution to student welfare: respect for students as individuals (Braxton et al., 2014). Prior research has empirically supported the importance of this concept in both residential and commuter PWIs (Braxton et al., 2014) and residential HBCUs (Baker et al., 2021).

Discussion In our analysis of institutional retention efforts, we found a number of themes across the program types of advising, financial supports, academic supports, social supports, and multifaceted programming. The periodicals focused their attention on programmatic efforts that were individualized to the student, made proactive outreach, and followed up at intervals after an initial point of contact.

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We also observed that the institutional retention efforts featured were most often implemented at large public universities. Given the concentration of students in 2-year institutions and public college and university systems, it would be advantageous for periodicals to profile best practices in student persistence at individual 2-year institutions and at scale across college systems. The current representation of retention initiatives in higher education periodicals does not reflect the primary postsecondary population in the United States and its challenges. Relatedly, the bulk of coverage has focused on persistence interventions at PWIs. By sheer numbers, there are more PWIs than MSIs due to past and present structural inequality and overall population representation (Gasman & Conrad, 2018). In spite of this alignment with institutional representation, a spotlight on persistence interventions that are successful at MSIs would be beneficial to the development and dissemination of information on programs that serve student populations that will constitute the groups of greatest growth in American postsecondary education in the coming decades (Frey, 2018). There was some variation in the geographic distribution of interventions by type. The profiled multifaceted programs were more highly concentrated in the West, whereas social and advising supports were more highly concentrated in the South. Overall, most of the periodical profiles focus on initiatives implemented at southern colleges and universities (N=37). Although there has been a traditional emphasis on the centrality of student affairs practice at northeastern and midwestern institutions of higher education, this geographic representation maps onto projected population shifts: In the coming decades, the West and South will be the regions of the country that see the largest population growth (Gonzales, 2019). As institutions in these regions mobilize to accommodate shifting student populations and the country’s new population centers, their entrepreneurial endeavors in the realm of student persistence may remain in the spotlight. Among the financial support programs to encourage persistence that were highlighted in these periodicals, most were primarily implemented at 4-year institutions; 4-year students, by nature of the funding structure of higher education institutions as well as guidelines around federal and state financial aid eligibility, often have access to more sources and greater overall magnitude of financial aid. The reporting related to financial interventions in support of student persistence aligns with this trend. We also found little evidence of journalistic coverage of persistence interventions at for-profit institutions. This hole in reporting may be a function of the weight that for-profit institutions hold (or do not) in the practice community. However, there may exist interventions worthy of dissemination that remain relatively unknown due to prejudice and antiquated conceptions of what constitutes a true institution of higher education. That being said, the

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success rates for students at for-profit institutions are no better than those of similar samples of nonprofit-attending students, so there is not necessarily evidence to suggest that for-profit institutions are breeding grounds for effective innovation in student retention. Nonetheless, these institutions are motivated by their bottom lines and the maintenance of access to federal aid in the face of regulation, so there may yet be interesting retention-oriented work that not-for-profit institutions may benefit from learning about. In addition to the discussed theoretical grounding for these interventions, there is empirical evidence to support initiatives with these characteristics. The body of empirical research has shown that certain policies and provisions can substantially raise students’ chances of completing their degree or credential. Each of the categories of supports identified has shown promise for supporting student persistence and degree completion. Advising interventions, which can address a lack of access to appropriate information on coursework and career, have been shown to be effective for boosting persistence both during the advising period and for years after the conclusion of the intervention (e.g., Bettinger & Baker, 2014). Academic support programs, particularly those targeted to serve underrepresented students or students in STEM majors, have been shown to contribute to both shorter term outcomes, such as course grades and retention within a given major, as well as longer term college persistence (e.g., Toven-Lindsey et al., 2015). There is also a continually growing empirical literature base evaluating the effects of financial aid; across over four dozen causal studies, estimates suggest that grant aid boosts both persistence and degree attainment, with each additional $1,000 in grant aid contributing to a 1.5 to 2 percentage point increase in degree completion (Nguyen et al., 2019). Overall, multifaceted initiatives that feature grant aid and proactive, personalized academic and social supports have proven to increase persistence by attending not only to financial need but also other structural impediments to student success. Intensive support during enrollment for students receiving financial aid awards has shown to positively affect student persistence across a variety of implementation models and settings (e.g., Page et al., 2019; Scrivener et al., 2015; Sommo et al., 2018). Looking across the inventory of profiled interventions, the journalistic coverage of institutional retention efforts aligns fairly well with the current literature on the interventions that contribute to increased persistence in postsecondary education.

Limitations Several limitations to this study temper our conclusions. The first limitation centers on our assessments of empirical grounding of the profiled institutional retention initiatives. We do not have direct knowledge of whether the

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initiatives were guided by research findings from tests of theories of college student persistence as well as empirically derived concepts. However, we temper this limitation by our grounding of the initiatives in terms of their resonance with research findings rather than research findings as a foundation for the development of the initiative. The second limitation is that this is not an exhaustive study of programs that were highlighted in all higher education publications over the 3-year span from August 2015 to August 2018. We chose The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed due to their level of readership and respect in the field of student success. To this end, a more extensive search of other related periodicals during this time frame could be useful. Our study is limited by our search parameters. With regard to our search terms, we selected persistence and retention due to their widespread use in both practice and research. However, it is possible that our search missed related articles due to the limited number of terms and the strictness of the periodical platforms’ search functionality. When undertaking a review of this nature, one necessarily balances the number of records screened against the inclusivity of the search terms. Future research of this nature on the topic could test the inclusion of related terms—perhaps, for example, terms that tie more directly into models of student persistence, in order to draw in reporting on other innovative institutional practices. Relatedly, we chose to limit our search to a 3-year period from August 2015 to August 2018. Consequently, we have placed firm temporal boundaries on our examination of the representation of persistence programs at institutions of higher education in the major periodicals in the field. This helps to focus our research efforts, but also limits the representativeness and magnitude of our study.

Conclusions and Implications for Practice At the outset of this chapter we sought to answer two questions: What are the settings and features of institutional retention efforts profiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed? and To what extent are the profiled interventions grounded in existing success and retention research? The review of the relevant body of periodical articles from August 2015 to August 2018 led us to some answers and conclusions. As noted in the chapter, a surprisingly large number (final database of 99 unique programs) of institutional retention initiatives received attention during the defined time period. Although certain college and university types were represented more than others, almost all institutional categorizations (size, type, location, students served, etc.) were covered at least once by

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both periodicals. This presents an obvious conclusion that student success (as defined by persistence and retention), and the interventions created to support it, may present differently on the institutional level, but are indeed a higher education enterprise-wide phenomenon. We also found that across all five of the categories of institutional initiatives (advising, academic supports, financial supports, social supports, and multifaceted initiatives), there were specific initiatives that resonated with empirically tested theories of college student persistence and conditions for college student success outlined in our template. In particular, all five of the program categories included initiatives that connect with the empirically supported concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare. This empirically backed concept functions as an important element in both the revised theory of student persistence in residential colleges and universities and the theory of student persistence in commuter colleges and universities (Braxton et al., 2014). Moreover, two of the conditions for college student success empirically derived by Kuh et al. (2005) provide empirical grounding for the program categories of advising and academic support: clear pathways for student success (advising) and an unshakeable focus on student learning (academic support). In addition, social integration, a key empirically supported concept derived from the revised theory of student persistence in residential colleges and universities, resonated with one of the initiatives in the program category of social supports. Thus, we conclude that theory and research are foundational to these institutional interventions, despite Tinto’s (2012) contention that research “tends to focus on theoretically appealing concepts that do not easily translate into definable courses of action” (p. 5). In this case, the usefulness of theory and research to practice springs from the vocabulary provided to institutional retention initiatives by empirically supported concepts, albeit in a post hoc manner. However, our work raises questions as to how campuses engage in the process of developing novel interventions to boost student retention and whether these connections to existing research and theory are at the forefront of the institutional actors’ minds when student success and persistence interventions are constructed. We posit that a more research-based foundation at the creation of these interventions could allow for firmer design frameworks and potentially better outcomes. Another key conclusion is that institutional culture must speak to the desired assurance and intention of achievement for students to believe in their success. The culture of a college or university influences “what is done, how it is done and who is involved in doing it” at a given college or university

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(Tierney, 1988, p. 3). The empirically supported theoretical concept of the commitment of the institution to student welfare constitutes an attribute of the organizational culture of a college or university (Braxton et al., 2014). Accordingly, institutional actions, communication, and decisions emerge from organizational culture. The prevalence of commitment of the institution to student welfare as an empirical grounding for the five categories of institutional retention initiatives likely occurs because it stands as an attribute of organizational culture. Thus, we conclude that empirically affirmed theoretical concepts useful to institutional action correspond to the culture of a college or university. Our findings lead us to raise two questions: How did these initiatives attract the attention of these two publications? Higher education publications likely seek out “good practice” to share with the higher education community, but how are initiatives identified? Are institutions employing savvy marketing departments to both get their name mentioned on a national level and promote their own agendas? Understanding how the field of higher education selects and reports on student success initiatives may prove as or more important than the articles themselves, which leads to the second question: What does public sharing of these initiatives tell us about the social institution of higher education? Perhaps the willingness to share retention initiatives suggests that individual colleges and universities value cross-institutional collaboration toward student success. Thus, the social institution of higher education may embody a collectivity orientation organized around student success. Colleges and universities may find that offering specific programs of one or more of the five types of institutional efforts is useful to improve their student retention rates. The culture of sharing details regarding implementation and outcomes associated with efforts may guide the development and implementation of such institutional efforts. The contribution of higher education as a field of study to efforts to enhance college student success emanates from research and practice communities centered on theory and research of college student retention. We recommend that colleges and universities interested in developing initiatives to improve their institution’s student retention rate consider the various initiatives described in this chapter. The descriptions of these initiatives offer a blueprint for such efforts. More specifically, institutions interested in developing programs or activities focused on advising, academic supports, financial supports, social supports, and multifaceted initiatives should review those specific programs that are institutionally relevant based on such matters as size, enrollment type, location, and students served.

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References ACT. (2018). National collegiate retention and persistence to degree rates, 2018. https:// www.act.org/content/act/en/research/pdfs/MS2807rev1-retention-persistence2018-07.html Anft, M. (2018, July 1). Student needs have changed. Advising must change, too. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/StudentNeeds-Have-Changed/243797 Baker, D. J., Arroyo, A. T., Braxton J. M., & Gasman, M. B. (2020). Understanding student persistence in commuter Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Journal of College Student Development, 61(1), 34–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/ csd.2020.0002 Baker, D. J., Arroyo, A. T., Braxton J. M., Gasman, M. B., & Francis, C. H. (2021). Expanding the student persistence puzzle to minority serving institutions: The residential historically black college and university context. Journal of College Student Retention: Theory, Research and Practice, 22(4), 676–698. https://doi .org/10.1177/1521025118784030 Bettinger, E. P., & Baker, R. B. (2014). The effects of student coaching: An evaluation of a randomized experiment in student advising. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 36(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713500523 Biemiller, L. (2016, November 15). Learning from failure in student success programs. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/ Learning-From-Failure-in/238398 Braxton, J. M., Doyle, W. R., Hartley, H. V., Hirschy, A. S., Jones, W. A., & McClendon, M. K. (2014). Rethinking college student retention. Jossey-Bass. Braxton, J. M., Hirschy, A. S., & McClendon, S. A. (2004). Understanding and reducing college student departure (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, Vol. 30, No. 3). Wiley. Brown, S. (2016a, September 19). Colleges add mental-health awareness to crowded orientation lineup. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle .com/article/ Colleges-Add-Mental-Health/237824 Brown, S. (2016b, August 26). The real story behind U. of Connecticut’s “Scholars House.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/ The-Real-Story-Behind-the-U/237571 Carlson, S. (2016, March 6). On the path to graduation, life intervenes. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/On-the-Path-to-Graduation/235603 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. (n.d.). Institution lookup. Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University School of Education. https://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/lookup/lookup.php Field, K. (2017a, April 16). College, with kids. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/College-With-Kids/239793

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Field, K. (2017b, January 8). How 2 colleges help Native students succeed. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/How2-Colleges-Help-Native/238835 Field, K. (2018, June 3). A third of your freshmen disappear. How can you keep them? The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/AThird-of-Your-Freshmen/243560 Frey, W. (2018, March 14). The US will become “minority white” in 2045, Census projects. The Avenue. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/ the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/ Gasman, G., & Conrad, C. (2018). Minority Serving Institutions: Educating all students. Penn Center for MSIs. https://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/cmsi/msis_educating_ all_students.pdf Gonzales, R. (2019, May 23). South and west continue rapid growth, according to new population data. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/23/725903534/south-andwest-continue-rapid-growth-according-to-new-population-data Hagedorn, L. S. (2005). How to define retention: A new look at an old problem. In A. Seidman (Ed.), College student retention: Formula for student success (pp. 89–105). American Council on Education/Praeger. Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Schuh, J., & Whitt, E. (2005). Student success in college: Creating conditions that matter. Jossey-Bass. Nguyen, T. D., Kramer, J. W., & Evans, B. J. (2019). The effects of grant aid on student persistence and degree attainment: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 89(6), 831–874. https:// doi.org/10.3102/0034654319877156 Ohrablo, S. (2017). The role of proactive advising in student success and retention. The EvoLLLution: A Destiny Solutions Illumination. Page, L. C., Kehoe, S. S., Castleman, B. L., & Sahadewo, G. A. (2019). More than dollars for scholars: The impact of the Dell Scholars Program on college access, persistence, and degree attainment. Journal of Human Resources, 54(3), 683–725. https://doi.org/ 10.3368/jhr.54.3.0516.7935R1 Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. (2018). 2018 list of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). https://cmsi.gse.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/MSI% 20List%202018.pdf Renick, T. M. (2018, July 1). How to best harness student-success technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-BestHarness/243798 Scrivener, S., Weiss, M. J., Ratledge, A., Rudd, T., Sommo, C., & Fresques, H. (2015). Doubling graduation rates: Three-year effects of CUNY’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) for developmental education students. MDRC. Smith, A. A. (2018, May 31). Closing the gap in San Francisco. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/31/san-franciscos-metro-academies-increase-college-completion-academically

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Sommo, C., Cullinan, D., Manno, M., Blake, S., & Alonzo, E. (2018). Doubling graduation rates in a new state: Two-year findings from the ASAP Ohio demonstration. MDRC. Teaching and Learning Transformation Center. (n.d.). Inspire, innovate and impact. University of Maryland. https://tltc.umd.edu Tierney, W. G. (1988). Organizational culture in higher education: Defining the essentials. The Journal of Higher Education, 59(1), 2–21. https://doi.org/ 10.2307/1981868 Tinto, V. (1975). Dropout from higher education: A theoretical synthesis of recent research. Review of Educational Research, 45(1), 89–125. https://doi .org/10.3102/00346543045001089 Tinto, V. (2012). Completing college: Rethinking institutional action. University of Chicago Press. Toven-Lindsey, B., Levis-Fitzgerald, M., Barber, P. H., & Hasson, T. (2015). Increasing persistence in undergraduate science majors: A model for institutional support of underrepresented students. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(2), Article 12.

3 THEORIES, FINDINGS, A N D I M P L I C AT I O N S FROM HIGHER E D U C AT I O N R E S E A R C H ON STUDENT SUCCESS Nicholas A. Bowman and Jason C. Garvey

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esearch on higher education—and specifically on issues of student success—has a long history. Berger et al. (2012) provided an overview of various contextual issues related to retention, with specific focus on how scholars and administrators have defined and contextualized retention historically. They presented the historical progression of retention through nine time frames: (a) retention prehistory (1600s to mid-1800s), (b) evolving toward retention (mid-1800s–1900), (c) early developments (1900–1950), (d) dealing with expansion (1950s), (e) preventing dropouts (1960s), (f ) building theory (1970s), (g) managing enrollments (1980s), (h) broadening horizons (1990s), and (i) current and future trends (early 21st century). Particularly since the 1960s, scholars and administrators have focused on retention as a universal concern in higher education, which has then led to practical, theoretical, and intellectual advancements in retention theory and practice. Further illustrating the long-standing inquiry in this field, the first issue of The Journal of Higher Education was published in 1930, and one of the earliest studies of college attrition was conducted by McNeely in 1937 (Morrison & Silverman, 2012). This work has evolved over time to reflect the current emphasis and language of student success. Contrasting with some of the other content chapters in this book, higher education is an interdisciplinary field of study as opposed to a “discipline,” as higher education research has been informed by sociology, psychology, economics, and other disciplines. 28

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Purpose and Positionality In this chapter, we have provided a broad overview of higher education theories, research findings, limitations, and implications from this work. In doing so, we made an intentional effort to reduce overlap with the disciplinary chapters in this book while still providing a summary of the field. We used two primary criteria to define research that is “within” the field of higher education: (a) this work appeared in a journal, conference, book, or monograph series that focuses on issues of higher education (including student affairs) and/or (b) the authors were employed within a program, department, center, or organization that focuses on higher education. An important feature of higher education research is that there is low consensus or agreement around the specific theories and methodologies used in this work (Renn, 2020; Torres et al., 2019), so we therefore intentionally highlight various perspectives and approaches throughout the chapter. Bowman (he/him/his) is a professor of higher education and student affairs at the University of Iowa. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in an individually designed program that combined social psychology and higher education, along with master’s degrees in educational research methodology and in higher education. This training has continued to shape his work on various topics, including student success, college diversity, undergraduate admissions, college rankings, and quantitative research methods. His research often explores the factors that promote or inhibit equity in student outcomes; it also takes a postpositivist approach while recognizing that students’ experiences and their interpretation of those experiences may vary notably across individuals and identity groups (see chapter 10, this volume). Garvey (he/him/his) is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs administration (HESA) at the University of Vermont. He also serves as faculty-in-residence for UVM’s Leadership & Social Change 1st-year undergraduate learning community. He received his PhD in college student personnel administration from the University of Maryland with a certificate in measurement, statistics, and evaluation. Garvey’s research examines queer and trans collegians across educational contexts primarily using quantitative methods. He often frames his scholarship through critical cultural perspectives, including intersectionality and queer theory, and he foregrounds salient experiences for queer and trans collegians, including identity development, retention, campus climate, and belonging. Garvey proudly identifies as a quantitative queer, navigating the borders of postpositivistic quantitative methods and poststructural queerness. Prior to his faculty appointments, Garvey worked in college student services across a variety of functional areas,

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including queer and trans student involvement and advocacy, student affairs assessment, residential life, academic advising, and undergraduate research. We recognize our methodological privileges as researchers who primarily conduct quantitative analyses using large-scale datasets, particularly given the historical dominance of quantitative scholarship when examining undergraduate student success. Although we use similar methods, our differing epistemological assumptions complement one another, and through this, we embrace epistemological openness and diversity across research approaches. Inherent in all of our scholarship is an understanding that our social identities—and in particular our racial, gender, sexual, and social class identities—greatly shape how we conceptualize power, marginalization, and student success.

Student Success Theories in Higher Education This section presents theories for college student success developed by higher education scholars. (For a review of recent theories, see Jones, in press). Using language adopted from Jones and Stewart (2016), we frame these theories in two waves to document the shifting emphases across frames and chronicle the evolution in how scholars have conceptualized student success. Adopting the metaphor of “waves” from feminist scholars (Humm, 1995), Jones and Stewart (2016) designated the evolution of student development theory across three waves. The first wave included foundational theories with a primary focus on psychological and developmental frameworks, whereas the second wave included student development theories that reflected a focus on students’ social identities and experiences holistically. Finally, Jones and Stewart’s third wave of student development theories applied critical and poststructural perspectives. In describing the three waves, they encouraged readers to recognize the intellectual and epistemological evolution of student development theories while also not abandoning earlier theories or suggesting that they have no relevance to students’ growth. In providing an overview of student success, we present two waves of theories largely determined by shared characteristics and constructs. In the first wave, we present foundational theories of student success that, similar to Jones and Stewart’s (2016) first-wave student development theories, are foundational in nature and broadly developed to adapt to a majority of collegians. In our second wave of student success theories, we include frameworks that center and uplift student populations that have been historically marginalized or overlooked. We focus on prevailing themes common across all theories within each wave and supplement these themes with theoretical examples.

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First-Wave Student Success Theories First-wave theories commonly have a shared goal of examining how college contexts and environments interact with and impact student success. There is no theory more ubiquitous for examining college impact than Astin’s (1970a, 1970b, 1975, 1991) inputs-environments-outcomes (I-E-O) model. Although considered more of a conceptual or methodological framework, Astin’s I-E-O model’s greatest strength is its flexibility across various contexts and student populations. Like many first-wave theories, Astin’s model includes broad categories for student inputs (i.e., characteristics that students bring into college), environments (i.e., what students encounter while in college), and outcomes (i.e., goals that students may achieve). First-wave student success theories broadly conceptualize success as a linear and traditional pathway for undergraduate students from matriculation to graduation, which seldom includes students transferring between institutions. These theories place high emphasis on retention and degree completion. Tinto’s (1987, 1993) theory of student departure is a key example of the theoretical longitudinal trajectory espoused across first-wave theories. From beginning with preentry characteristics to engaging with academic and social systems, first-wave theorists largely emphasize a conventional pathway for student success. Many first-wave theories begin with precollege characteristics as defining features of student persistence, retention, and success. For example, Weidman’s (1989) model of undergraduate socialization focuses on precollege traits, including parental normative pressures, which shape and constrain student growth. The importance of parental socialization continues throughout students’ undergraduate experiences, regardless of proximity to parents. First-wave theorists commonly examine various environmental contexts experienced during college that shape and define student success. Within these environments, there is a dominant focus on integrating into campus environments through socialization and involvement. In his theory of involvement, Astin (1985) argued that the amount of learning and development is directly related to the quantity and quality of involvement. He wrote that involvement requires psychological and physical investment and energy. Indeed, with many first-wave success theories, greater time and effort devoted to involvement, socialization, and integration often yields favorable student success measures. Kuh’s (2001, 2008) delineation of high-impact educational practices is a key example of how increased engagement, including interactions with faculty and peers, is conceptualized as yielding better success outcomes. Substantive relationships and conversations across

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extended periods further strengthen the impact of involvement, which in turn promotes increased learning and personal development. Integration often examines a student’s alignment with their institution, whether through their commitments or goals. Cabrera et al.’s (1993) integrated model of student retention defines persistence as the result of a complex set of interactions over time. They focus on precollege characteristics as determinants for student adjustment, noting that a successful match between students and institutions affects persistence. In fact, a large number of first-wave theories view success as a function of a person’s interaction with their environment. Bean and Eaton’s (2000) psychological model of college student retention emphasizes the importance of student characteristics to success in college. Students with strong personality traits, including self-efficacy and a better developed self-concept, are more confident about their likelihood of success in college. When students have an internal locus of control and believe they can achieve success at college, they are more likely to persist. Not all of the onus is placed on students to achieve success in these firstwave theories. These frameworks are often designed to promote policies and practices that can effectively facilitate student success. Perna and Thomas’s (2006) framework for reducing the college success gap and promoting success for all describes multiple layers that influence undergraduate student success, including internal, family, school, social, economic, and policy contexts. The primary goal of their model is to inform the development, implementation, and evaluation of policy and practice to foster student success. Although widely applicable across various contexts and student experiences, these first-wave theories are often dominantly constructed—whether explicitly or implicitly—to center residential students who attend 4-year colleges and universities. There are a small number of first-wave theories that directly discuss the unique contexts for students attending 2-year community colleges. Three prevailing first-wave theories with such a focus include Bean and Metzner’s (1985, 1987) nontraditional student attrition, Braxton et al.’s (2004) theory of student persistence in commuter colleges and universities, and Wang’s (2017) model of momentum for community college student success. Common across these three frameworks is an understanding that students who attend 2-year colleges experience college environments and contexts differently, with external experiences and commitments that shape their overall success.

Second-Wave Student Success Theories Second-wave theories of student success build upon foundations in first-wave theories while also rebuking the generalizability of these models. The notion

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of “success” and the conventional discourses about retention are broadened within these theories to include a greater array of students and institutions. In Arroyo and Gasman’s (2014) theoretical framework of Black college student success, they promoted supportive environments at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) through non-Eurocentric metrics for student success. Achievement, identity formation, and values cultivation constitute the core of their model, all of which include both individual components and interacting processes. A number of second-wave theorists deemphasize white dominance by centering and uplifting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations when conceptualizing student success. Museus (2014) created his culturally engaging campus environments model with an understanding that higher education researchers and administrators need to use more racially and culturally responsive theoretical models to understand success among racially diverse college student populations in higher education. His model underscores how culturally engaging environments at colleges and universities, combined with students’ individual influences, lead to greater persistence. Although engagement is key to student success, how and to what capacity BIPOC students may engage with institutional environments is often limited due to oppressive learning environments. Limitations with engagement are also exacerbated for other minoritized students, including queer and trans students, students with disabilities, undocumented students, and international students, as well as for students who commute, attend college part time, are nontraditional-age, and/or have caretaker obligations. Not only do second-wave theories center minoritized students, but they also examine how constructs like belonging differ for minoritized students compared to students with privilege. Sense of belonging is a prevailing theoretical construct extensively researched by a number of higher education scholars, including Strayhorn (2012) and Vaccaro and Newman (2016). Frameworks by these authors explore how belonging is a critical dimension of success at college, particularly related to students’ social and academic experiences. A student’s sense of belonging is shaped by environmental perceptions and relationships, as well as how students experience these environmental contexts, both of which may differ based on students’ social identities. As noted by Strayhorn (2012), satisfying the need to belong is essential to college students’ ability to thrive academically and socially. In addition to challenging dominant constructs related to retention, second-wave theorists also challenge assumed homogeneity of institutions. In other words, campus contexts and environments are vastly different based

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on institutional characteristics, and students experience these environments uniquely based on both the institutional context and their own meaningmaking. Mobley and Hall (2020) developed their queer and trans* HBCU student engagement and retention practice model to synthesize how policies and cultures at HBCUs have impeded or disrupted queer and trans* student retention. Importantly, they recognize the vast differences among HBCUs, noting that there is no “one size fits all” answer to supporting students. Such a differentiation within and across institutional contexts is a defining feature of second-wave student success theories. Similar to first-wave theories, student success scholars within the second wave often examine the interaction between students and their environments. However, these institutional contexts become more nuanced and holistic in second-wave theories. Hurtado et al.’s (2012) multicontextual model for diverse learning environments defines and analyzes nested contexts for learning that account for climate, educational practices, and student outcomes. In their model, students experience campus climate through both individual- and institutional-level dimensions. In other words, students’ campus experiences become a function of not only their identities and interpersonal interactions, but also the complex organizational structure and the broader sociopolitical climate. Although first-wave theories somewhat recognized how external influences and precollege characteristics shape success, second-wave theories reinforce this theme by centering students’ extended lives much beyond college environments. Lopez’s (2018) millennium falcon persistence model identified variables relevant to American Indian/Alaska Native college persistence at both 2- and 4-year institutions. He emphasized four emerging themes: family support, institutional support, tribal community support, and academic performance. Conceptually, second-wave theories place much more of an onus on institutions to promote equitable environments in which minoritized students can succeed, rather than assuming student responsibility solely for their persistence. One theory that clearly illustrates institutional responsibility for student success is Rendón’s (1994, 2002) validation theory. In her conceptualization, external agents must take initiative to validate students both academically and interpersonally, which in turn increases students’ confidence in their own success. Rendón emphasized that minoritized students require active intervention from campus agents and significant others to help them negotiate the complexities of institutional environments. Relatedly, Rankin and Reason’s (2008) transformational tapestry model focuses on institutional reform through policy and services/practice. Their comprehensive and strategic model of assessment, planning, and intervention is designed to support administrators understanding their campus climate in order to transform

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their institutions. The transformational tapestry model is both a framework and an assessment template, aimed at identifying transformational interventions to reshape institutional climate to be more equitable and welcoming for all. Above all else, second-wave student success theories recognize that students themselves have agency and choice to determine their own pathways for success. Although we have focused on first- and second-wave student success theories in our chapter, there is much to explore regarding critical and poststructural frameworks of success in higher education scholarship. We encourage readers to review Linley et al.’s chapter 9 (this volume) where they overview and problematize student success through critical and poststructural theories.

Student Success Research and Findings in Higher Education The first-wave and second-wave theories discussed previously have informed a massive higher education literature based on student success. Several largescale reviews have attempted to make sense of this research broadly, with a focus on findings from quantitative studies (Barnett & Kopko, 2021; Mayhew et al., 2016; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005; van der Zanden et al., 2018). Culver and Bowman (in press) provided an overview of recent research that is more inclusive of qualitative and critical studies, and Linley et al.’s chapter 9 explores critical perspectives on college student success. Other work has synthesized research on specific student identities, including Latinx students (Crisp et al., 2015), first-generation students (Ives & CastilloMontoya, 2020), queer and trans students (Garvey & Dolan, 2021), and students with disabilities (Kutscher & Tuckwiller, 2019). Additional scholars have focused on national or regional contexts, such as Latin America and the Caribbean (Munizaga et al., 2018), as well as the Netherlands and part of Belgium (van Rooji et al., 2018). In the following, we have organized a summary of higher education research about institutional and individual influences on student success into five large categories: institutional characteristics, college environments, high-impact practices, student supports, and institutional policies and practices. These categories sometimes overlap with one another, but we have distinguished these to the extent possible. Our synthesis is informed by the large-scale reviews noted in the previous paragraph, systematic reviews of specific topics (which we cite later), and individual studies on these topics (which we do not cite as a result of space constraints). This review inherently offers a very high-level overview; we encourage readers who are interested in

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learning more about specific topics to obtain the relevant articles, chapters, and books that we have cited.

Institutional Characteristics Colleges and universities have a number of attributes that are either permanent or reasonably stable over time, which include the types of degrees granted (e.g., associate versus bachelor’s), control (e.g., private not-for-profit), type (e.g., religious affiliation, HBCU), size, selectivity, student–faculty ratio, endowment, geographic region, urbanicity, representation (e.g., of racially minoritized students), and mission (which may also be reflected within the institutional type, representation, religious affiliation, etc.). Research that explores the direct role of institutional characteristics in shaping student success is largely quantitative in nature; these studies use institution-level data or a combination of student and institutional data to predict retention, persistence, and graduation. Some qualitative work samples students who are attending institutions with a certain characteristic (e.g., minority-serving institutions, religiously affiliated institutions) and explores the college environments and resulting sense of belonging or other student outcomes. Within this broad category, the largest effect occurs in relation to starting at a 4-year institution instead of a 2-year institution for ultimately receiving a bachelor’s degree. According to the best available evidence, starting at a 2-year institution decreases the probability of obtaining a bachelor’s degree by 23 percentage points (Schudde & Brown, 2019). That said, 2-year colleges ultimately serve to increase access to postsecondary education by providing a more affordable alternative that helps students achieve a variety of professional goals. Attending a more selective 4-year institution (defined in various ways) also notably increases the likelihood of receiving a 4-year degree, as does attending an institution with a low student–faculty ratio. Institutions with greater financial resources also contribute to higher graduation rates, especially if those resources are allocated toward instruction (and perhaps other forms of student support) rather than administrative costs. Moreover, although the quantitative evidence is somewhat mixed, both qualitative and quantitative studies frequently find that historical legacies and institutional missions shape student adjustment, belonging, retention, and graduation, especially for students who hold minoritized identities. In contrast, most institutional characteristics have small and/or inconsistent relationships with student success when accounting for other institutional factors, such as size, type, control, region, urbanicity, and tuition rates. To the extent that institutional characteristics do affect student success, these influences likely occur indirectly through the college environments, policies, practices, and supports that may shape students’ experiences.

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College Environments College environments refer broadly to the various formal and informal contexts with which students engage at the college or university, as well as the interpersonal interactions that students have with peers, instructors, and staff. Some features of these environments may be reasonably consistent throughout the institution, whereas others may vary substantially within institutions and may also be experienced quite differently by different groups of students. Engagement with college environments may occur within a well-defined structure (e.g., coursework, cocurricular activities), or it may be highly informal in nature. Students may also have varying degrees of choice in determining the particular college environments that they experience. Higher education scholars commonly differentiate between academic and social environments, although these distinctions become less clear when examining informal educational environments like learning communities or student– faculty relationships. The topic of college environments has received considerable attention from multiple approaches: Qualitative research frequently explores students’ experiences within college environments, especially among students with minoritized identities and within specific institutional contexts; quantitative research frequently examines the link between experiences and outcomes among all students, with some attention paid toward differences across student identities or analyses of a particular student subgroup. Large-scale reviews have explored general experiences with college environments, such as student–faculty interactions (Kim & Sax, 2017), crossracial peer interactions (Chang, 2011), and involvement within social and academic contexts (Richardson et al., 2012; Robbins et al., 2004). Other syntheses have explored how college environments are often experienced by students with minoritized identities in terms of the campus climate for diversity (Harper & Hurtado, 2007), subtle and overt microaggressions that reflect intergroup oppression (Ogunyemi et al., 2020), and sense of belonging in college (Strayhorn, 2012). Overall, having high-quality experiences within college environments is strongly associated with student success. Quality can be defined in various different ways, including the presence of positive experiences or a lack of negative experiences. The quality of college environments and resulting engagement is undoubtedly more important than the quantity. In fact, the relationship between the simple frequency of environmental interactions and student success is often modest, and we believe that some of this positive association may actually be the result of quality (i.e., students may choose to have subsequent interactions within certain environments and contexts if their early interactions were positive). Both positive and negative environments can often be found in curricular, cocurricular, and informal contexts.

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Moreover, students with minoritized identities are much more likely to experience hostile college environments than are students with privileged identities, and this pattern is especially pronounced at institutions that have historically excluded and oppressed large populations of potential students. These environmental disparities may take a variety of forms, including the limited representation or lack of visibility of people from certain identities, subtle or blatant bias through interpersonal interactions, and broader structural barriers that hinder positive experiences and student success.

High-Impact Practices Based on a review of the literature and original analyses, Kuh (2008) proposed 10 curricular approaches that may promote college learning, growth, and success: first-year seminars and experiences, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, diversity/global learning, service-learning/community-based learning, internships, and capstone courses and projects. Kuh and O’Donnell (2013) later offered eight key conditions that lead to benefits from these practices: (a) creating an investment of time and energy; (b) setting high performance expectations; (c) including interaction with faculty and peers on substantive topics; (d) exposing participants to diversity; (e) having real-world relevance and application; (f ) demanding reflection and integrated learning; (g) requiring students to demonstrate competence; and (h) providing frequent, timely, and meaningful feedback. Specific institutional efforts that fall under the umbrella of “highimpact practices” can take a variety of forms, and they may or may not exemplify these eight attributes or other conditions that foster student success. As a result, rigorous research is crucial for determining whether, when, and for whom these practices contribute to college success. Systematic reviews have provided an overview of individual high-impact practices, including first-year seminars (Permzadian & Credé, 2016; Robbins et al., 2009; Swaner & Brownell, 2010), learning communities (Inkelas et al., 2018; Wurtz, 2014), undergraduate research (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017), service-learning (Celio et al., 2011; Jacoby, 2015), collaborative learning (Kyndt et al., 2013; Tomcho & Foels, 2012), writing-intensive courses (Bangert-Drowns et al., 2004), and diversity courses (Denson & Bowman, 2017). Research examining specific high-impact practices is often quantitative in nature, but considerable qualitative research has examined students’ experiences within and perceptions of high-impact practices. The relevant literature base is voluminous, especially for some high-impact practices (e.g., first-year seminars, collaborative learning).

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Despite the name assigned to this group of practices, the results for the link between high-impact practices and student success is surprisingly mixed. The most consistent positive results occur for collaborative learning, service-learning, and undergraduate research predicting academic achievement, whereas the results differ across studies and outcomes for first-year seminars, learning communities, diversity coursework, and writing-intensive courses (limited research is available for internships and capstone projects, which tend to occur late within the undergraduate years). The success outcomes for students who participate in high-impact practices vary greatly depending on students’ qualitative experiences, which are often governed by students’ social identities and experiences of marginalization. Focusing on studies that use strong research methodologies generally leads to the same equivocal results. Kuh (2008) had argued that high-impact practices are especially effective for students who hold minoritized identities, but this pattern may depend notably on the practice and how it is enacted. For instance, collaborative learning appears to be more effective for bolstering the success of racially and socioeconomically minoritized students (Bowman & Culver, 2018; Theobald et al., 2020), but trans students’ success may frequently be undermined by various high-impact practices through the way that these are often implemented and conducted, with dominant and oppressive notions of success espoused through white-dominant assumptions (Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018).

Student Supports Colleges and universities frequently offer structured programs and services to help students adjust to postsecondary education, navigate their college journey, and afford their education. These supports may include academic coaching, advising, mentoring, tutoring, supplemental instruction, multifaceted programs, and financial aid. Students’ engagement with these supports may be very limited (e.g., attending one session of supplemental instruction that is linked with a large, introductory course) or very intensive (e.g., a program that combines summer bridge, advising, mentoring, tutoring, coursework, and academic and social programming). Participation in particular forms of student support may be required of all students (e.g., needing to meet with an academic advisor before enrolling in classes), required of some students (e.g., based on one’s major or precollege academic preparation), or optional for all students. Some of these programs and services are tailored or limited to certain subgroups of students (which may be determined via federal legislation and data), such as TRIO Student Support Services or Women in Science and Engineering.

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Substantial quantitative research exists for predicting students’ grades, retention, and graduation, with some recent studies providing rigorous causal conclusions. Considerable qualitative research has explored students’ experiences with these programs and services, along with whether and how students believe those supports helped them in college. Systematic reviews have explored student mentoring (Crisp & Cruz, 2009; Eby et al., 2007; Sneyers & De Witte, 2018), supplemental instruction (Dawson et al., 2014; also see Arendale, 2020), summer bridge programs (Ashley et al., 2017; Sablan, 2014), strategies to diversify STEM fields (Estrada et al., 2016; Tsui, 2007), programs for “at-risk” students (Valentine et al., 2011), and financial aid (Nguyen et al., 2019; Sneyers & De Witte, 2018). In general, many of these programs and services ultimately achieve their intended goals of facilitating college adjustment, engagement, belonging, achievement, retention, persistence, or graduation. These favorable results occur across research methodologies and student identities; when differences are present, the results tend to be more favorable among students with minoritized identities. Multifaceted or integrated programs that combine multiple student support services (and/or combine services with at least one of the “high-impact practices” described previously) are particularly effective at promoting short-term and long-term success. This work further demonstrates that student supports operate not only to provide practical information and guidance, but also to develop individual relationships and group memberships that lead to positive outcomes.

Institutional Policies and Practices Contrasting with the reasonably static institutional characteristics described previously, colleges and universities have considerable control over various policies and practices that they may implement. These approaches cover a range of topics: They directly pertain to the inclusion of (or discrimination against) various groups; they provide guidelines about (or exclusively dictate) how students are placed into advanced coursework or developmental education; they allow (or prevent) the transfer of coursework from other colleges, dual enrollment programs, Advanced Placement, or International Baccalaureate exams; and they determine (sometimes rigidly) when students are placed on academic probation, suspended from the institution, or dismissed entirely. Research on inclusion or exclusion policies is generally qualitative in nature and often focuses on queer, trans, and undocumented students, whereas the research on other topics generally takes a quantitative approach. Systematic reviews have considered the impact of placing students into developmental education (Jaggars & Bickerstaff, 2018; Valentine et al.,

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2017) and academic probation (Sneyers & De Witte, 2018). Not surprisingly, students who are targeted by discriminatory policies—or who lack protection from a supportive/inclusive policy—suffer numerous negative consequences, whereas implementing inclusion-focused policies leads to a greater sense of belonging. Notably, despite the intent of developmental education to help students who are purportedly underprepared for college-level coursework, placement into this coursework contributes to a variety of reduced academic outcomes. Contributing to this problem, students are often misplaced into courses that are too low for their actual knowledge and skills. Placement into academic probation also frequently leads to reduced retention, with mixed results for graduation. For both developmental education and academic probation, this placement may lead to specific barriers that must be overcome (taking additional non-credit-bearing coursework and avoiding academic dismissal, respectively) and also result in adverse psychological consequences (sending a strong message that the institution believes the student is unlikely to succeed; see chapter 6, this volume).

Limitations in Higher Education Research on Student Success The existing higher education research has yielded critically important insights into the dynamics that facilitate or hinder success among college students generally and among groups of students specifically. That said, a few key limitations to this work are noteworthy. First, some research topics and perspectives are substantially overrepresented, which comes at the expense of studying other topics and taking different approaches in this work. As one notable example, Permzadian and Credé (2016) analyzed 195 studies of approximately 170,000 total students on the quantitative relationship between first-year seminars and retention to the 2nd year of college. The emphasis on certain domains is driven by a variety of forces, and only some of these are within the control of individual researchers. For instance, federal research funding is skewed considerably toward supporting quantitative (and sometimes mixed-methods) research on student academic achievement and persistence within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Federal and institutional data also tend to be limited in ways that make it difficult to study certain student populations, especially at a large scale (e.g., undocumented, queer, and trans students, as well as groups within the broad federally-designated categories of “Asian,” “Black,” “Hispanic,” multiracial, and others). And for several reasons, higher education studies have an overrepresentation of certain institutional contexts (e.g.,

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4-year, residential, at least moderately selective, historically white) and therefore the students who attend those colleges. Such dominance perpetuates both empirical and theoretical/conceptual assumptions about college student retention, thus limiting the applicability of this work across student populations and institutional types. Second, many quantitative analyses have been limited in exploring some topics in a methodologically rigorous and nuanced manner. Higher education quantitative researchers have increasingly recognized the importance of using experimental and quasiexperimental designs to draw strong conclusions about causal relationships (rather than observing that students who happen to choose a certain college experience may have better outcomes). However, this type of rigorous research is still underutilized, especially for examining the potential impact of institutional characteristics, college environments, and high-impact practices. A practical challenge for conducting rigorous research is that higher education administrators and staff want students to receive the potential benefits of participating in promising practices, and placing some students into an “untreated” control group runs contrary to that philosophy. Furthermore, despite the increased recognition that students’ multiple identities may be important for understanding college experiences and outcomes, these across- and within-group explorations of identity are quite rare in quantitative research. Although quantitative scholars have begun embracing intersectionality as a frame for examining how various systems of oppression overlap to create unique contexts for student success, few quantitative scholars have conceptually or methodologically included such approaches. Such analyses require a very large sample size to study the interaction between multiple identities and systems of oppression, especially those that are not well represented in higher education or identified in largescale data collections. Even if this sample size is available, the direct examination of systems of power and oppression that may shape relevant effects is still extremely difficult (if not impossible) to quantify empirically. Third, the presence of many different approaches to studying and conceptualizing research on college student success provides a notable strength by yielding complementary insights, but it also leads to some challenges for researchers and practitioners. From a research perspective, scholars often read and cite work that is similar to their own in terms of methodology, epistemology, student population, research questions, publication outlet, and so on. This tendency means that the richness of previous research findings may not sufficiently inform current work, and that silos may therefore be created within the field of higher education research (in addition to larger silos that exist by field of study or discipline; see Renn, 2020; Torres et al., 2019). From a practical standpoint, these silos make it difficult for practitioners

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to learn about the broad knowledge base that could inform their decisionmaking and approaches for bolstering student success.

Implications for Practice and Policy Higher education research requires college administrators, practitioners, and policymakers to deeply reconsider whether and how their current efforts may or may not affect student success, with an emphasis on students who hold marginalized identities. A reconsideration does not necessarily require universal changes, but it does mean that even well-established practices, programs, and policies may need to be revised substantially or eliminated completely, along with potentially engaging in new substantive initiatives. The literature on “high-impact practices” provides conflicting findings, so this type of reconsideration would involve a rigorous examination of these practices at the institution (among all students and within groups by student identity and precollege academic preparation). Research on developmental education and academic probation has found consistently negative effects across institutional contexts, so a reconsideration should start with a stronger inclination toward making substantial changes that would reduce the chances of students needing to take additional coursework or being placed into a probationary status. The institutional decision-making process should be informed by a combination of previous research, relevant theory, and institutional data. Importantly, student success is influenced not only by intentional efforts to foster success. The literature on college environments illustrates the powerful ways in which curricular, cocurricular, and informal contexts affect student outcomes; this research often highlights the prevalence of adverse experiences and resulting outcomes for students with minoritized identities. These environments are shaped by various instructor, staff, and student behaviors, and many of these influences occur without any conscious intention of the individuals who are involved. These unintentional effects may also result from a lack of (recent) actions, such as the long-standing naming of buildings for people who worked to perpetuate inequality and oppression, which contributes to a hostile environment. Therefore, a reconsideration of college environments must inherently cover a variety of dimensions, including some that are rarely considered. In order to create substantial, lasting changes, collaboration across institutional departments and divisions is crucial. Research clearly demonstrates that the most effective student supports occur within an intentional, structured program that combines support services and often involves one

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or more high-impact practices (Mayhew et al., 2016; Tsui, 2007; Wurtz, 2014), which will require working across organizational units. Moreover, institutional policies should not only prevent discrimination based on student identities but also actively contribute to belonging by fostering inclusive environments. Institutional input on existing policies and resulting efforts to improve them typically do not (or should not) reside in a single office or with a single person. Instructors, staff, and administrators all shape student success in a variety of ways, so their collective involvement and future actions are critically important. Assessment and research in higher education needs to expand its scope to fully understand and work toward improving student success. For instance, sociopolitical movements and events (whether locally, nationally, or otherwise) are often viewed as external to college and therefore overlooked, but these can substantially influence students’ experiences and outcomes in important ways. Efforts to foster student success, especially for students who hold minoritized identities, should attend to these events and how institutions support students during difficult times. More broadly, a consideration of life outside of the physical boundaries of college campuses—as well as broadening the types of institutions—will be useful for providing a more accurate and useful understanding of present-day undergraduates, as earlier research and theories often focused on residential, 4-year, historically white institutions that exclusively offered in-person instruction. Finally, assessment and research endeavors require improved data collection to explore and enhance student success at the institutional, state, and national levels. Quantitative analyses are inherently limited by the available data, which must be expanded to represent student identities more fully and to assess college environments in ways that reflect constructs in second-wave student success theories.

References Arendale, D. R. (2020). Annotated bibliography—Supplemental instruction. https:// www.arendale.org/peer-learning-bib Arroyo, A. T., & Gasman, M. (2014). An HBCU-based educational approach for Black college student success: Toward a framework with implications for all institutions. American Journal of Education, 121(1), 57–85. http://dx.doi .org/10.1086/678112 Ashley, M., Cooper, K. M., Cala, J. M., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). Building better bridges into STEM: A synthesis of 25 years of literature on STEM summer bridge programs. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(3), 1–18. https://doi .org/10.1187/cbe.17-05-0085 Astin, A. W. (1970a). The methodology of research on college impact, part one. Sociology of Education, 43(3), 223–254. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112065

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Astin, A. W. (1970b). The methodology of research on college impact, part two. Sociology of Education, 43(4), 437–450. https://doi.org/10.2307/2111842 Astin, A. W. (1975). Preventing students from dropping out. Jossey-Bass. Astin, A. W. (1985). Achieving educational excellence: A critical assessment of priorities and practices in higher education. Jossey-Bass. Astin, A. W. (1991). Assessment for excellence: The philosophy and practice of assessment and evaluation in higher education. Macmillan. Bangert-Drowns, R. L., Hurley, M. M., & Wilkinson, B. (2004). The effects of school-based writing-to-learn interventions on academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 74(1), 29–58. https://doi .org/10.3102/00346543074001029 Barnett, E. A., & Kopko, E. M. (2021). What really works in student success? In T. U. O’Banion & M. M. Culp (Eds.), Student success in the community college: What really works? (pp. 177–196). Rowman & Littlefield. Bean, J., & Eaton, S. (2000). A psychological model of college student retention. In J. Braxton (Ed.), Rethinking the departure puzzle: New theory and research on college student retention (pp. 48–62). Vanderbilt University Press. Bean, J., & Metzner, B. (1985). A conceptual model of nontraditional undergraduate student attrition. Review of Educational Research, 55(4), 485–540. https://doi .org/10.3102/00346543055004485 Bean, J. P., & Metzner, B. S. (1987). The estimation of a conceptual model of nontraditional undergraduate student attrition. Research in Higher Education, 27(1), 15–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992303 Berger, J. B., Blanco Ramírez, G., & Lyon, S. (2012). Past to present: A historical look at retention. In A. Seidman (Ed.), College student retention: Formula for student success (pp. 7–34). Rowman & Littlefield. Bowman, N. A., & Culver, K. (2018). Promoting equity and student learning: Rigor in undergraduate academic experiences. In C. M. Campbell (Ed.), Reframing notions of rigor: Building scaffolding for equity and student success (New Directions for Higher Education, no. 181, pp. 47–57). Jossey-Bass. https://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/he.20270 Braxton, J. M., Hirschy, A. S., & McClendon, S. A. (2004). Understanding and reducing college student departure (ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, Vol. 30, No. 3). Jossey-Bass. Cabrera, A. F., Nora, A., & Castaneda, M. B. (1993). College persistence: Structural equation modeling test of an integrated model of student retention. The Journal of Higher Education, 64(2), 123–139. https://doi.org/10.2307/2960026 Celio, C. I., Durlak, J., & Dymnicki, A. (2011). A meta-analysis of the impact of service-learning on students. Journal of Experiential Education, 34(2), 164–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382591103400205 Chang, M. J. (2011). Quality matters: Achieving benefits associated with racial diversity. Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, The Ohio State University. Crisp, G., & Cruz, I. (2009). Mentoring college students: A critical review of the literature between 1990 and 2007. Research in Higher Education, 50(6), 525–545. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-009-9130-2

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Crisp, G., Taggart, A., & Nora, A. (2015). Undergraduate Latina/o students: A systematic review of research identifying factors contributing to academic success outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 85(2), 249–274. https://doi .org/10.3102/0034654314551064 Culver, K., & Bowman, N. A. (in press). Are you experienced? How college environments, programs, and interactions shape student retention, persistence, and graduation. In R. D. Reason & J. M. Braxton (Eds.), Improving college student retention: New developments in theory, research, and practice. Stylus. Dawson, P., van der Meer, J., Skalicky, J., & Cowley, K. (2014). On the effectiveness of supplemental instruction: A systematic review of supplemental instruction and peer-assisted study sessions literature between 2001 and 2010. Review of Educational Research, 84(4), 609–639. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654314540007 Denson, N., & Bowman, N. A. (2017). Do diversity courses make a difference? A critical examination of college diversity coursework and student outcomes. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 32, pp. 35–84). Springer. Eby, L. T., Allen, T. D., Evans, S. C., Ng, T., & DuBois, D. L. (2007). Does mentoring matter? A multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and nonmentored individuals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72(2), 254–267. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.04.005 Estrada, M., Burnett, M., Campbell, A. G., Campbell, P. B., Denetclaw, W. F., Gutierrez, C. G., Hurtado, S., John, G. H., Matsui, J., McGee, R., Okpodu, C. M., Robinson, T. J., Summers, M. F., Werner-Washburne, M., & Zavala, M. (2016). Improving underrepresented minority student persistence in STEM. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(es5), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0038 Garvey, J. C., & Dolan, C. V. (2021). Queer and trans student success: A comprehensive review and call to action. In L. W. Perna (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 36, pp. 161–215). Springer. Harper, S. R., & Hurtado, S. (2007). Nine themes in campus racial climates and implications for institutional transformation. In S. R. Harper & L. D. Patton (Eds.), Responding to the realities of race on campus (New Directions for Student Services, no. 120, pp. 7–24). Jossey-Bass. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ abs/10.1002/ss.254 Humm, M. (1995). The dictionary of feminist theory. The Ohio State University Press. Hurtado, S., Alvarez, C. L., Guillermo-Wann, C., Cuellar, M., & Arellano, L. (2012). A model for diverse learning environments. In J. C. Smart & M. B. Paulsen (Eds.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 27, pp. 41–122). Springer. Inkelas, K. K., Jessup-Anger, J. E., Benjamin, M., & Wawrzynski, M. R. (2018). Living-learning communities that work: A research-based model for design, delivery, and assessment. Stylus.

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Ives, J., & Castillo-Montoya, M. (2020). First-generation college students as academic learners: A systematic review. Review of Educational Research, 90(2), 139– 178. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654319899707 Jacoby, B. (2015). Service-learning essentials: Questions, answers, and lessons learned. Jossey-Bass. Jaggars, S. S., & Bickerstaff, S. (2018). Developmental education: The evolution of research and reform. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 33, pp. 469–503). Springer. https://link.springer.com/ chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-72490-4_10 Jones, S. R., & Stewart, D.-L. (2016). Evolution of student development theory. In E. S. Abes (Ed.), Critical perspectives on student development theory (New Directions for Student Services, no. 154, pp. 17–28). Jossey-Bass. https://onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ss.20172 Jones, W. A. (in press). Reimagining student persistence, retention, and success: An exploration of new theories and models. In R. D. Reason & J. M. Braxton (Eds.), Improving college student retention: New developments in theory, research, and practice. Stylus. Kim, Y. K., & Sax, L. J. (2017). The impact of college students’ interactions with faculty: A review of general and conditional effects. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 32, pp. 85–139). Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-48983-4_3 Kuh, G. D. (2001). The National Survey of Student Engagement: Conceptual framework and overview of psychometric properties. Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University. Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-impact educational practices: A brief overview. Association of American Colleges & Universities. Kuh, G. D., & O’Donnell, K. (2013). Ensuring quality and taking high-impact practices to scale. Association of American Colleges & Universities. Kutscher, E. L., & Tuckwiller, E. D. (2019). Persistence in higher education for students with disabilities: A mixed systematic review. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 12(2), 136–155. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000088 Kyndt, E., Raes, E., Lismont, B., Timmers, F., Cascallar, E., & Dochy, F. (2013). A meta-analysis of the effects of face-to-face cooperative learning: Do recent studies falsify or verify earlier findings? Educational Research Review, 10, 133–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2013.02.002 Lopez, J. D. (2018). Factors influencing American Indian and Alaska Native postsecondary persistence: AI/AN millennium falcon persistence model. Research in Higher Education, 59(6), 792–811. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-017-9487-6 Mayhew, M. J., Rockenbach, A. N., Bowman, N. A., Seifert, T. A., & Wolniak, G. C. (with Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, E. T.). (2016). How college affects students: Vol. 3. 21st century evidence that higher education works. Jossey-Bass. Mobley, S. D., & Hall, L. (2020). (Re)Defining queer and trans* student retention and “success” at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Journal of Col-

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lege Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 21(4), 497–519. https://doi .org/10.1177/1521025119895512 Morrison, L., & Silverman, L. (2012). Retention theories, models, and concepts. In A. Seidman (Ed.), College student retention: Formula for student success (pp. 61–80). Rowman & Littlefield. Munizaga, F., Cifuentes, M., & Beltrán, A. (2018). Retención y abandono estudiantil en la Educación Superior Universitaria en América Latina y el Caribe: Una revisión sistemática. Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas, 26(61), 1–32. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.26.3348 Museus, S. D. (2014). The Culturally Engaging Campus Environments (CECE) Model: A new theory of college success among racially diverse student populations. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 29, pp. 189–227). Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8005-6_5 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2017). Undergraduate research experiences for STEM students: Successes, challenges, and opportunities. The National Academies Press. Nguyen, T. D., Kramer, J. W., & Evans, B. J. (2019). The effects of grant aid on student persistence and degree attainment: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 89(6), 831–874. https:// doi.org/10.3102/0034654319877156 Ogunyemi, D., Clare, C., Astudillo, Y. M., Marseille, M., Manu, E., & Kim, S. (2020). Microaggressions in the learning environment: A systematic review. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 13(2), 97–119. https://doi.org/10.1037/ dhe0000107 Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (1991). How college affects students. Jossey-Bass. Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students: Vol. 2. A third decade of research. Jossey-Bass. Permzadian, V., & Credé, M. (2016). Do first-year seminars improve college grades and retention: A quantitative review of their overall effectiveness and an examination of moderators of effectiveness. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 277–316. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315584955 Perna, L. W., & Thomas, S. L. (2006). A framework for reducing the college success gap and promoting success for all. National Symposium on Postsecondary Student Success: Spearheading a Dialog on Student Success. Rankin, S. R., & Reason, R. D. (2008). Transformational tapestry model: A comprehensive approach to transforming campus climate. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 1(4), 262–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014018 Rendón, L. (1994). Validating culturally diverse students: Toward a new model of learning and student development. Innovative Higher Education, 19, 33–51. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01191156 Rendón, L. (2002). Community college puente: A validating model of education. Educational Policy, 16, 642–667. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904802016004010

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Renn, K. (2020). Reimagining the study of higher education: Generous thinking, chaos, and order in a low consensus field. Review of Higher Education, 43(4), 917–934. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2020.0025 Richardson, M., Abraham, C., & Bond, R. (2012). Psychological correlates of university students’ academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 353–387. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026838 Robbins, S. B., Lauver, K., Le, H., Davis, D., Langley, R., & Carlstrom, A. (2004). Do psychosocial and study skill factors predict college outcomes? A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 130(2), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.2.261 Robbins, S. B., Oh, I.-S., Le, H., & Button, C. (2009). Intervention effects on college performance and retention as mediated by motivational, emotional, and social control factors: Integrated meta-analytic path analyses. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(5), 1163–1184. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015738 Sablan, J. R. (2014). The challenge of summer bridge programs. American Behavioral Scientist, 58(8), 1035–1050. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764213515234 Schudde, L., & Brown, R. S. (2019). Understanding variation in estimates of diversionary effects of community college entrance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sociology of Education, 92(3), 247–268. https://doi .org/10.1177/0038040719848445 Sneyers, E., & De Witte, K. (2018). Interventions in higher education and their effect on student success: A meta-analysis. Educational Review, 70(2), 208–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2017.1300874 Stewart, D.-L., & Nicolazzo, Z (2018). High impact of [whiteness] on trans* students in postsecondary education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 51(2), 132–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2018.1496046 Strayhorn, T. L. (2012). College students’ sense of belonging: A key to educational success for all students. Routledge. Swaner, L. E., & Brownell, J. E. (2010). Outcomes of high impact practices for underserved students: A review of the literature. Association of American Colleges & Universities. Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., Chambwe, N., Cintrón, D. L., Cooper, J. D., Dunster, G., Grummer, J. A., Hennessey, K., Hsiao, J., Iranon, N., Jones, L., II, Jordt, H., Keller, M., Lacey, M. E., Littlefield, C. E., . . . Freeman, S. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476–6483. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916903117 Tinto, V. (1987). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. University of Chicago Press. Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving college: Rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Tomcho, T. J., & Foels, R. (2012). Meta-analysis of group learning activities: Empirically based teaching recommendations. Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 39(3), 159–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312450414

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Torres, V., Jones, S. R., & Renn, K. (2019). Student affairs as a low-consensus field and the evolution of student development theory as foundational knowledge. Journal of College Student Development, 60(6), 645–658. https://doi.org/10.1353/ csd.2019.0060 Tsui, L. (2007). Effective strategies to increase diversity in STEM fields: A review of the research literature. Journal of Negro Education, 76(4), 555–581. https://www .jstor.org/stable/40037228 Vaccaro, A., & Newman, B. M. (2016). Development of a sense of belonging for privileged and minoritized students: An emergent model. Journal of College Student Development, 57(8), 925–942. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2016.0091 Valentine, J. C., Hirschy, A. S., Bremer, C. D., Novillo, W., Castellano, M., & Banister, A. (2011). Keeping at-risk students in school: A systematic review of college retention programs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33(2), 214–234. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373711398126 Valentine, J. C., Konstantopoulos, S., & Goldrick-Rab, S. (2017). What happens to students placed into developmental education? A meta-analysis of regression discontinuity studies. Review of Educational Research, 87(4), 806–833. https:// doi.org/10.3102/0034654317709237 van der Zanden, P. J. A. C., Denessen, E., Cillessen, A. H. N., & Meijer, P. C. (2018). Domains and predictors of first-year student success: A systematic review. Educational Research Review, 23(1), 57–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .edurev.2018.01.001 van Rooji, E., Brouwer, J., Fokkens-Bruinsma, M., Jansen, E., Donche, V., & Noyens, D. (2018). A systematic review of factors related to first-year students’ success in Dutch and Flemish higher education. Pedagogische Studiën, 94(5), 360–404. https://pedagogischestudien.nl/download?type=document&identifier=644595 Wang, X. (2017). Toward a holistic theoretical model of momentum for community college student success. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 32, pp. 259–308). Springer. https://link.springer.com/ chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-48983-4_6 Weidman, J. (1989). Undergraduate socialization: A conceptual approach. In J. Smart (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 5, pp. 289–322). Agathon. Wurtz, K. A. (2014). Effects of learning communities on community college students’ success: A meta-analysis [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Walden University.

4 PUBLIC POLICY IN H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N Agendas, Solutions, and Impacts on Student Success Nicholas W. Hillman

P

ublic policies have important—yet often ambiguous, contradictory, or indirect—effects on student success. These effects often vary from student to student, or even from college to college and state to state. Any given policy might deliver great benefits to some students but not others, or it might make some students worse off than others. There are even cases when policies do none of those things and simply make no meaningful difference (positively or negatively) on students. Public policies can improve student success in deliberate and meaningful ways, and this chapter provides theoretical underpinnings and evidence about how policies—and the policy-making process—can affect student success. State, tribal, and federal governments; advocacy groups; membership organizations; and philanthropic foundations all have a role in shaping higher education policies. Accordingly, this chapter focuses on these actors and how they set policy agendas, promote policy solutions, implement policies, and ultimately evaluate their effectiveness. Through this conversation, the chapter outlines common theories of public policy-making that, when incorporated into higher education research, can help the field advance new understandings about the link between policy and student success. The chapter outlines key economic theories underlying many policy debates, and it synthesizes recent research on how policies affect student outcomes, concluding with promising avenues for further research and implications for practice.

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What Is Public Policy? Without a working definition, the term public policy can be vague or unclear, resulting in broad interpretations of its meaning. For the purposes of this chapter, the term refers to “a relatively stable, purposive course of action or inaction followed by government in dealing with some problem or matter of concern” (Anderson, 2010, p. 7). This brief definition provides rich context by inviting readers to consider why governments act or fail to act, how they do so, and whose interests are served in this process. By focusing on behaviors and actions, this definition frames policy-making as a political process that ultimately reflects the values and priorities of those in power. Policymakers will not always agree that a problem exists or that it even needs to be addressed. Even if they do agree on a problem, they may disagree on the best course of action to take in response. In higher education, federal, tribal, and state governments are the primary actors involved in policy-making. The executive and legislative branches of these governmental bodies (e.g., governors, presidents, legislators, councils, etc.) are responsible for policy-making. This means public policies are codified through laws, regulations, and other formal governmental actions. It also means the judicial branch of government does not make public policy; rather, courts rule on the constitutionality of existing policies and their rulings shape future policy designs. Outside of government, there are several think tanks, advocacy groups, professional membership associations, and philanthropic foundations that advance policy agendas. Think tanks can promote, analyze, or develop policy proposals for elected officials. Advocacy groups and membership associations lobby for policies that serve their members’ interests, whereas philanthropic organizations underwrite these groups, because they cannot lobby directly. These nongovernmental organizations carry significant influence in the policy-making process, but they do not make public policy. Similarly, individual colleges and universities advocate for specific policies at the state and federal level, but they are not policymakers. A college’s board of regents, trustees, or other governing body is in a gray area between public policy and campus governance, and they are excluded from public policy-making scholarship for the purposes of this chapter. Similarly, the internal policies and procedures of a college are often affected by public policies, but they themselves are not public policies as defined previously.

Theories of the Policy-Making Process The policy-making process is dynamic, ongoing, and never truly finished— public priorities and opinions change, laws expire and need updating,

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political coalitions rise and fall—meaning public policy-making is always in flux and requires active policy maintenance (Mettler, 2016). Figure 4.1 offers a visual representation of the policy-making process, which focuses on the distinct “stages” that occur throughout a policy life cycle (Theodoulou, 2013). This is an oversimplified version of the policy-making process, where the aim is to demonstrate there are distinct activities occurring at different times in the policy process. In practice, policymakers do not spend equal amounts of time, energy, or attention on each stage; instead, these stages are iterative, interconnected, and sometimes missing altogether. Nevertheless, researchers seeking to make their work more policy-relevant may find these stages useful for framing studies (or entire research agendas) around distinct moments in the policy cycle. Figure 4.1. Stages of the policy-making process.

Agenda Setting

Evaluation

Implementation

Formulation

Adoption

Figure 4.1 starts at the top, where policymakers, advocacy groups, and coalitions engage in agenda setting, in which they make a case for policy action and mobilize support to that end. The advocacy coalition framework, punctuated equilibrium model, and multiple streams of policy-making are promising theories to help explain, understand, and critique the origins of a wide range of higher education public policy issues (McLendon et al., 2015). After setting an agenda and gaining political support, policymakers engage in policy formulation, where they determine the optimal mix of “instruments” to use when designing specific policies (Howlett, 2019). In higher education,

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these instruments tend to be financial (e.g., tax credits, financial aid, and appropriations), informational (e.g., performance reporting and transparency efforts), authoritative (e.g., mandates, approvals, and authorizations), or capacity-building (e.g., technical assistance and improvement plans), where policymakers choose any mix of instruments to achieve their policy goals given their financial or political constraints (Hillman, Tandberg, & Sponsler 2015). Agenda setting and formulation often occur in tandem and sometimes even backward, where elected officials have policy solutions ready and waiting for a window of opportunity to open regardless of whether that solution is well designed to solve the problem at hand (Kingdon, 2010). Unlike the first two stages, the third (adoption) focuses on formal policy action, where elected officials negotiate and ultimately decide to convert policy ideas into legislation, rules, or other formal policy channels. Research in this area tends to focus on state-level “policy diffusion,” where states adopt similar policies to one another based largely on learning from other states’ experiences or via political pressure to adopt popular policies regardless of their efficacy (Baker, 2019; Lacy & Tandberg, 2014; Li, 2017). These first three stages shape the fourth stage, implementation, where governments allocate financial, technical, or human resources to enact the policy consistent with its legal or regulatory framework. This area of policy scholarship is underdeveloped in higher education, yet it holds great promise for understanding how professional administrators, campus leaders, and students respond to political oversight. The final stage is evaluation, which determines how and how well a policy is reaching its intended goals. Did a policy work? For whom? And under what conditions? These three questions often guide evaluation research and, by answering them, can help scholars link their research directly to policy conversations. Academic research in this area is steadily moving in the direction of experimental and quasiexperimental research designed to draw causal links between policies and outcomes (Angrist, 2004; Angrist & Pischke, 2010).

Economics and Public Policy The previous section described distinct moments in the policy-making process. Missing from this discussion was a rationale for why elected officials would be concerned with higher education in the first place and, more importantly, how they believe policies can affect student success. In many higher education policy debates today, economic rationales dominate the conversation by focusing on human capital theory and market failures. Human capital theory pertains to the productive capacity individuals

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develop through formal education. By investing in education, individuals will generate long-term financial and nonfinancial returns. As illustrated in Figure 4.2, so long as those returns (B) are greater than the direct costs of attending college (A) and the opportunity costs and foregone earnings (C), then their investment has a positive return. To maximize the return on investment, policymakers may try to minimize A by keeping tuition low, providing grants and scholarships, or by reducing time-to-degree. Similarly, they may encourage individuals to pursue careers that have high (or at least rising) earnings that maximize B. Figure 4.2. Return on investment in higher education.

$60,000

Income

$40,000

C

B

$20,000

$0 A $−20,000 0

20

Age

40

60

Policymakers who want to influence individuals’ investment decisions often turn to “demand-side” factors aimed to shape students’ behaviors. This is typically done via targeted financial aid programs that reduce prices, and thus increase enrollment demand, for students. In Figure 4.3, the downwardsloping line (D1) represents the overall demand for college at price (P1). If price stayed at P1, then a college would only enroll E1 students. If public policymakers believe students are responsive to price, then one way to encourage them to attend is by providing grants and scholarships to reduce price from P1 to P2. Doing so would increase enrollment from point E1 to E2, where more price-sensitive students would be likely to attend college due to the price reduction.

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Figure 4.3. Price elasticity of demand in higher education.

Price

P1

P2

D1

E1

E2

Enrollment

By reducing price barriers, individuals should be more likely to invest in education. Reducing price barriers can also help increase individuals’ return on investment by reducing the direct and opportunity costs of going to college. Public policymakers, either explicitly or implicitly, often frame and justify policy actions around key concepts in human capital theory. In addition to this economic rationale, public policymakers also rely on three key “market failure” concepts to justify policy action in higher education: public goods, externalities, and information asymmetries. In well-functioning markets, sellers compete with one another to deliver goods and services at prices that meet consumer demands. But sometimes sellers do not supply enough, or consumers do not buy enough, resulting in inefficiency. And other times, the byproducts of an exchange end up affecting individuals who were never involved in the exchange, resulting in externalities. When these circumstances arise, as they often do in higher education, then markets fail and governmental involvement can be well justified on economic grounds (Winston, 1999).

Public Goods Public goods are characterized as having (a) nonrival consumption where one’s use of the good does not take away from someone else’s and (b) nonexcludable

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ownership where one cannot control who consumes the good (Toutkoushian & Paulsen, 2016). Purely private goods are just the opposite: Only one person or group can consume the good at a given time, and owners can restrict consumption to select individuals. Somewhere between these two extremes are common goods, where individuals are not prohibited from a resource but one’s consumption of it takes away from another’s (rivalrous but not exclusive). And common pool goods are those that limit participation, but the individual has unfettered access to a given resource once admitted (nonrivalrous but exclusive). Table 4.1 shows this basic typology, where different aspects of higher education can fall into different quadrants depending on the context. TABLE 4.1

Rivalry and Excludability of Goods and Services Nonrival Rival

Nonexcludable

Excludable

Public

Toll

Common pool

Private

Of course, higher education is not monolithic, and its outcomes are wide-reaching and sometimes share elements of all four of these quadrants. For example, a central purpose of higher education is to produce and disseminate new knowledge. Therefore, one of the key outcomes of higher education—knowledge development—can be viewed as nonrival, because one’s knowledge of a basic scientific fact does not take away from someone else’s knowledge of that same fact (Stiglitz, 1999). Similarly, it may not be feasible or socially desirable to actively prevent people from accessing basic levels of knowledge, making education nonexcludable. This combination would make knowledge a purely public good. But other parts of higher education are not at all public. For example, selective college admissions and specialized programs can be viewed as private goods, because nonadmitted students are excluded from enrolling and, once enrolled, courses are rivalrous if there are only a certain number of seats available. Similarly, imagine a speech on a college campus that is open to the public. This would be nonexcludable, but if space is limited then access would be rivalrous, thus making the speech a common pool good. Alternatively, a college could provide high-speed internet where one’s use of bandwidth does not affect someone else’s; however, the college may limit access to those who have usernames and passwords, making campus internet service a toll good. This brief illustration shows the complexity of higher education— different parts of the education enterprise have elements of public, private,

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toll, and common pool goods. This phenomenon occurs across nearly all areas of social policy (e.g., health care, environmental protection, media, etc.), which is made only more complicated when public goods are delivered via public and private nonprofit or for-profit providers. Higher education is no different—there are thousands of different types of colleges that provide public, private, toll, and common pool goods. Public policymakers navigate this complexity by assessing whether colleges are producing a socially desirable level or quality of a public good, for whom, and with what trade-offs. If colleges are not doing enough to produce a particular public good, then they may be at risk of losing access to public funding or they could be subject to greater policy oversight.

Externalities The second market failure occurs when an individual or group’s consumption of a good or service has a spillover effect, or “externality,” on nonconsumers. Bystanders, nonparticipants, or those who otherwise did not fully consent to the consumptive activity are thus subject to externalities, which can be either positive or negative (Weimer & Vining, 2017). For example, when an individual invests in higher education, they (on average) accrue private benefits like higher earnings, better health, and other nonmonetary outcomes. But their investment also generates positive social benefits—or externalities—including increased tax revenue, greater charitable giving, and more civic participation (Bloom et al., 2007). Alternatively, higher education can also produce negative externalities that affect both the individual student and their communities. For example, when borrowers default on their federal student loans, their personal credit scores are degraded, and it costs money for the federal government to collect these unpaid debts. Because individuals do not always account for (or know in advance) the social consequences of their consumption, markets are likely to underproduce positive externalities and overproduce negative ones (Toutkoushian & Paulsen, 2016). If markets overproduce outcomes that are socially desirable, or underproduce those that are undesirable, then policymakers would likely let the market prevail and not intervene. Alternatively, they might use subsidies and incentives to encourage individuals to invest in socially desirable activities that create positive externalities while taxing, outlawing, or otherwise discouraging activities that create negative externalities.

Information Asymmetries In efficient markets, buyers and sellers have equal information about the quality of the good or service being exchanged (Weimer & Vining, 2017). In

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these markets, producers provide information so that consumers can distinguish quality across multiple providers and update their preferences as they make more frequent purchases. However, when purchases are infrequent and quality is difficult to measure (or to define), then information asymmetries begin to emerge. And when there are multiple providers delivering a similar good at varying degrees of quality that can only be known after consumption, then information asymmetries abound. This is the case in higher education, where quality is difficult to objectively measure across heterogeneous providers, purchases are infrequent, and students are both an input and an output of their own education (Winston, 1999). Policymakers respond to these asymmetries by requiring producers to be more transparent or to offer consumer warranties; they may also respond by requiring or subsidizing consumers to purchase insurance that protects against investment risks. Short of transparency mandates (e.g., College Scorecard), higher education policy has not systematically fixed the deadweight loss that stems from these information asymmetries. These economic rationales tend to dominate public policy conversations. But public policymakers also justify involvement in higher education based on ethical principles related to rights and duties. From this perspective, governmental action is justified on the basis of human dignity, equal opportunity, and equitable outcomes (Weimer & Vining, 2017). Many of these actions are rooted in constitutional rights and court decisions affirming those rights, whereas others are rooted in moral philosophy and political values that evolve over time. For example, discrimination on the basis of gender, race, or national origin is outlawed under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to both preserve basic human rights outlined in the U.S. Constitution and to promote equal opportunity as a national value and policy goal. Similarly, policymakers may view higher education as a key function of a democratic society; from this perspective, colleges are necessary for preparing future political leaders and engaged citizens to be active participants in the democratic process (Labaree, 1997). As a result, public policymakers may couple their economic rationale with ethical ones, justifying governmental involvement on the basis of economic justice and civil rights.

Public Policy Research in Higher Education One of the greatest challenges in higher education policy research is identifying whether—and under what conditions—policies affect student outcomes. The source of this challenge rests with the word affect, which implies a direct causal relationship between a policy intervention and student outcomes. For

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example, the state of Tennessee adopted a new performance-based funding policy in 2010, and college completions rose in the subsequent years. Was this growth due to the policy, or might this trend have occurred even without the policy? Unfortunately, we will never know with complete certainty, because it is impossible to observe the state under both conditions (with and without the policy). This means that researchers need to create “counterfactual” conditions to compare outcomes—for example, in Tennessee (the “treatment” group) against outcomes in other similar states that never adopted the policy (the “comparison” group). Counterfactual conditions help policymakers and researchers see what could have plausibly happened in the absence of a treatment. The most convincing way to do this is through experimental research designs like randomized controlled trials (RCTs); however, RCTs are often not practical, ethical, or possible to do in public policy analysis. Under certain conditions, quasiexperimental research designs can replicate RCTs and draw plausibly causal links between a treatment (or policy) and an outcome. Social science research—and education research in particular—has a long and complicated history of conflating correlation and causation, leading to today’s “credibility revolution” where experimental and quasiexperimental research designs now dominate public policy scholarship (Angrist, 2004; Angrist & Pischke, 2010). Accordingly, this section highlights some of the most recent and rigorous policy scholarship using experimental or quasiexperimental designs aimed at drawing causal links between policies and student outcomes.

Randomized Controlled Trials Perhaps the most notable policy experiment in higher education is the 2008 H&R Block study, where researchers randomly assigned a personalized counselor to help tax filers complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in Ohio and North Carolina (Bettinger et al., 2012). By receiving personalized guidance, filers were more likely to file the FAFSA and, in so doing, their children were more likely to receive aid and enroll in college. This study continues to be cited in policy debates about simplifying the FAFSA and improving college access (Dynarski & Scott-Clayton, 2013; Z. Smith, 2017). More relevant for this chapter, the H&R Block study also ushered in the new era of RCTs in the field of student financial aid, where researchers randomly assign informational interventions to help increase FAFSA filing. For example, Castleman and Page (2016) randomly sent text message reminders to “nudge” students to file the FAFSA. Some of these earlier text message

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interventions made positive impacts on student success, but once researchers began texting students at scale (and thus in less personalized ways), these effects were no longer found (Bird et al., 2019). Similar nudges have been used to inform students on how much they have borrowed and the consequences of borrowing. Darolia and Harper (2018) randomly assigned some student loan borrowers additional information about their debt history and future loan repayment options, yet the intervention made no significant impact on borrowing behaviors. However, another study found that providing information about loan availability—in this case, offering loans in students’ financial aid award letters—improved students’ academic performance and educational outcomes, because the additional aid provided financial liquidity to stay enrolled (Marx & Turner, 2019). Yet another study used warning letters to inform high-debt students about the risks of defaulting on their loans; this warning message induced borrowers to switch to higher paying majors (Schmeiser et al., 2016). Informational interventions like these are convenient and increasingly common in student financial aid research, where information asymmetries abound and researchers can ethically, feasibly, and legally assign treatment and control groups.

Quasiexperimental Studies When RCTs are not an option, policy scholars search for natural experiments that—under certain conditions—can replicate random assignment and allow researchers to draw causal inferences. In higher education, there are far more quasiexperimental studies than experimental ones, and many of these are in the area of financial aid because of its strict eligibility thresholds that expose some students to a “treatment” but not others. For example, the federal Pell Grant is based on FAFSA filers’ expected family contribution. Using regression discontinuity design, Carruthers and Welch (2019) found the Pell Grant had no systematic impact on students’ enrollment decisions, whereas Denning et al. (2019) used the same design and found positive enrollment impacts concentrated among the lowest income Pell recipients. Similarly, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit has eligibility thresholds conducive for policy evaluation, where the refund has positive enrollment effects on lowincome students (Manoli & Turner, 2018). Meanwhile, federal tax deductions for tuition and fees (which tend to be for higher income students) have no enrollment effect (Bulman & Hoxby, 2015). In addition to federal financial aid policies mentioned in the previous paragraph, quasiexperimental policy research focuses on a wide range of state policies including financial aid, performance-based funding, tuition policy, and developmental education. Starting with state financial aid,

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quasiexperimental studies demonstrating the effectiveness of state aid programs vary depending on program design, eligibility criteria, and award amounts. For example, California’s Cal Grant (Bettinger et al., 2019), Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship (Castleman & Long, 2016), and West Virginia’s PROMISE scholarship (Scott-Clayton, 2011) have improved college completion. Two of these studies (Cal Grant and Bright Futures) examine state “need-based” financial aid programs, where the positive impact likely comes from the additional money to help students stay enrolled. And the meritbased PROMISE scholarship effects are likely driven from a combination of financial aid and requiring students to maintain a certain grade point average and course load. These findings are similar to the research consensus—an additional $1,000 in aid increases enrollment by 1.5 to 2 percentage points (Herbaut & Geven, 2020; Nguyen et al., 2019). But not every study of state financial aid finds positive effects. In Massachusetts, the merit-based Adams Scholarship encouraged students to attend less selective and poorer resourced public colleges because the aid made tuition free. The aid did not provide more resources to the colleges, so it effectively channeled students into underresourced institutions where students were less likely to graduate. By shifting students into colleges with low graduation rates, scholarship recipients ended up having lower completion rates than other students (Cohodes & Goodman, 2014). And in Georgia, the merit-based HOPE scholarship does not appear to improve completion (Sjoquist & Winters, 2015). Across these studies, need-based aid helps reduce price barriers for low-income students, whereas the combination of academic incentives and financial aid may improve outcomes in merit-based programs. The emerging research literature concludes that simply providing aid is a suboptimal way to support student success; instead, complementing aid programs with personalized student support services like supplemental counseling, social networking opportunities, and nonacademic support services can boost enrollment and persistence (Andrews et al., 2019; Clotfelter et al., 2018; Evans et al., 2019; Page et al., 2019; Weiss et al., 2019). Shifting away from financial aid, quasiexperimental designs have also examined state performance-based funding policies. Under these policies, state higher education appropriations are tied to measurable outcomes like 1st-year retention, credit hour completion, and degree completion rates. States adopt different types of performance-based policies in different years, making them excellent candidates for the difference-in-differences design, where colleges located in performance funding states are compared to those

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in similar states that never adopted the policy. In case studies of two of the nation’s longest standing performance funding efforts (Ohio and Tennessee) and national analysis of all states that have adopted policies over the years, the weight of evidence suggests these policies have generated little to no impact on improving retention and degree completion (Hagood, 2019; Ward & Ost, 2021). When there are impacts, they tend to be among colleges with the greatest resources (Favero & Rutherford, 2019; Hagood, 2019), encourage the growth of short-term certificates (Hillman, Tandberg, & Fryar, 2015; Hillman et al., 2018; Li & Kennedy, 2018), or limit access for students of color and low-income students (Kelchen & Stedrak, 2016; Umbricht et al., 2017). To avoid these negative outcomes, some states include bonuses for enrolling and graduating underrepresented students, though the evidence is mixed, showing both positive and negative effects on Black and Latino student enrollments (Gándara & Rutherford, 2018; Kelchen, 2018). Other studies using difference-in-differences designs have found that tuition freeze policies can actually increase tuition inflation over the long run (Delaney & Kearney, 2015), that tuition-free community college increases community college participation rates (Gurantz, 2020), and that providing in-state tuition for undocumented students improves access for undocumented youths, although the policies may also shift students into lower resourced colleges that provide fewer support services (Darolia & Potochnick, 2015; Dickson & Pender, 2013; Ngo & Astudillo, 2019). Shifting away from financial policies toward admissions and academics, difference-in-differences studies have found statewide affirmative action bans generally reduce racial/ethnic diversity among selective colleges (Blume & Long, 2014; Cortes, 2010; Garces, 2013; Hinrichs, 2012). And when states adopted policies requiring all high school graduates to take standardized entrance exams like the ACT and SAT, they improved college-going rates among high school juniors and seniors (Hurwitz et al., 2015; Hyman, 2016). Finally, when states moved away from traditional college remediation models toward those that consider multiple measures of academic preparation or that accelerate coursework, they can improve important academic milestones including credit hour accumulation and course pass rates (Ngo & Melguizo, 2016; Valentine et al., 2017; Xu, 2016). These examples point to promising policy solutions for supporting student success—sometimes finding a policy has no effects can be useful for guiding and informing policy debates. Across these studies, researchers are

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making great strides in applying experimental and quasiexperimental designs to help identify what works, for whom, and under what conditions.

Gaps in Higher Education Policy Research The policy-making stages outlined in Figure 4.1 provide useful guidance for identifying gaps in higher education policy scholarship. Much of today’s policy scholarship falls squarely in the evaluation stage, where researchers seek to identify whether and under what conditions policies affect various outcomes. Although this development holds promise by opening new lines of inquiry and applying new research designs, it should not come at the expense of overlooking other policy stages. Similarly, the shift toward policy evaluation prioritizes a very narrow range of research methods—namely, experimental and quasiexperimental designs—that run the risk of devaluing descriptive and qualitative evaluations. The future of policy scholarship needs to examine a wider range of policy stages and a wider range of research designs/ methods. Doing so should not only result in better insights into the nature of the policy problem but how, why, and under what conditions policies can promote student success.

Agenda Setting and Formulation Policy scholars studying the origins and formulation of policies tend to focus on elected officials and their choice of policy instruments. For example, Ness (2007) and Ness and Mistretta (2010) documented how “policy entrepreneurs” in state legislatures used merit-based financial aid as a way to garner support for politically unpopular (but revenue-generating) state lottery and gaming legislation. Subsequent research has focused on the role intermediary organizations play in promoting policy agendas, namely advocacy organizations and think tanks largely supported by philanthropic foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation (Gándara et al., 2017; Ness et al., 2015). These private organizations are gaining greater influence in higher education policy, yet many are memberless organizations accountable to their boards of directors rather than to dues-paying members or elected officials. When “self-appointed” advocates from the private sector have outsized influence on public policy-making, their interests are often served over public interest, which can work against democratic representation and reinforce inequality (Schlozman et al., 2015). Philanthropic foundations and other private memberless organizations have long been involved in higher education policy-making (e.g., Carnegie Foundation in the 1960s and 1970s); however, their role is not well

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understood in higher education scholarship. Higher education policy scholars could do much more to examine the role philanthropic funders play in financing policy agendas, brokering relationships, and promoting advocacy research for advancing policy agendas, as has been done in K–12 education research (Reckhow & Snyder, 2014; Reckhow & Tompkins-Stange, 2018). To the extent federal and state policymakers take cues from memberless organizations and those promoting specific policy agendas, these intermediaries can play a significant role in the way policymakers view higher education (broadly) and strategies for improving student success (specifically). When intermediaries identify solutions that are well supported by evidence and address underlying policy problems, then their advocacy may go a long way to promoting student success. But if they promote unproven policy solutions, actively ignore evidence, or misdiagnose the underlying policy problem, then their actions can stand in the way of promoting student success. These topics are largely unexplored in policy scholarship, yet they hold great promise for understanding whose interests are served in policy debates and how policies originate, opening new lines of inquiry into the politics of democratic representation, private influence on policy-making, and the role of research and evidence in framing policy agendas (Gándara & Ness, 2019; Gándara et al., 2017).

Design and Implementation The way governments design and implement higher education policies can have important, but often overlooked, consequences on student success. Financial aid is a good example of how design can interfere with student success, where (as discussed earlier) the administrative process of applying for federal financial aid is burdensome and can limit opportunities for students. These “administrative burdens” intentionally or unintentionally function as a rationing tool for limiting access to public benefits, not just in higher education but across social services and governmental programs (Herd & Moynihan, 2019). Higher education policy scholars can build promising research agendas around the behavioral response to administrative burdens. How do bureaucratic processes affect student experiences? How do students navigate college bureaucracies? To what extent can policymakers or college administrators reduce administrative burdens to support student success? These questions are conducive to a wide range of research paradigms and analytical methods, where qualitative and quantitative studies can help link policy design and implementation to students’ experiences and outcomes. Another fruitful area of scholarship could examine how rulemaking and regulations affect student success. Instead of focusing on specific statutes,

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laws, or legislation, this line of inquiry examines how negotiated rulemaking and other regulatory actions play out in higher education. The best example of this is Rebecca Natow’s (2015, 2016) work on federal negotiated rulemaking, where the U.S. Department of Education selects negotiators to deliberate and reach consensus on how to design various regulations. The Higher Education Act gives the secretary of education regulatory authority in certain administrative areas like “gainful employment” rules. Similarly, through “state authorization,” states regulate which colleges are permitted to operate within the state boundaries (Tandberg et al., 2019). These regulatory actions can have significant consequences on colleges and their students, yet the origins, design, and implementation of federal and state regulations are not well documented in (but can greatly inform) higher education policy literature.

Evaluation Policy evaluations are and will likely continue to be dominated by economic and statistical analysis. The emergence of experimental and quasiexperimental research designs in higher education policy scholarship is perhaps one of the biggest changes of the past 2 decades. Although the field steadily presses toward these research methods, its need for understanding the contextual and nuanced details driving any of the findings is still ongoing. This can best be done via case studies, systematic reviews, in-depth interviews and observations, and other qualitative approaches to understand how and why particular policy effects occur. Additionally, the press toward causal inference may shift attention away from distributional effects, where policies (regardless of their causal effect) redistribute resources, power, and privileges away from certain groups and toward others. Research on the social construction of target groups is a promising area of policy analysis, where questions focus less on “what works” and instead shift attention to “who benefits and is burdened” by a given policy (Bell, 2020). By widening the methodological and theoretical scope of what qualifies as policy evaluation, researchers and policymakers will gain more inclusive and nuanced understandings of how policies affect different students differently. Critical policy analysis can go a long way in advancing these ends, documenting why policies “work” (or do not) and for whom (K. Smith, 2013).

Implications for Practice Public policy scholarship blends many of social science’s theories and analytical techniques in order to critically examine problems and their consequences. Although policy analysis currently draws heavily from economics,

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the future requires a much wider range of approaches to understanding how and under what conditions policies shape student success. This chapter explored several theoretical and empirical examples, but it has not yet discussed the importance of interpersonal and professional relationships in bridging public policy-making and research. Elected officials make policy decisions based on a wide range of factors—their political ideology, anecdotal stories from constituents, pressure from advocacy groups, news headlines, and so on. Academic research does not always play a role in their decision-making calculus and, when it does, its influence may only be small. A single research study is unlikely to shape the arc of a policy conversation, but it can help build relationships between academic and policy communities. Over time and through relationships with staff, intermediary organizations, elected officials, advocacy groups, and other policy networks, academic researchers will increase their chances of having their work shape policy. This means that researchers interested in linking their work with policy conversations should minimally get their key findings out in the public domain (e.g., op-ed, public talks, blog post, white paper, policy brief ). Doing so may lead to intermediary organizations and media outlets amplifying the scholarship. In turn, that scholarship might offer policymakers new ways of conceptualizing a problem, identifying new solutions, or even for promoting a political argument for (or against) a policy. These different “uses of research” can help policy scholars anticipate how their work might be used in different stages of the policy-making process (Ness, 2010). To help make these connections, researchers should identify the specific policy (e.g., statute, law, regulation, etc.) most relevant to their analysis and the stakeholders most affected by the policy. These two steps can go a long way toward improving the policy relevance of a study, regardless of its research design. Of course, using experimental and quasiexperimental designs to evaluate policies will give researchers an added advantage in linking their work to policy, but only if the study clearly articulates and identifies the specific policy contribution it aims to make. Policy scholarship, like any other scholarly pursuit, aims for empirically and theoretically sound research that stands the test of time. These contributions can occur at any “stage” in the policy-making process, so this chapter outlines promising ways to connect public policy research with student success. There are many unexplored research areas that, when connected to theories of the policy-making process, can make more deliberate and meaningful contributions to student success.

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Hyman, J. (2016). ACT for all: The effect of mandatory college entrance exams on postsecondary attainment and choice. Education Finance and Policy, 12(3), 281–311. https://doi.org/10.1162/EDFP_a_00206 Kelchen, R. (2018). Do performance-based funding policies affect underrepresented student enrollment? The Journal of Higher Education, 89(5), 702–727. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1434282 Kelchen, R., & Stedrak, L. J. (2016). Does performance-based funding affect colleges’ financial priorities? Journal of Education Finance, 41(3), 302–321. http:// www.jstor.org/stable/44162557 Kingdon, J. W. (2010). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies (2nd ed.). Pearson. Labaree, D. F. (1997). Public goods, private goods: The American struggle over educational goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1), 39–81. https://doi .org/10.3102/00028312034001039 Lacy, T. A., & Tandberg, D. A. (2014). Rethinking policy diffusion: The interstate spread of “finance innovations.” Research in Higher Education, 55(7), 627–649. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24571807 Li, A. Y. (2017). Covet thy neighbor or “reverse policy diffusion”? State adoption of performance funding 2.0. Research in Higher Education, 58(7), 746–771. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11162-016-9444-9 Li, A. Y., & Kennedy, A. I. (2018). Performance funding policy effects on community college outcomes: Are short-term certificates on the rise? Community College Review, 46(1), 3–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091552117743790 Manoli, D., & Turner, N. (2018). Cash-on-hand and college enrollment: Evidence from population tax data and the earned income tax credit. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10(2), 242–271. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20160298 Marx, B. M., & Turner, L. J. (2019). Student loan nudges: Experimental evidence on borrowing and educational attainment. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11(2), 108–141. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20180279 McLendon, M. K., Cohen-Vogel, L., & Wachen, J. (2015). Understanding education policymaking and policy change in the American states: Learning from contemporary policy theory. In B. Cooper, J. Cibulka, & L. Fusarelli (Eds.), Handbook of education politics and policy (2nd ed., pp. 86–117). Routledge. https://doi .org/10.4324/9780203074107-9 Mettler, S. (2016). The policyscape and the challenges of contemporary politics to policy maintenance. Perspectives on Politics, 14(2), 369–390. https://doi .org/10.1017/S1537592716000074 Natow, R. S. (2015). From Capitol Hill to Dupont Circle and beyond: The influence of policy actors in the federal higher education rulemaking process. The Journal of Higher Education, 86(3), 360–386. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhe.2015.0015 Natow, R. S. (2016). Higher education rulemaking: The politics of creating regulatory policy. Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2019.0104 Ness, E. C. (2007). Merit aid and the politics of education. Routledge. https://doi .org/10.4324/9780203933688 Ness, E. C. (2010). The role of information in the policy process: Implications for the examination of research utilization in higher education policy. In J. C. Smart

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(Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 25, pp. 1–49). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8598-6_1 Ness, E. C., & Mistretta, M. A. (2010). Merit aid in North Carolina: A case study of a “nonevent.” Educational Policy, 24(5), 703–734. https://doi .org/10.1177/0895904809339165 Ness, E. C., Tandberg, D. A., & McLendon, M. K. (2015). Interest groups and state policy for higher education: New conceptual understandings and future research directions. In M. B. Paulsen (Ed.), Higher education: Handbook of theory and research (Vol. 30, pp. 151–186). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31912835-1_4 Ngo, F., & Astudillo, S. (2019). California DREAM: The impact of financial aid for undocumented community college students. Educational Researcher, 48(1), 5–18. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X18800047 Ngo, F., & Melguizo, T. (2016). How can placement policy improve math remediation outcomes? Evidence from experimentation in community colleges. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 38(1), 171–196. https://doi .org/10.3102/0162373715603504 Nguyen, T., Kramer, J., & Evans, B. (2019). The effects of grant aid on student persistence and degree attainment: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the causal evidence. Review of Educational Research, 89(6), 831–874. https://doi .org/10.3102/0034654319877156 Page, L. C., Kehoe, S. S., Castleman, B. L., & Sahadewo, G. A. (2019). More than dollars for scholars: The impact of the Dell Scholars Program on college access, persistence, and degree attainment. Journal of Human Resources, 54(3), 683–725. http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/54/3/683 Reckhow, S., & Snyder, J. W. (2014). The expanding role of philanthropy in education politics. Educational Researcher, 43(4), 186–195. https://doi .org/10.3102/0013189X14536607 Reckhow, S., & Tompkins-Stange, M. (2018). Financing the education policy discourse: Philanthropic funders as entrepreneurs in policy networks. Interest Groups & Advocacy, 7(3), 258–288. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41309-018-0043-3 Schlozman, K. L., Jones, P. E., You, H. Y., Burch, T., Verba, S., & Brady, H. E. (2015). Organizations and the democratic representation of interests: What does it mean when those organizations have no members? Perspectives on Politics, 13(4), 1017–1029. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592715002285 Schmeiser, M., Stoddard, C., & Urban, C. (2016). Student loan information provision and academic choices. American Economic Review, 106(5), 324–328. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.p20161122 Scott-Clayton, J. (2011). On money and motivation: A quasi-experimental analysis of financial incentives for college achievement. Journal of Human Resources, 46(3), 614–646. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.46.3.614 Sjoquist, D. L., & Winters, J. V. (2015). State merit-based financial aid programs and college attainment. Journal of Regional Science, 55(3), 364–390. https://doi .org/10.1111/jors.12161

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Smith, K. (2013). Critical discourse analysis and higher education research. In M. Tight & J. Huisman (Eds.), Theory and method in higher education research (Vol. 9, pp. 61–79). Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-3628(2013)0000009007 Smith, Z. (2017). Roadmap connecting researchers and practitioners to relevance for postsecondary policy interests. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 47(3), Article 8. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/jsfa/vol47/iss3/8 Stiglitz, J. E. (1999). Knowledge as a global public good. Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century, 308, 308–325. https://doi .org/10.1093/0195130529.003.0015 Tandberg, D., Bruecker, E., & Weeden, D. (2019). Improving state authorization: The state role in ensuring quality and consumer protection in higher education. State Higher Education Executive Officers. Theodoulou, S. (2013). Public policy: The essential readings (S. Theodoulou & M. Cahn, Eds.; 2nd ed.). Pearson. Toutkoushian, R. K., & Paulsen, M. B. (2016). Economics of higher education. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2016.1271124 Umbricht, M. R., Fernandez, F., & Ortagus, J. C. (2017). An examination of the (un) intended consequences of performance funding in higher education. Educational Policy, 31(5), 643–673. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904815614398 Valentine, J. C., Konstantopoulos, S., & Goldrick-Rab, S. (2017). What happens to students placed into developmental education? A meta-analysis of regression discontinuity studies. Review of Educational Research, 87(4), 806–833. http://doi .org/10.3102/0034654317709237 Ward, J., & Ost, B. (2021). The effect of large-scale performance-based funding in higher education. Education Finance and Policy, 16(1), 92–124. https://doi .org/10.1162/edfp_a_00300 Weimer, D. L., & Vining, A. R. (2017). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice (6th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315442129 Weiss, M. J., Ratledge, A., Sommo, C., & Gupta, H. (2019). Supporting community college students from start to degree completion: Long-term evidence from a randomized trial of CUNY’s ASAP. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 11(3), 253–297. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20170430 Winston, G. C. (1999). Subsidies, hierarchy and peers: The awkward economics of higher education. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 13(1), 13–36. https://doi.org/ 10.1257/app.20170430 Xu, D. (2016). Assistance or obstacle? The impact of different levels of English developmental education on underprepared students in community colleges. Educational Researcher, 45(9), 496–507. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X16683401

5 B E H AV I O R A L E C O N O M I C S O F H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N Theory, Evidence, and Implications for Policy and Practice Lindsay C. Page and Aizat Nurshatayeva

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n 2017, Richard H. Thaler received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his groundbreaking work in behavioral economics that integrated economics with psychology. In addition to recognizing Thaler’s significant contribution to economics, the award acknowledged the importance and substantial maturity of behavioral economics itself. Once an esoteric subfield that irritatingly challenged the assumptions and elegant models of mainstream economics, behavioral economics has grown in prominence, revolutionized economic thought, and inspired interventional changes that have led to improved health, financial, and personal decision-making (Bernheim & Taubinsky, 2018; Camerer & Loewenstein, 2003; Kahneman, 2011; Thaler, 2016). The standard theoretical models in economics characterize optimal behavior but often do not predict human behavior well, arguably due to a mismatch between model assumptions and the reality of human rationality and decision-making in practice (Thaler, 2015, 2016). The theoretical propositions put forward by behavioral economics incorporate insights from psychology into the framework of conventional economic thinking. By doing so, behavioral economics allows description and prediction of how people actually make choices, highlights sources of market inefficiencies, and helps design more effective public policies (Hursh & Roma, 2013; Madrian, 2014). With the successful implementation of behavioral insights in areas of retirement saving, health, law, and finance, there is a growing understanding that behavioral economics complements and invigorates the 74

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same neoclassical economic theories that it once challenged (Chetty, 2015; Lavecchia et al., 2016; Thaler, 2016). In the field of higher education, behavioral economics applications may be particularly promising. According to classical economic theories of subjective expected utility and human capital, students make a well-planned and calculated investment in higher education and should persist in college when expected returns to college training exceed expected costs (Becker, 1962, 1964; Eide & Showalter, 2010). However, the evidence on gaps in college access and attainment across socioeconomic status and race suggests that, puzzlingly, many students underinvest in education (Baum et al., 2013; Black & Sufi, 2002; Bowen et al., 2009; Koch et al., 2015; Levitt et al., 2016). Such inconsistency of college-related decision-making with the predictions of classical economic theories indicates that behavioral economics might help understand these decisions better (Lavecchia et al., 2016). Furthermore, behaviorally informed policies and programs might help a broader range of students to access and succeed in college. Thus, behavioral economics should be of great interest to higher education policymakers and practitioners. In this chapter, we review behavioral economics research on college student success and discuss its implications for higher education practice and policy. By doing so, we catalogue how far the use of behavioral economics has progressed in higher education in a relatively short period of time. Compared to just a handful of studies about a decade ago (Jabbar, 2011), the last 10 years have seen an impressive growth in behaviorally informed higher education research. We structure the chapter as follows: The first section discusses human capital theory, the second section summarizes behavioral economic concepts relevant for higher education, the third section examines how behavioral economics might help students succeed in higher education, and the final section concludes and discusses implications for future work.

Human Capital Theory: Successes and Limitations in Higher Education Research Standard human capital theory conceptualizes education as an investment, positing that self-interested individuals with considerable willpower carefully analyze and weigh costs and benefits to decide whether or not to pursue higher education, which major to select, and whether or not to graduate (Becker, 1962, 1964; Eide & Showalter, 2010; Long, 2007). Costs include opportunity costs of time and lost income while in college, as well as direct costs of tuition and fees and room and board, among others. Private returns to schooling are incurred through increased earnings. If an individual decides

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that returns to college are higher than the costs of investing in higher education, then she pursues college training. Labor and education economists have productively applied this traditional investment model to research. For example, lowering costs of college through financial aid increases enrollment rates of low-income and firstgeneration students who, in the absence of financial aid, would not invest in higher education (Bartik et al., 2016; Cornwell et al., 2006; Dynarski, 2003). Next, considerable research across a variety of contexts confirms that the returns to college are indeed sizable enough to justify pursuing higher education (Bahr et al., 2015; Heckman et al., 2018; Oreopoulos & Petronijevic, 2013; Scott-Clayton & Wen, 2019). Rising college enrollment rates throughout the world suggest that students are aware of the high returns to higher education and likely view the costs of college-going as a wise investment in their lifetime well-being. Finally, using the framework of human capital theory, economists have shown that in addition to private returns, education in general and college education in particular yield sizable social returns. Specifically, individuals exposed to higher education have better health, are more active citizens, are happier spouses and parents, and report higher overall life satisfaction (Oreopoulos & Salvanes, 2011). However, human capital theory cannot explain many important behaviors observed in higher education. Although standard economic theory suggests that students should strive to make optimal choices and maximize the benefits (financial and otherwise) of college training, many students’ college decisions do not fit this education investment model in reality. Despite high lifetime returns to college, large gaps persist in college attendance and completion rates by factors like socioeconomic status and race (Baum et al., 2013; Black & Sufi, 2002; Bowen et al., 2009; Koch et al., 2015; Levitt et al., 2016). Many students do not apply for college financial aid, even if they need and qualify for it (Bird & Castleman, 2016; Kofoed, 2017; Page, Castleman, & Meyer, 2020; Page et al., 2017). Many students accepted to colleges do not matriculate on time, succumbing to “summer melt” between high school graduation and the fall of the subsequent academic year (Castleman & Page, 2014a, 2014b). STEM enrollment gaps across gender, race, and socioeconomic status suggest that students may fail to maximize the benefits of higher education and pursue majors with lower lifetime returns despite being academically capable of preparing to enter a higher paying profession (Altonji et al., 2012; Hinrichs, 2015; Rask & Tiefenthaler, 2008; Szelenyi et al., 2013). College students threaten the returns to their educational investments by missing classes (Dobkin et al., 2010; Romer, 1993) or by not doing homework (Grodner & Rupp, 2013). Approximately 30% of college

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freshmen drop out after their 1st year, and less than two-thirds of students in 4-year programs graduate with a degree within 6 years (ACT, 2018; National Student Clearinghouse, 2018).

Behavioral Economics: An Alternative Framework for Understanding Investment in Higher Education Behavioral economics offers a coherent framework that explains behaviors that seemingly contradict standard economic thinking about human decision-making. Behavioral economics argues that economists’ assumption about how rational (i.e., optimizing, calculating, and maximizing) people are might rarely hold (Kahneman, 2011; Loewenstein, 2007; Simon, 1955, 1983; Thaler, 2015; Tversky & Kahneman, 2000). In contrast to the mainstream neoclassical approach that views deviations from the assumed rationality as small and therefore negligible, behavioral economics injects behavioral realism and formally connects economics with psychology and other social sciences. It argues that economics can arrive at better theories, insights, and policy recommendations by employing more realistic assumptions about human decision-making (Camerer & Loewenstein, 2003; DellaVigna, 2009; Rabin, 1998). In the following, we review key theoretical constructs and concepts most relevant for applications of behavioral economics to higher education. For a more thorough introduction to behavioral economics, we refer the reader to Tomer (2017), Loewenstein (2007), Thaler (2015), Thaler and Sunstein (2008), and Kahneman (2011), as well as to the literature reviews of behavioral economics research in education and beyond that are summarized in Table 5.1. Following this overview, we turn to consider how these constructs apply to higher education research. TABLE 5.1

Literature Reviews of Behavioral Economics Research Relevant to Education Literature Review

Summary

1

Rabin (1998)

A review of psychological evidence relevant to economics

2

Camerer and Loewenstein (2003)

An introduction to behavioral economics and review of salient findings

3

DellaVigna (2009)

A review of behavioral economics research (Continued)

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(Continued)

Literature Review

Summary

4

Jabbar (2011)

A review of behavioral economics research A review of behavioral economics applications in education with examples of decision-making about college and teacher performance pay

5

Yeager and Walton (2011)

A review of experimental behavioral interventions in education focusing on their theoretical underpinnings

6

Hursh and Roma (2013)

A review of applications of behavioral economics in public policies

7

Madrian (2014)

A review of applications of behavioral economics in public policies

8

Koch et al. (2015)

A review of the potential of behavioral economics in education, focusing on the role of soft skills in the education production function

9

Lavecchia et al. (2016)

A review of research on the behavioral economics of education, highlighting its connections to psychology, neuroscience, and sociology

10

Thaler (2016)

A review of historical roots of behavioral economics discussing the arguments mainstream economists used to disregard inconsistencies in their assumptions and illustrating the validity of behavioral economics concepts with examples from financial markets

11

Bernheim and Taubinsky (2018)

A review of behavioral public economics research

12

Damgaard and Nielsen (2018)

A review of using nudges in education

13

Meyer and Rosinger (2019)

A review of behaviorally informed federal higher education policies aimed at reducing informational barriers and simplifying the college-going process

14

Weijers et al. (2021)

A review proposing a typology of nudges used in education

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Prospect Theory: To Err Is Human Prospect theory is a cognitive psychology theory used in behavioral economics. Prospect theory focuses on examining whether individuals make their decisions as rational actors as assumed by standard economic theory. According to prospect theory, individuals’ decision-making and the resulting outcomes differ considerably, systematically, and predictably from those described by the economic approach of expected utility (Ariely, 2008; Tomer, 2017). Prospect theory instead posits that individuals often lack the capacity to make decisions rationally (Kahneman, 2011; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). It argues that individual thinking can be of two types: System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking or automatic system thinking is fast, uses rules of thumb (heuristics), and is prone to multiple biases. System 2 thinking is slower and more deliberative. Decision-makers tend to have biased understandings about risks and payoffs. Further, when pressed for time, they may not make the most optimal decisions despite their aspirations. Instead, individuals may often operate in System 1 thinking mode in complex situations that actually require deep and careful thinking in System 2 mode (Tomer, 2017). As a result, decision-making deviates from the rational model.

Loss Aversion: A Bird in the Hand Instead of rationally selecting among various possible decisions for the sake of the best outcome, people value losses and gains in a way that induces inertia and acceptance of the status quo. Specifically, most decision-makers are loss averse, which means that they dislike losses and have more intense attitudes toward losses compared to gains. For example, the prospect of losing $50 is more emotionally loaded than gaining $100 and, in general, one would need to be presented with a larger possible gain to counterbalance a smaller potential loss when making a decision involving risk (Kahneman, 2011). Loss aversion acts like gravity pulling our decisions away from risky changes toward known and therefore perceived-as-safer behavior patterns.

Status Quo Bias: “Yeah, Whatever” or Default Behaviors Status quo bias also describes the tendency of people to avoid changing their existing situations. People mostly prefer their current condition for two reasons. First, as described previously, they are loss averse and view the pain of a loss as greater than the value of a gain. Second, they are relatively inattentive to the decisions they make. For example, due to this “yeah, whatever” mode, people often retain the default options preset on their electronic devices,

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essentially empowering electronics producers to choose the optimal setup even if people might achieve higher utility from customizing the settings (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008; Tomer, 2017).

Framing: Judging a Book by Its Cover The framing of the information used in decision-making often leads to large, systematic, and predictable deviations from behaviors expected from a rational actor (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981, 2000). Seemingly unimportant changes in the way information or questions are framed can induce different and often suboptimal decisions, because different framing evokes different emotions and thereby triggers different System 1 or automatic thinking (Kahneman, 2011; Tomer, 2017). For example, people make different decisions when a problem is worded to accentuate gains or losses due to loss aversion. In other words, individuals often act as “somewhat mindless, passive decision-makers” and do not put sufficient effort into analyzing the actual costs and benefits. Instead, we are susceptible to reacting predictably to the framing imposed on us (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Of course, framing effects also can be at play when individuals are trying to engage in thoughtful decision-making. For example, students can be swayed in their college decision when financial aid is framed as a scholarship (e.g., Avery & Hoxby, 2004).

Deviations From Assumed Self-Interest and Self-Control: No Man Is an Island Behavioral economics also challenges two less frequently mentioned assumptions of mainstream economics: that decision-makers are self-interested only and that they have self-control sufficient to carry out their rational and self-interested plans (Thaler, 1996). In contrast, behavioral economists have shown that people are essentially kind, cooperative, and altruistic. They value fairness and react when they encounter unfairness, even if their reaction implies less than optimal economic outcomes for themselves (Kahneman et al., 1991; Thaler, 2015). They cooperate with others and willingly give money and contribute time and effort to common causes, which an abstract, self-interested “econ” individual from the land of theoretical and empirical economic models would not be predicted to do. Further, people lack self-control to execute even the most rational plans they have designed. People do not possess unbounded willpower assumed by standard economic theories (Thaler, 1996). The mental work of self-control is tiring and demands attention and effort; therefore, people often tend to procrastinate or choose instant gratification (Kahneman, 2011).

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Time Inconsistency or Strong Present Bias: There Is No Time Like the Present People’s time preferences are not consistent over time. According to traditional economic utility models, when comparing costs and benefits in the future to those in the present, individuals tend to prefer to receive benefits sooner and to delay costs (Tomer, 2017). Importantly, their lower valuation of benefits further into the future (discount rate) is assumed to remain constant over time. Contrary to this assumption of time consistency in attitudes toward future benefits, behavioral economics evidence suggests that people are strongly present-biased: Their discount rates are largest in the nearest future and grow smaller when they think about the distant future (Camerer & Loewenstein, 2003; Rabin, 2002; Tomer, 2017). In other words, people tend to be impatient and impulsive in a way that leads them to overvalue short-term rewards while dismissing future consequences.

Nudges: Tools of a Libertarian Paternalist Nudges have been a common policy instrument proposed by behavioral economics. Nudging originates in the philosophy of libertarian paternalism, where a policymaker acts like a “father” concerned with the well-being of his children. Nudges are actions that change individual behavior in a hypothesized direction without limiting choice options and without using incentives (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Key characteristics of nudges are that they may be easily and cheaply avoided by decision-makers. An example of a nudge is placing a mirror behind two plates, one with dessert pastries and another with fruits. Individuals approaching the two plates see themselves in the mirror and therefore are reminded about potential consequences of choosing the pastries and therefore choose fruits. Without the mirror, most individuals tend to select pastries. Behavioral economists using nudges are, in essence, “choice architects” who influence people’s decisions by designing or organizing the context in which decisions are made (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008). Thus, nudges help busy humans who typically lack the time or attention to think carefully about the decisions they make in the modern complex world (Tomer, 2017). Thaler and Sunstein (2008) argued that individuals are especially receptive to nudges provided in contexts where they have to make a difficult or rare decision, where feedback is not readily available, and where information is provided in a way that is hard to understand. Behavioral economics research has amassed considerable evidence on successful applications of nudges in domains such as financial retirement planning and health care, among others.

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According to Tomer (2017), the main types of nudges used in behavioral economics include (a) changing the default setting to a more optimal one; (b) simplification of information; (c) using social norms (emphasizing how common optimal behaviors are); (d) increasing ease and convenience of optimal behaviors; (e) disclosure of the costs of suboptimal behaviors; (f ) graphic or text warnings; (g) precommitment strategies (getting individuals to commit to optimal behaviors—e.g., quitting smoking); (h) reminders about optimal behaviors (e.g., via text message or email); (i) eliciting implementation intentions; and (j) informing people about the nature and consequences of their prior decisions.

Summary: Contributions of Behavioral Economics to Understanding Decision-Making Theory and empirical research in behavioral economics offer evidence that challenges classical economic assumptions about human behavior. In short, behavioral economists have shown that people are “dumber, nicer, and weaker” than the maximizing, calculating, self-interested, and self-controlling cost-benefit analyst homo economicus species inhabiting the theoretical lands of economics (Thaler, 1996). At the same time, behavioral economics does not depart from standard economics in its views about optimal behaviors. Although behavioral economics accepts that optimal decisions involve rational maximization of costs and benefits in a self-interested way, it provides a framework for recognizing the many things that can stand in the way of optimal decision-making.

Applications of Behavioral Economics to Help Students Succeed in Higher Education Educational research has embraced the promise of behavioral economics to better explain and predict college decisions (Castleman, Schwartz, & Baum, 2015; Lavecchia et al., 2016; Page & Scott-Clayton, 2016). This is especially so, given that college-going decisions align well with the decision-making theories of behavioral economics. Students and their parents often do not rationally maximize making higher education decisions. Instead, they tend to use rules of thumb, are prone to cognitive biases, succumb to behaviors maintaining the status quo, and can suffer a lack of information (Anthony et al., 2016; Beattie, 2002; Bettinger et al., 2013; Burd et al., 2018; Dynarski & Wiederspan, 2012; Goldrick-Rab et al., 2009; Grodsky & Jones, 2007; Mundel, 2008; Pallais, 2015; Scott-Clayton, 2015).

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In addition to applying behavioral economics to better describing and explaining college decision-making, policymakers and practitioners have embraced behaviorally informed tools to implement and test low-cost strategies to increase rates of college access and success (Barr & Turner, 2018; Lavecchia et al., 2016). The potential for scale with such strategies has also made them attractive for policymakers. We turn now to reviewing the research on such applications.

Applications of Behavioral Economics to Increase College Access Decisions about what college to choose, whether or not to apply for financial aid, how to finance college, and what college to enroll in have longer term implications for success in college and later in life (Meyer & Rosinger, 2019). The studies in this section are briefly summarized in Table 5.2. We discuss these studies in three subtopics: college application decisions, financial aid decisions, and college enrollment. College Application Decisions Insights from behavioral economics have challenged many assumptions about how students and parents make college application decisions. For example, students who are highly college-qualified and from a low-income background often do not apply to the types of selective colleges for which they are academically qualified (Avery & Hoxby, 2004). Furthermore, many high school seniors fail to apply to any colleges (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008), even when affordable options exist nearby. One straightforward policy option is to provide students and families with relevant and timely information about higher education. Students may perceive college to be overly expensive and the returns to higher education too low. Oreopoulos and Dunn (2013) examined how focusing on the benefits of higher education and showing ways to prepare financially for college affected Canadian high school seniors’ attitudes toward college costs and returns. In their experiment, treatment students were shown a 3-minute video about the positive effects of college and were offered the opportunity to try a financial aid calculator. Students in the treatment group were later more likely to report higher expectations about returns from college and a higher probability of attending college. Research has also considered policy efforts to provide timely information at greater scale. For example, the U.S. Department of Education launched the College Scorecard website in 2015 to provide students and parents with detailed information about different colleges so that they could make better college choice decisions. Huntington-Klein (2016) examined whether

3

2

1

TABLE 5.2

Study Outcome Barr and Full-time Castleman enrollment, (2016) attendance at a 4-year college or a college with higher graduation rates, participation in student groups, feeling of comfort Barr and College enrollment Turner among unemployed (2018) individuals (recipients of unemployment insurance [UI] age 20–40) Bettinger FAFSA completion and college et al. enrollment and (2012) persistence among low-income individuals receiving tax preparation help

Receiving a letter from UI with information about benefits and costs of attending college and the necessary steps and assistance available Offer of immediate assistance and a streamlined process to submit FAFSA + estimated financial aid compared to costs of attending nearby colleges

Treatment Bottom Line’s College Access and Success advising intervention

Survey of Income and Program Participation, FAFSA filing data, Benefit Accuracy Measurement Survey

Randomized Microdata from controlled trial H&R Block, Department of Education, Ohio Board of Regents, and the National Student Clearinghouse

Difference-indifferences

Method Data Randomized Survey and controlled trial administrative data, National Student Clearinghouse

Applications of Behavioral Economics to Increase College Access

Treatment group high school seniors were 8 percentage points more likely to enroll in college and complete 2 years of college. No effects among families who were offered FAFSA information but no assistance

Findings Advising intervention recipients were more likely to enroll full time, attend a 4-year institution or institutions with higher mean graduation rates, participate in student groups, and feel more comfortable on campus Receiving a letter with information increased college enrollment among unemployed individuals by 4 percentage points or 40%

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Dynarski et al. (2021)

6

Enrollment of lowincome students at the University of Michigan

Castleman 4-year college and Page enrollment (2015)

5

4

Study Outcome Castleman CSS PROFILE et al. form filing, college (2017) enrollment

Data Findings National Student Text messages increased CSS Clearinghouse; PROFILE form filing but Virginia Department had no effect on enrollment of Education, Federal Student Aid, Common Core of Data, University of Virginia

Randomized Administrative controlled trial microdata from each experimental site linked to the National Student Clearinghouse data

Method Differencein-differences estimation

(Continued)

Text messaging intervention increased college enrollment by 7 percentage points at one site and had no effect at another site. Peer mentor increased enrollment by 4.5 percentage points. Effects were greater among students who had limited access to college counseling An encouragement to Randomized Michigan Department Treatment doubled lowapply to the University controlled trial of Education, Michigan income students’ likelihood of Michigan and a Center for Educational to apply (67% vs. 26%) and promise of free tuition Performance and enroll (27% vs. 12%) at the and fees for 4 years if Information, University University of Michigan admitted of Michigan

1. Text message reminders of enrollment-related steps and offer of counselor support 2. Offer of peer mentor support

Treatment Targeted semipersonalized text messages to high school students in Virginia during the college application process

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HuntingtonKlein (2016)

9

Treatment Simplified sets of variables used to calculate financial aid amount

College application guidance, info on colleges’ net cost, graduation rates and instructional resources; fee waivers for applying to eight selective colleges Google searches for Availability of the keywords associated College Scorecard with high-earnings, website high-graduationrate, and lowtuition colleges

Hoxby and Applying to and Turner (2013) enrolling in more selective colleges by high school seniors

Outcome Percent variation explained in financial aid amount calculations

8

7

Study Dynarski and Scott-Clayton (2006)

TABLE 5.2 (Continued)

Data 2003–2004 National Postsecondary Aid Survey

Differencein-differences estimation

Data from the College Scorecard website and from Google Trends

Randomized Surveys, controlled trial administrative data, National Student Clearinghouse

Method Simulations

Findings Out of 70 data items required by FAFSA to determine amount of aid, only a handful are sufficient to explain variation in aid, suggesting that FAFSA can and should be simplified Treatment students submitted more applications, were more likely to apply to and enroll in institutions with greater instructional and student-related expenditures The College Scorecard led to more searches for keywords associated with high-earnings, high-graduation-rate, and low-tuition colleges, but the increase in these searches is very small

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Oreopoulos Toronto high school and Dunn students’ reported (2013) expected returns to college and concerns about costs, and likelihood of college attainment

13

Amount of student loan, GPA, credits completed, probability of transferring to a 4-year college

Marx and Turner (2019)

12

Number of SAT scores sent to colleges

Hurwitz and Smith (2018)

Outcome Low-income students’ SAT score sending, college access, bachelor’s degree completion within 6 years

11

10

Study Hurwitz et al. (2017)

College Board, Common Core of Data, National Student Clearinghouse

Randomized Administrative controlled trial data from a large community college

Differencein-differences estimation

A 3-minute video Randomized Two surveys about the benefits controlled trial conducted by of postsecondary researchers education and invitation to try out a financial aid calculator

Offering students $0, or $3,500, or $4,500 loans in financial aid letters

Availability of the College Scorecard website

Treatment Method Data College Board’s offer Difference-in- College Board’s to low income students differences microdata on with a fee waiver to SAT takers, send out eight free National Student reports at any time Clearinghouse during high school

(Continued)

Students offered nonzero loans in the financial aid letters were likely to borrow more, had higher GPAs, completed more credits, and were more likely to transfer to 4-year colleges. Students who watched the video reported higher expected returns and lower concerns about costs, and expressed a greater likelihood of college attainment.

Information on earnings after graduation increased number of SAT scores sent; info on costs and graduation rate had no effect.

Findings Low-income students sent 0.4 more SAT reports, were about 2 percentage points more likely to attend college and get bachelor’s degrees within 6 years.

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Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, College Scorecard, experimental data

4-year colleges’ adoption of the “shopping sheet” (model financial aid notification)

16 Rosinger (2018) Number of students enrolled in 4-year colleges, share of students who took up federal student loans, average amount of loans

Differencein-differences estimation, randomized controlled trial

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, College Scorecard

Community Differencecolleges’ in-differences adoption of the estimation “shopping sheet” (model financial aid notification)

Data Administrative data from Georgia State University (GSU)

15 Rosinger (2017) Number of students enrolled in community colleges, share of students who took up federal student loans, average amount of loans

Method Randomized controlled trial

Treatment Artificially intelligent conversational chatbot

Study Outcome 14 Page and College enrollment Gehlbach (2017)

TABLE 5.2 (Continued)

The information provided by the college to students had no effect on their enrollment but decreased amount borrowed in colleges, with greater shares of students receiving federal aid and more minority students.

The information provided by the college to students had no effect on their enrollment and borrowing decisions.

Findings GSU-intending students in the treatment group were 3.3 percentage points more likely to enroll.

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providing more information on colleges increases interest in higher quality colleges by considering the effect of the College Scorecard website launch on Google searches for specific colleges. The availability of information through the College Scorecard slightly increased the number of searches for colleges with high graduation rates, low tuition, and higher earnings of graduates. Even though the effects were modest, these findings suggest that simply providing relevant and user-friendly information about higher education has the potential to shape student interest in certain schools. However, broad provision of information may not be sufficient for affecting outcomes, and especially for narrowing the gaps in college access and persistence that contribute to rising income inequality in the United States. Hurwitz and Smith (2018) examined whether the introduction of earnings information on the College Scorecard affected students’ interest in higher quality colleges. They specifically examined the effect of the augmented College Scorecard website on the number of SAT score reports sent to colleges. Their findings suggest that the availability of information on median earnings after graduation increased SAT score sends, but that this effect was driven by students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. It may be that these students (and their families) are better equipped or supported to make use of tools like the College Scorecard. Despite impacts on score sending for these students, the authors detected no effects on college enrollment. In sum, although there may be some effects of making information broadly available, it may not have a sustained or equalizing effect without other supports. Another potential policy tool informed by behavioral economics is to change the default options in the architecture of a given choice. For example, at one time, the College Board allowed students to send their SAT scores to four colleges or universities for free at the time of taking the SAT. This structure sent a strong signal to students that four is the appropriate number of colleges to which to apply. Instead, if students had been allowed to send more than the standard four free score reports, would it have changed their college application behavior? Standard economic thinking would say no, because additional SAT reports are relatively inexpensive, and a rational investor in human capital would pursue college goals irrespective of the default number of free SAT score reports. However, evidence suggests the opposite. Hurwitz et al. (2017) examined the effect of a College Board policy change in 2007 that allowed test-takers who had received a test fee waiver to send out four additional SAT reports (in addition to the default four free reports received by all test-takers) at any time during high school (in contrast to a short period after the test date for all test-takers). This policy changed the number of free SAT score reports and the time horizon during which a student could send their SAT scores to colleges. This, in turn, signaled to students that they

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should apply to a greater number of schools and reduced one barrier to doing so. As a result of the policy change, low-income SAT takers with a test fee waiver sent out more SAT reports, on average, and were 2 percentage points more likely to attend college and earn a bachelor’s degree within 6 years. In other words, a small and relatively low-cost change in SAT score sending affected students’ college application behavior. Furthermore, this policy had a chain reaction beyond college access and positively impacted college success outcomes like persistence and degree completion. Finally, behavioral economics may inform the development of more comprehensive interventions to change college application behaviors. For example, Thaler and Sunstein (2008) described how San Marcos High School in Texas required each student to complete an application to nearby Austin Community College as a high school graduation requirement. The college’s staff counselors spoke with high school seniors, framing the difference between a life with and without a college degree as a comparison between a Mercedes and a Kia. These same counselors administered a standardized admission exam to the students for free, provided financial aid information, and offered tax consultation sessions for parents. This package of supports increased timely college enrollment by 11 percentage points (from 34 to 45%). Hoxby and Turner (2013) tested a mail-based version of this type of multifaceted college-going support through their Expanding College Opportunities project. This effort focused specifically on high-achieving high school seniors from disadvantaged backgrounds. In the context of an experimental study, treatment group students received an individually customized information package consisting of personalized college application guidance, information about college net costs, instructional resources, and graduation rates of several selective colleges, along with a no-paperwork fee waiver for applying to eight selective colleges (from among a list of more than 200 colleges). As a result of this customized outreach, students were more likely to apply to and enroll in more selective colleges with higher instructional and student-related expenditures. The per-student cost of the intervention was relatively low at $6. Based on this work, the authors concluded that information matters, it is cheap to provide, and the relevance of information is more important than its amount (Hoxby & Turner, 2015). A cautionary note based on more recent research, however, is that these promising results did not replicate in a more recent College Board experiment (Gurantz et al., 2020). It may be that the low-income, high-achieving students originally targeted by Hoxby and Turner have since been the focus of so much outreach that the marginal impact of any one attempt has gotten substantially smaller. In short, policymakers and practitioners should be cognizant of the unique contribution that any one intervention has the potential to make.

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Financial Aid Decisions Behavioral economics highlights that students’ financial aid-related decisions also deviate from the rational human capital investment model. For example, high school seniors who are academically capable of succeeding in college and obtaining financial aid tend to be excessively attracted to loans and work-study; they also pay too much attention to aid nomenclature (e.g., being more influenced by a “scholarship” than a “grant” of otherwise similar monetary value) and end up accepting nonoptimal aid offers as a result (Avery & Hoxby, 2004). Further, many students in need of college financial aid fail to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the gateway application to federal financial aid (as well as other sources of financial aid) for postsecondary education in the United States (King, 2004; Kofoed, 2017). Given that students from lowincome backgrounds may be particularly dependent on financial aid, such as the Pell Grant, to make postsecondary education affordable, we might expect that school districts serving a higher poverty student population would have higher FAFSA filing rates. Unfortunately, evidence suggests the opposite—in most states, districts in higher poverty areas have much lower FAFSA completion rates than their wealthier counterparts (Page et al., 2017). Of course, these differences are likely due, in part, to different expectations about college-going. However, these different expectations may be influenced by differential knowledge regarding college-going supports like financial aid. From the perspective of behavioral economics, the complexity of financial aid application forms and processes are a likely contributor to such outcomes. Dynarski and Scott-Clayton (2006) argued that FAFSA complexity poses barriers to the efficient and equitable distribution of financial aid. The authors examined how well federal financial aid levels can be predicted by a far smaller number of inputs than those requested by the FAFSA and found that only a handful of the many items included on the FAFSA is sufficient to explain nearly all variation in federal financial aid amounts. Thus, they conclude that the FAFSA could and should be simplified to a document no longer than one page. Dynarski and Scott-Clayton (2008) further argued that to reduce complexity and uncertainty in the aid system, FAFSA submission should involve simply a checkbox indication at the time of tax filing. By checking this box, a filer would direct the IRS to send relevant information to the Department of Education. Beyond this type of streamlining, evidence also suggests that well-timed support for FAFSA filing can have significant and persistent effects on college financial aid participation and take-up. In a randomized field experiment, Bettinger et al. (2012) offered low-income individuals receiving tax return

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preparation from H&R Block immediate personal assistance to complete the FAFSA for themselves and their children. Tax professionals would fill out most of the FAFSA using information from tax returns and then guide the participant to complete the rest and submit the application to the Department of Education electronically. Treated individuals also received financial aid estimates for nearby colleges. The control group individuals received only these financial aid estimates. Both college enrollment and 2nd-year college persistence rose by 8 percentage points for those in the treatment group. This study illustrates both the power of behavioral interventions to increase college access and the importance of FAFSA filing and financial aid overall on longer term college success after matriculation. In a more recent study, Page, Castleman, and Meyer (2020) used text-based outreach to remind students about the importance of the FAFSA and provide feedback on their individual filing status. This outreach similarly improved rates of FAFSA completion and college enrollment. Highlighting certain aspects of financial aid may help students to access the funding necessary for their studies. For example, due to the salience effect and default bias, students tend to borrow approximately the amount indicated in their financial aid offer letters instead of the amount they actually need to finance their college studies. Marx and Turner (2019) examined how including a loan offer in the financial aid award letters of community college students affected their borrowing for college, GPAs, completed credits, and the probability of transferring to a 4-year college. In their randomized controlled trial, they had three versions of treatment, whereby financial aid offer letters included an offer of no loans, $3,500 in loans, or $4,500 in loans. These three loan amounts were randomly added to actual financial aid letters in which the rest of financial aid had already been calculated based on student characteristics. If a student was not eligible for loans, they were not offered any loans irrespective of their treatment group assignment. Community college students in the treatment groups receiving nonzero loan offers borrowed more, had higher GPAs, completed more course credits, and were more likely to transfer to 4-year colleges. Further analyses suggested that loan offers had affected college access and success through providing information about loan availability (rather than through anchoring effects). Perceiving financial aid letters offering nonzero loans as a source of information about loan availability explained up to 75% of the effect of the treatment on loan acceptance. Their findings suggest that including loan offers in financial aid award letters is capable of increasing welfare; given that millions of students do not get loan offers in their financial aid award letters, this approach presents an opportunity for policymakers.

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College Enrollment The college enrollment process consists of several subprocesses requiring sequential decision-making and action. Viewed from the perspective of behavioral economics, these decisions are difficult for imperfectly rational individuals for many reasons, including too much choice, complexity in navigating bureaucratic processes, and lack of adequate information to inform choice (Avery & Hoxby, 2004; Avery & Kane, 2004; Barr & Turner, 2018; Dynarski & Wiederspan, 2012). The evidence suggests behaviorally informed interventions have been differentially effective in raising college enrollments. Simply providing information about the costs of college appears not enough to increase enrollments. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau introduced the college “shopping sheet,” a model financial aid notification intended to help students make more informed decisions by providing simplified, itemized information about costs and financial aid options. Rosinger (2017) found that the adoption of the shopping sheet had no effect on the number of students enrolled in community colleges or the share of student loan borrowers at those colleges. In the context of 4-year colleges and universities, the shopping sheet had no effect on enrollments but was associated with lower borrowing in colleges that enroll more students receiving federal financial aid and minority students (Rosinger, 2018). In contrast, Barr and Turner (2018) found that receiving a letter with information about benefits of attending college, potential eligibility for financial aid (Pell Grants), and steps and assistance available to navigate the college application and enrollment process increased college enrollment among targeted unemployed individuals (recipients of unemployment insurance [UI]) age 20–40 by 4 percentage points or 40%. The effects were slightly larger for women and Black UI recipients who had lower earning potential at baseline. Thus, information may be particularly effective when it facilitates access to assistance or simplifies the process of uptake; in other words, even if some studies show that information alone is not effective, it can be effectively combined with access to help. Another feature of the Barr and Turner study worth highlighting is its focus on an older college-going population. Research has more work to do to consider how different segments of the potential college-going population may respond differentially to behavioral interventions. Cottom (2017), for example, highlighted the ways in which the for-profit college sector streamlines and facilitates enrollment and financial aid processes, in this way attending to the time constraints faced by their target market.

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More robust, in-person advising also appears to be effective in raising college enrollment. Barr and Castleman (2016) examined the effect of Bottom Line’s advising intervention on college access and subsequent college outcomes. They found that students who received Bottom Line’s College Access and Success advising intervention were more likely to enroll full time, attend a 4-year institution or institutions with higher mean graduation rates, participate in student groups, and feel more comfortable on campus. Although higher touch than some of the interventions highlighted previously, in-person advising targets the same information and psychological barriers that can prevent students from entering college. Positive impacts on postenrollment college success suggest that advising might be a useful approach to target a range of college success outcomes. Even after students have applied and been accepted to a college, barriers can stand in the way of timely enrollment. A series of studies investigate how to tackle this so-called “summer melt”—a phenomenon whereby high school seniors accepted to higher education programs fail to enroll by the fall following high school graduation (Castleman, Owen, & Page, 2015; Castleman & Page, 2014a, 2014b). Low-income and first-generation students tend to be particularly susceptible to summer melt (Castleman & Page, 2014a), with students failing to matriculate on time due to multiple administrative hurdles, lack of information, and missing deadlines for enrollment-related tasks. Summer outreach, reminders, and the offer of support appear to be effective in reducing summer melt. Castleman and Page (2015) investigated the impact of two behaviorally informed interventions to reduce summer melt. One intervention consisted of automated and personalized text messages to remind high school students of enrollment-related steps and direct them to counselor support. Another intervention connected high school students to peer mentors of similar age. Both interventions increased college enrollment among students with limited access to college counseling support and information. Likely the interventions worked through giving access to information, raising students’ and parents’ awareness of prematriculation tasks, and reducing hassle costs of obtaining counselor support. Importantly, both interventions were cost-effective. Recent work on using nudges to reduce summer melt has explored the opportunities of more advanced technological solutions to support students on their road to college. Building on the prior summer melt research, Page and Gehlbach (2017) examined how conversational artificial intelligence (AI) can support would-be college freshmen through personalized, text message–based nudges and guidance for preenrollment tasks. They tested this system through a field experiment with Georgia State University (GSU). GSU-intending students in the treatment group were more successful in

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completing preenrollment requirements and were 3.3 percentage points more likely to enroll on time. The impacts were comparable to prior interventions, but the AI chatbot substantially reduced the advising workload burden on university staff. Given the capacity for AI to learn and improve over time, this intervention holds much potential for scaling personalized college transition support. Follow-up studies in other contexts suggest that chatbots can be effective in reducing summer melt, especially among firstgeneration students (Nurshatayeva et al., 2021). All these behaviorally informed interventions to increase college enrollment may be particularly effective when thoughtfully combined with financial resources to support college-going. For example, Dynarski et al. (2021) examined how the provision of information about financial aid for college affects college application and enrollment of low-income students at the University of Michigan. In their experimental study, high school seniors in the treatment group received a comprehensive, glossy mailer containing an encouragement from the president of the University of Michigan to apply to the university with the promise, if admitted, that the student would receive the High-Achieving Involved Leader (HAIL) scholarship, a guaranteed 4-year scholarship covering tuition and fees at the University of Michigan. The university also notified students’ parents and school principals about this financial aid offer. The design of the HAIL scholarship outreach addressed three barriers shown to negatively affect low-income students’ college choices: The encouragement letter dealt with students’ uncertainty about whether they belong in a selective university, the promise of a full scholarship tackled overestimation of college costs, and minimization of complicated forms to fill out lifted administrative barriers. The promise of financial aid and an encouragement to apply more than doubled treatment group students’ probability of applying to and enrolling at a highly selective college (from 13 to 28%), an effect entirely driven by increased enrollment at the University of Michigan. Applications of Behavioral Economics to Support College Success Next, we summarize the behavioral economics literature focused on college success. The studies in this section are grouped in Table 5.3 and are discussed in the following subsections on financial aid while in college, achievement, and retention. Financial Aid While in College By the time students are enrolled in college, many have encountered the FAFSA at least once. Nevertheless, refiling it is an annual exercise that can still pose difficulties. From the perspective of behavioral economics, failing to maintain access to financial aid may cause students to drop out of college.

4

Exam grades, homework assignment grades, and final course grade

Two emails from professor to students indicating knowledge of student’s progress, advice to succeed in course, and reminder of when professor is available

Offer of the InsideTrack coaching service

College retention

Bettinger and Baker (2014) Carrell et al. (2016)

3

Treatment Framing the IncomeBased Repayment plan emphasizing either insurance aspects of the plan or its longer repayment period and higher interest rates

An intervention that focused on stressing that intelligence is malleable

Outcome Selecting an optimal student loan repayment plan

Aronson et GPA and al. (2002) engagement of African American students

Study Abraham et al. (2020)

2

1

TABLE 5.3

Randomized controlled trial Randomized controlled trial

Administrative data on students in introductory microeconomics class at a large selective comprehensive university

InsideTrack data

Randomized Experimental and controlled administrative trial data from Stanford University

Method Data Randomized Experiment data and controlled survey of University trial of Maryland undergraduate students

Applications of Behavioral Economics to Increase College Success

Treatment group students received higher scores in exams, homework assignments, and final course grade.

Student coaching increased retention in college.

Students in the treatment group had higher selfreported enjoyment of and engagement with the academic process and had higher GPAs.

Findings Emphasizing the insurance aspects of the IncomeBased Repayment plan increases take-up of this plan. Emphasizing the costs associated with not enrolling in the Income-Based repayment plan has no effect on take-up of the plan.

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Cox et al. (2020)

7

Selecting an optimal student loan repayment plan

Clark et al. Academic (2020) performance of college students

Lab experiment

Information complexity on the Student Loan Exit Counseling website

Data from the lab experiment

Randomized Experiment data and controlled trial administrative data from a public U.S. university

Data Springfield, MA and Boston, MA college freshmen who worked with uAspire, a nonprofit focusing on college affordability and financial literacy

Self-set performance goals (course letter grade and midterm grades in a specific course), self-set taskbased goals (number of completed online practice exams)

Outcome Treatment Method College freshmen’s Personalized text Randomized FAFSA refiling and messaging intervention controlled trial maintaining financial aid for sophomore year

6

5

Study Castleman and Page (2016)

(Continued)

Majority of participants choose the student loan repayment plan that is set by the website as the default version and that offers no protection against default.

Course performance goals had no statistically significant effects on outcomes. Task-based goals increased task completion and thereby course performance.

Findings Text recipient students at community colleges were 14% more likely to remain enrolled through the spring of their 2nd year. No effect on 4-year college freshmen. behavioral economics of higher education  

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Kramer et al. (2021)

Randomized Survey and controlled trial administrative data from McGill University

Online goal-setting Randomized Administrative data activity; text messages controlled trial from a large Canadian with academic advice, university information, and motivation; personal coaching from senior students

Online goal-setting activity

The coaching program had a positive effect on grades and GPA. The online goalsetting exercise and the text messaging campaign had no effect on any academic outcomes.

Treatment students had higher GPAs, were more likely to maintain a full course load, and less likely to feel negative affect.

Setting the default Randomized Administrative data When required to opt in option to loan opt-in controlled trial from a public research to accept loans, students versus opt-out university were 5 percentage points less likely to accept all loans offered and reduced the borrowed amount by 5%.

Loan acceptance and amount borrowed

GPA, probability of maintaining a full course load, negative affect

Treatment Method Data Findings Goal setting in an Randomized Administrative data Goal setting had no effect online environment + controlled trial from a large Canadian on GPA, course credits, or offer to receive email university 2nd-year persistence. or text message goaloriented reminders

Outcome GPA, course credits, or 2nd-year persistence of 1styear undergraduate students

GPA, average 11 Oreopoulos and Petronijevic grades (2018)

10 Morisano et al. (2010)

9

8

Study Dobronyi et al. (2019)

TABLE 5.3 (Continued)

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Page et al. (2020)

ScottClayton (2011)

14

15

Semesters enrolled, GPA, credits completed, bachelor degree completion

Completion of administrative requirements

Oreopoulos Credits completed, course grades, et al. (2019) retention, and study time of incoming college students enrolled in an introductory economics course

Outcome Mental health, study time, academic outcomes (GPA, average grades)

13

12

Study Oreopoulos and Petronijevic (2019)

West Virginia Promise scholarship (financial aid + requirement of full-time course load and adequate GPA)

Administratively focused nudging via text messages

Treatment Online goal-setting activity; text messages with academic advice, information, and motivation; personal coaching from senior students Information on recommended study time + requirement to make a weekly plan with study time slots + weekly text messages with tips and reminders about planned study time

Regression discontinuity design

Randomized controlled trial

Randomized controlled trial

Method Randomized controlled trial

No effects on credits completed, course grades, and retention. Moderate positive effects on self-reported study time among University of Toronto students

Findings No effect on any outcomes. Modest positive effect of coaching on mental health and study time but not on academic outcomes

Positive effects on completion of discrete administrative requirements where the consequences of inaction were high (e.g., clearing registration holds). No effect on nonacute tasks (e.g., attending a career fair). West Virginia No effect on semesters Higher enrolled. PROMISE Education Policy recipients had higher Commission data cumulative GPA after the 1st and 4th years, were

Survey and administrative data from two campuses of University of Toronto, and an online college (Western Governors University) Administrative data from Georgia State University

Data Survey and administrative data from the University of Toronto

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End-of-year GPA, mental health and engagement of first-generation college students

GPA, White–Black achievement gap, selfreported health and well-being

Academic performance and amount of debt to college

17 Walton and Cohen (2011)

18 Weissman et al. (2019)

Outcome

16 Stephens et al. (2014)

Study

TABLE 5.3 (Continued)

Disbursement of financial aid for tuition and fees directly to colleges and disbursement of the remainder to students via biweekly checks (“Aid Like a Paycheck”)

Sense of belonging

Stories of college adjustment highlighting students’ diverse backgrounds

Treatment

Data

Mixedmethods study, randomized controlled trial

Administrative data from community colleges in Texas and California

Randomized Data from the controlled trial experiment, administrative records

Randomized Survey and controlled trial administrative data from a private university

Method

Treatment students held smaller amounts of debt to the college in the first semester but effects dissipate by the fourth semester. Biweekly disbursement of aid had no effect on students’ academic outcomes

3 years after the intervention, Black students had higher GPAs, White– Black achievement gap decreased, and Black students reported better health and well-being

Treatment group first-generation students had higher end-of-year GPA, better mental health, and stronger engagement. Mechanism: students sought available resources (e.g., meeting with professors) more actively

Findings 9.4 percentage points more likely to complete BA degree in 4 years

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Even after filing the FAFSA once, the application process remains complex, and short-term time and effort costs may be too high. Further, traditionalage students may procrastinate because they are more impulsive, and their neurological systems are more prone to respond to immediate stimulation (Casey et al., 2011; Castleman, Schwartz, & Baum, 2015). As with initial FAFSA filing, nudging students via text message can be an effective strategy for guiding students to refile the FAFSA and persist in college. Castleman and Page (2016) examined how a text-messaging intervention affected FAFSA refiling and persistence through the sophomore year among college freshmen in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts. The intervention provided a combination of reminders and prompts about financial aid, FAFSA renewal, and the importance of maintaining adequate academic progress to qualify for financial aid. The outreach increased 2nd-year persistence by 14 percentage points among students attending community colleges. The outreach had no effect for the students attending 4-year colleges, for whom persistence was already high. Researchers have also experimented with the way financial aid is disbursed in order to help students manage financial aid more effectively and possibly even help them persist in college. Policymakers have signaled concern about the rising level of debt students take on for financing higher education. Kramer et al. (2021) considered the effects of choice architecture and defaults at the stage of loan disbursement. Specifically, they tested the impact of loan opt-in or opt-out defaults relative to students having to make an active choice to accept each loan offered in their financial aid package. When students were required to opt in to accept their loans, they were nearly 5 percentage points less likely to accept all loans offered and reduced the entire amount borrowed by nearly 5%. These reductions in borrowing were concentrated within unsubsidized loans and did not appear to have negative repercussions on downstream student outcomes like enrollment, academic performance, or intensity of on-campus work. Weissman et al. (2019) focused on the actual distribution of aid funds to students in their evaluation of the “Aid Like a Paycheck” program, which offered financial aid in an innovative way. Specifically, Aid Like a Paycheck would disburse federal financial aid directly to colleges to cover tuition and fees and pay the remaining aid to students throughout the academic term in the form of a biweekly “paycheck.” This idea was hypothesized to be potentially transformative as it would, by default, help students manage their financial aid more responsibly. In a mixed-methods study in community college systems in Texas and California, Weissman et al. (2019) found, however, that this financial aid disbursement program had only small effects on student debt accumulation and that these effects dissipated by the fourth

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semester. Further, this way of disbursing financial aid had no effect on academic outcomes, and program implementation was more difficult than originally expected. Another decision in the life cycle of student borrowing is choosing a student loan repayment plan out of several options offered. A puzzling fact is that few borrowers enroll in an income driven repayment (IDR) plan despite this plan’s benefits compared to other repayment schedules. This plan is linked to borrowers’ earnings and thus offers insurance-like protection against loan default. Cox et al. (2020) examined how the design of the government’s Student Loan Exit Counseling website might be affecting the choice of student loan repayment plans. In a laboratory experiment, they used an exact copy of the Student Loan Exit Counseling website and manipulated information complexity, uncertainty about earnings, and default options of the website. Their findings indicate that neither uncertainty about earnings nor information complexity affect loan repayment option choices. However, in contrast to selecting an optimal choice, most users of the website select the default repayment option, which is, at present, the standard fixed repayment option that offers limited protection in case earnings drop. The policy recommendation from this behaviorally informed study is straightforward—if IDR is a safer option for students, the government should consider making it the default repayment option for student loans, even if this option increases the total cost of the loan to the student. In a related study, Abraham et al. (2020) examined how framing the information about the IDR plan for student loans affects loan repayment plan choices. Using a sample of undergraduates from the University of Maryland, they found that emphasizing the insurance aspects of the IDR option increases the likelihood of students selecting it. In contrast, emphasizing the costs of enrolling in this plan (longer repayment period and higher interest rates over the life of the loan) has no effect on take-up. The policy implication is again straightforward—just changing the way loan repayment options are framed and emphasizing the IDR plan’s insurance aspects will decrease student loan defaults without damaging long-run federal revenue. Achievement A range of studies have explored how psychological interventions may help improve the academic performance of college students. For example, a series of studies examined how goal-setting may help students perform better academically. The low costs, scalability, and logistical simplicity of goal-setting activities make them appealing for practice and research in education (Clark et al., 2020). However, the evidence of their benefit is mixed.

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Morisano et al. (2010) conducted a small-scale experiment involving 85 McGill University undergraduate students with GPAs below 3.0 and asked treatment students to complete a goal-setting program. Academic performance and the probability of maintaining a full course load significantly increased for the treatment group students when measured 4 months after the intervention. Another study by Clark et al. (2020) supports the conclusion that goal-setting might help boost college students’ achievement. Clark et al. (2020) conducted randomized experiments to examine how setting goals affects achievement outcomes of undergraduate students enrolled in an on-campus, semester-long introductory course at a public university in the United States. They concluded that task-based goals increased task completion and thereby course performance (and worked better for male students). Results suggest that present-biased students will, in the absence of goals, underinvest effort and that self-set goals act as salient reference points and internal commitment devices that induce students to increase effort. In contrast, other studies find that goal-setting has no effect on undergraduate students’ academic achievement. Dobronyi et al. (2019) randomly assigned about 1,400 freshmen enrolled in an introductory economics course at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto to treatment and control groups and asked them to complete an online goal-setting activity. Treatment students were also provided with growth mindset information that argued that intellect could be grown over time and were offered the opportunity to receive email or text message reminders about their goals. The treatment had no effect on GPA, course credits, or 2nd-year persistence. A series of experiments involving a similar treatment consisting of a goal-setting activity, text message reminders, and coaching by senior undergraduates showed that goal-setting had no effect on achievement and other academic outcomes (Oreopoulos & Petronijevic, 2018, 2019). Only the coaching treatment had a positive and large effect on students’ average grades and GPA. The authors concluded that behavioral interventions may not be capable of affecting academic achievement and that more complex and comprehensive programs are more promising than low-touch behavioral interventions (Oreopoulos & Petronijevic, 2019). Unlike the effect of goal-setting on achievement, the potential for other psychological interventions to increase college students’ achievement has not yet been contested by large-scale follow-up replications. Studies of these types of psychological interventions are also discussed in chapter 6 of this volume, and the fact that we also focus on them here highlights the connections between behavioral economics and psychology. Most of these studies, in essence, employ a “threat reduction” approach, which aims to reduce or eliminate threats posed to students who have a potentially stigmatized

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background or particular social identity (Stephens et al., 2014). For example, interventions reducing stereotype threat might be effective for raising achievement. Aronson et al. (2002) conducted an experiment in which treatment students in a sample of 109 African American Stanford undergraduates were encouraged to conceptualize intelligence as malleable rather than fixed. Control students were told to instead focus on the fixed nature of intelligence. Treatment students had higher GPAs and reported greater enjoyment of academic processes and greater academic engagement. In a related study, Walton and Cohen (2011) examined how an intervention aimed at supporting 1st-year students’ sense of social belonging affects performance. In their experimental treatment arm, they framed social adversity in college as common and transient. Consistent with their initial hypothesis, the treatment was particularly effective for African American students who were at risk of falling prey to stereotype threat. Three years after the intervention, Black students had higher GPAs and reported better health and well-being. Next, helping students to develop an understanding of how their different backgrounds matter can help them feel a sense of comfort, operate more efficiently in a diverse setting, and better navigate their own experiences in higher education. Stephens et al. (2014) randomly divided 168 incoming 1st-year students at a private university into treatment and control groups. Both groups participated in a discussion panel where college juniors and seniors told stories about their college adjustment, their challenges, and what can be done to overcome barriers to success. Stories were the same except for one component: In the treatment group, stories highlighted the diverse backgrounds of students, whereas they did not in the control group. Treatment group students had higher end-of-year GPAs, better mental health, and scored higher on a measure of engagement. Behavioral studies attempting to use psychological levers instead of academic content to increase achievement can also involve teaching faculty. For example, Carrell et al. (2016) examined how professor engagement affects college students’ academic performance in a microeconomics class at a large, selective comprehensive university. Using concepts from behavioral economics, education research, and social psychology, Carrell et al. (2016) developed an intervention consisting of two emails from the professor to students. The communication would state the student’s progress in the course, providing students with course-specific success tips and reminders about when the professor was available. The additional information, positive directions, and encouragement were hypothesized to improve students’ self-efficacy. According to behavioral economics, a nudge providing a small increase of information from a professor who typically matters for the recipient student is likely to improve academic performance and lead to higher rates of

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academic success. Indeed, treatment group students received higher scores on exams, homework assignments, and final course grades. Although quantitative examination of mechanisms was not possible in the study, Carrell et al. (2016) showed qualitatively that treatment group students particularly valued and were grateful for their professor’s engagement, individualized attention, and care for students’ well-being. Retention Behavioral economics suggests innovative avenues for increasing student retention in higher education. For example, Bettinger and Baker (2014) showed that instead of expecting college students to be motivated by economic returns to college to persist in higher education, supporting them through individualized, in-person coaching might help boost retention. In their study, students were randomly assigned to InsideTrack, a coaching service whereby a coach contacted students regularly via phone, email, text messages, and social media, helping them clarify their goals and supporting them to build skills in areas of time management, self-advocacy, and study habits. Using data on students in colleges served by InsideTrack, Bettinger and Baker (2014) found that coaching increased retention both during the coaching period and 1 year after the coaching was over. These findings suggest that coaching is effective in increasing retention while being more cost-effective than interventions increasing financial aid. The Dell Scholars Program, which combines this type of proactive outreach and support with financial aid, has a large impact on college persistence and degree completion for the low-income, primarily first-generation college-goers that it supports (Page et al., 2019). Researchers have also attempted to utilize informational and nudging interventions to more discretely increase study time in hopes of increasing college retention rates. For example, Oreopoulos et al. (2019) tested giving 1st-year students information about how much time academically successful students spend studying. Treatment students were then required to make a plan for each week, specifying all their commitments and specifically allotting slots for study time in an online calendar. In addition, throughout the academic year, treatment students were nudged via text messages that reminded them of the study time they had planned. There was no effect of the treatment on retention, credits completed, or course grades, and only suggestive evidence of a positive effect on study time. Text-based nudges have also been used to support students with navigating the administrative aspects of higher education. Just as students need to navigate complex, bureaucratic tasks to enroll in college, so too must they handle bureaucracy once they are enrolled. Page et al. (2020) tested the effect

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of administratively focused text-based nudges and found that they were particularly successful in raising students’ attention to discrete, administrative requirements where the consequences of inaction were high (e.g., when a registration hold, if not cleared, would require the student to withdraw). In contrast, the text-based outreach was less impactful for promoting attention to nonacute topics (e.g., attending a career fair). Another way policymakers have sought to increase college retention and related academic outcomes is through designing performance-based college financial aid programs. These programs provide financial support for college and, by design, nudge students toward certain benchmarks of college success. For example, performance-based scholarships typically have specified minimum requirements regarding course load and GPA. Impact evaluations of such performance-based financial aid programs show greater effect sizes than scholarships offering financial aid only (Lavecchia et al., 2016). For example, Scott-Clayton (2011) examined how the West Virginia Promise financial aid policy requiring students to enroll in full-load coursework (minimum 12 credits) and maintain a GPA of 3.0 affected students’ behavior. Her findings suggest that West Virginia Promise eligibility increased recipients’ cumulative GPA after the 1st and 4th years, increased completion of 120 credits after 4 years by 9.5 percentage points, and increased probability of completing a BA degree in 4 years by 9.4 percentage points. She compares these relatively high-impact estimates to much lower Georgia Hope financial aid offer impacts and argues that it was important for the Promise’s success that the funder required full-time enrollment (which was not required by Georgia Hope). In essence, it made full-time enrollment and high GPA the default option for recipients, which contributed to the impacts of the program.

Conclusion and Potential for Future Work In the past decade, the principles of behavioral economics have informed policy and research formulation in many aspects of higher education, from college search, application, and transition to college retention, academic performance, and ultimately completion. Low-cost and scalable “tweaks” that are informed by behavioral principles appear particularly effective in helping students to navigate the bureaucracy of higher education, including tasks like applying for financial aid, submitting required paperwork, and deciding how to finance higher education. From implementing text-based nudges to setting default options, paying attention to choice architecture and nudging students into action at opportune times appears to help students access college and continue on a more successful path once there.

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However, another important takeaway from this literature is that there are likely limits to the outcomes that can be affected by these types of behavioral interventions. Most notably, the recent work from Philip Oreopoulos and colleagues suggests that although low-cost and scalable interventions are effective for moving one-time and relatively simple (administrative) actions, they appear less promising for shaping the types of sustained behavioral changes that may be necessary for truly shaping students’ academic outcomes in college. Indeed, interventions that have proven successful in improving college degree attainment for students by a substantial margin, such as the Dell Scholars Program (Page et al., 2019), CUNY ASAP (Scrivener et al., 2015), and the Carolina Covenant (Clotfelter et al., 2018), take a far more comprehensive approach to student support. Notably, while these comprehensive programs cannot, on their own, be classified as exclusively behaviorally informed interventions, they incorporate many of the themes discussed here, including reduced complexity in course choice, breaking down barriers to success such as transportation challenges, and strategic and timely outreach and support. Thus, practitioners and policymakers may want to focus most on how to incorporate the discrete ideas and principles discussed here into more comprehensive efforts to shape students’ postsecondary experiences and support them through to degree completion.

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6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS Heidi E. Williams and Mary C. Murphy

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he benefits of a college degree are undeniable. Although college graduates have long reaped greater economic reward over their lifetimes than high school graduates, the economic premium on a college degree has increased substantially in recent years. Indeed, the average full-time employee with a bachelor’s degree in the United States now earns about $92,000 dollars annually—almost 85% more than the average fulltime employee with just a high school diploma (Winters, 2020). And the benefits of a college education are not merely economic; a bachelor’s degree confers many other long-term benefits, including greater job satisfaction, subjective well-being, and better physical health (for a review, see Mayhew et al., 2016). The impressive benefits of a college education do not seem lost on today’s students. The majority of high school seniors now report expecting to earn a bachelor’s degree (53% of first-generation students and 90% of continuinggeneration students; Engle, 2007), and there has been a dramatic increase in undergraduate enrollment in recent years. From 2000 to 2018, for example, the total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions increased by 26%, and this upward trend is projected to continue (Snyder et al., 2019). Unfortunately, however, this increase in college enrollment does not translate into an equally high increase in rates of degree completion. Although degree completion rates are improving, the change is only modest compared to rates of enrollment (Long, 2018). Of the full-time undergraduate students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree at a 4-year degree-granting institution 116

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in 2011, for example, only about 60% had completed their degree at the same institution by 2017. Broken down by ethnicity, the 6-year degree-completion rate was slightly higher for White (64%) and Asian students (74%), and much lower for students of color (55% for Hispanic students, 49% for Pacific Islander students, 40% for Black students, and 38% for American Indian/Alaska Native students; Snyder et al., 2019). Other studies indicate that degree completion rates are similarly poor for students whose parents have not obtained a college degree (i.e., first-generation college students; Cataldi et al., 2018). The problem of low degree completion rates is not new. In fact, researchers across many academic disciplines have been studying college student persistence, and other indicators of college success, for roughly a century (Berger et al., 2012). These studies have informed education policies and practice for decades; however, the problem remains. Thus, the goal of this chapter is to explore the insights that the field of social psychology can contribute to our understanding of how and why college students succeed. We argue that social psychology’s focus on students’ construals—their sensemaking of themselves and their environments—provides an important theoretical and empirical perspective that can complement existing efforts to improve college student success.

Different Approaches to College Student Success A fundamental tenet of social psychology is that people’s perceptions of themselves and their environments—their construals1—powerfully shape their behavior (Asch, 1952; Heider, 1944; Lewin, 1947; Ross & Nisbett, 1991). Unlike computers that mechanically produce unvarying outputs given particular inputs, when people receive inputs (information about themselves and their social environment), they actively construct meaning from these inputs. People’s outputs (motivation, behavior, performance), then, are determined by the meaning that they make. Because meaning-making is a subjective process, two people who are situated in different social, economic, or historical contexts may draw different conclusions from the exact same information. In order to predict how a person will behave in a particular situation, it is critical to know how they construe that situation. The effect of a low test grade on a student’s success in college, for example, depends on how the student construes that grade. Do they see it as evidence that they aren’t smart enough for college? Or do they see it as a sign that they should switch strategies and study differently for the next exam? The effect of the grade on the student’s behavior and success in college can vary dramatically depending on how the

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student interprets the grade. Thus, a social psychological approach to college student success considers how students’ construals of themselves and their academic environment shape their behavior, which ultimately influences their success in college. How does the social psychological approach differ from those of other academic disciplines? Other disciplines generally rely on two broad theoretical approaches to social reform, and these approaches have been applied to college student success in particular (Walton & Wilson, 2018). The first approach is person-centric; it posits that success depends primarily on certain qualities of the student (like their intelligence, motivation, study habits, and skills). According to this approach, a lack of success often suggests some sort of deficiency in the student that needs remediation. Thus, efforts to promote college student success from a person-centric perspective aim to address these perceived deficiencies—by increasing students’ college preparedness (e.g., Cabrera et al., 2006), for example, or by teaching college students new learning strategies (e.g., Weinstein & Underwood, 1985). A second disciplinary approach to college student success is situationcentric. This approach posits that success depends on qualities of the environment—that students cannot succeed unless their environment supports them and facilitates their success. Consequently, efforts to promote college student success from a situation-centric perspective aim to address perceived deficiencies in the environment. Such efforts include decreasing college class sizes (e.g., Chapman & Ludlow, 2010) and introducing new technologies into college classrooms to help students learn and stay engaged in class (e.g., Mayer et al., 2009). Unlike the person-centric and situation-centric approaches that focus on addressing perceived deficiencies in the student or environment, the social psychological approach to college student success often prioritizes understanding students’ construals, which are shaped by their personal characteristics and characteristics of the environment. After understanding students’ construals, social psychologists then move to address the barriers that are identified by these construals. Thus, the social psychological approach is neither wholly person-centric nor wholly situation-centric. Instead, it takes a sociocontextual approach that considers the person and situation in dynamic relationship with each other. The social psychological approach to college student success aims to understand how qualities of students and qualities of their environments shape students’ construals, and how these construals, in turn, shape their motivation, behavior, and performance in school. Understanding students’ construals—where they come from and the psychological, motivational, and behavioral

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experiences that they engender—helps us understand the psychological and contextual interventions that may be most effective in supporting success in college.

Chapter Overview In this chapter, we argue that social psychology’s focus on students’ construals and the psychological and behavioral experiences that follow can improve our understanding of how and why college students succeed, and can inform our efforts to improve college success. To this end, we discuss how students’ interpretations of, and answers to, three central questions shape their success in college: Can I do it? Why should I do it? Is my identity valued here? For each of these questions, we review the relevant social psychological theories and research, and we show how efforts to promote success that center students’ construals can effectively bolster their success in college. We close by noting gaps in our current understanding of college success that are ripe for future investigation and, where appropriate, we offer recommendations for how the social psychological approach might be used to shape public policy regarding higher education.

Students Wonder: Can I Do It? Whether students succeed in college depends, in part, on their construal of their ability, or efficacy, to succeed in college (Bandura, 1977, 1986). When students believe that they are capable of completing academic tasks successfully, they are more motivated to engage in those tasks (Bandura & Schunk, 1981; Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1997, 1999); more likely to persist in them, even when they become difficult (Multon et al., 1991; Salomon, 1984); and, ultimately, they are more likely to succeed in them (Multon et al., 1991). This begs the question, “What factors influence how college students interpret their ability to succeed in college?” In other words, what factors help college students answer the question, “Can I do it?”

Students’ Personal Beliefs About the Malleability of Ability One factor that affects students’ interpretations of their ability to succeed is their personal beliefs about the malleability of ability, also known as their mindset beliefs, lay theories, or implicit theories (Dweck, 1999). According to mindset theory, people can endorse different beliefs about the fixedness or malleability of various human characteristics, like intelligence, athletic

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ability, or creativity (Dweck, 1999, 2008). When people think of ability as innate and unchanging, they endorse fixed mindset beliefs2—in this mindset, people tend to believe that individuals are essentially born with a fixed amount of ability, and they cannot do much to change it. In contrast, when people think of ability as malleable, they are said to endorse growth mindset beliefs—in this mindset, people tend to believe that ability can be developed over time with effort and good strategies. How do students’ personal mindset beliefs in college settings influence their construals of themselves? Specifically, how do these different mindset beliefs help college students answer the question “Can I do it?” Research suggests that students’ mindset beliefs shape how they interpret the challenges they face. When students endorse fixed mindset beliefs, they experience challenges as particularly aversive (Diener & Dweck, 1978). That is, when one believes that ability is fixed and cannot be developed, challenges become construed as risky, as failing to rise to the challenge suggests that one’s fixed level of ability is insufficient. When students endorse fixed mindset beliefs, they are inclined to interpret mistakes and failures as indicators that they cannot succeed in college. In contrast, when students endorse growth mindset beliefs, they are less likely to experience challenges as aversive. In fact, when students endorse growth mindset beliefs, they tend to find challenges exciting and energizing (Diener & Dweck, 1978). When they believe that their ability can grow and develop, they do not feel permanently blighted by failure or struggle. Instead, challenges represent an opportunity to learn something new and increase one’s ability, and mistakes simply indicate that one has not mastered a concept yet—that perhaps help from others or different strategies are necessary. Because development is possible under a growth (but not a fixed) mindset, students are less likely to infer that they cannot succeed in college after experiencing struggle or failure when they endorse growth (vs. fixed) mindset beliefs. Several studies demonstrate that students’ personal mindset beliefs predict their academic motivation and performance (Broda et al., 2018; Schleicher, 2019). For example, the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveyed approximately 600,000 high schoolage students across 79 countries about their personal mindset beliefs and academic attitudes (Schleicher, 2019). The survey found that, on average, growth mindset beliefs were positively associated with motivation to master academic tasks, desire to learn, perceived value of schooling, and academic self-efficacy, and they were negatively associated with fear of failure. Additionally, students were more likely to expect to complete their university education when they endorsed more growth (vs. fixed) mindset beliefs,

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and also performed better on reading tests when they endorsed more growth (vs. fixed) beliefs. Put simply, believing that academic ability can grow and change appears to liberate students from the fear of failure. With these fears assuaged, students who endorse growth mindset beliefs are better able to focus on their learning and development, which likely improves their sense of self-efficacy and their performance. These findings provide compelling evidence with a large, international sample of a robust correlational relationship between students’ personal mindset beliefs and their academic motivation and achievement. Studies have also demonstrated a causal link between students’ personal mindset beliefs and their academic motivation and achievement by teaching students to adopt growth mindset beliefs (Aronson et al., 2002; Blackwell et al., 2007; Good et al., 2003; Paunesku et al., 2012, 2015; Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016). For example, in one of the earliest of these studies with a college sample, students learned that the brain can grow and form new connections by persisting in the face of challenges, adopting good strategies, and seeking help when needed (Aronson et al., 2002). Then, the college students shared what they had learned via messages to middle school students who were struggling academically. Results of this program revealed that college students who learned about the malleability of intelligence were more likely to endorse growth mindset beliefs than were their peers who did not receive these messages, and these growth mindset beliefs endured 9 weeks later. The manipulation also proved successful in improving college students’ academic performance—students who learned about the malleability of intelligence also earned higher GPAs than their peers who did not receive these messages. A larger, more recent study with over 7,000 students found that a direct-to-student online program teaching college students about the malleability of intelligence sparked students’ motivation—increasing the number of students who attempted a full (12-credit) course load and who earned full-time continuous enrollment over the 1st year of college (Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016). Across these studies, there is also evidence that these direct-to-student mindset programs can reduce group-based inequalities in college performance, as these interventions exhibit larger benefits among students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, including underrepresented racial/ethnic minority students and first-generation college students (Aronson et al., 2002; Broda et al., 2018; Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016). Although growth mindset beliefs appear to be useful to all students, they seem especially helpful for students who belong to groups that have been negatively stereotyped along the dimensions of intelligence and ability in our society. Learning that intelligence and ability are not fixed and can be

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developed through effort, good strategies, and help-seeking bolsters students’ motivation and disrupts the fixed ability stereotypes that target the intellectual abilities of these groups. Taken together, these studies provide causal evidence that students’ personal growth mindset beliefs can improve their motivation and performance in college. When students construe ability as malleable, rather than fixed, they become more motivated and willing to engage in behaviors that will help them succeed (Burnette et al., 2013; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Hong et al., 1999; Nussbaum & Dweck, 2008). Thus, when students face challenges in college and ask themselves, “Can I do it?,” growth mindset beliefs can help them respond affirmatively.

Faculty’s Personal Beliefs About the Malleability of Ability Although the majority of mindset research investigates how students’ personal mindset beliefs affect their own motivation and performance, more recent research is investigating how the mindset beliefs of powerful people in a learning environment (e.g., faculty, staff, administrators) might also affect students’ motivation and performance. This work suggests that what students perceive their professors to believe about the fixedness or malleability of ability can shape students’ construals of their ability to succeed in college. Why might professors’ mindset beliefs shape how students construe their own ability? In a college classroom setting, the professor has the power to decide and influence students’ outcomes (e.g., grades). Thus, the mindset beliefs that the professor communicates through their verbal and nonverbal behavior provide important information to students about what is valued in the class and whether students can be successful there. Whereas growth mindset beliefs signal that effort and development are valued and that everyone has the potential to be successful, fixed mindset beliefs signal that natural talent and flawless performance are valued and that only some students— those with innate ability—are likely to succeed. When students perceive that their professor endorses growth mindset beliefs, they may feel like there is a viable pathway to success in the class. That is, students in growth mindset professors’ classes know that if they adopt growth mindset learning strategies—such as persisting in the face of challenges, seeking help when needed, and trying different approaches or strategies when they are stuck—they can be more successful in those professors’ classes. However, when students perceive that their professor endorses fixed mindset beliefs, they are likely to infer that the primary pathway to success is to demonstrate one’s natural, innate intellectual talents. Thus, students in fixed mindset professors’ classes may worry about whether they will be perceived by their professor as one of the “smart” students who has innate ability—they may wonder, “Am I one of

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the students the professor expects to do well in the class?” As a consequence, students in these professors’ courses may question their ability to succeed in class. Therefore, when students wonder, “Can I do it?,” the mindset beliefs that their professors communicate about the nature of ability may shape students’ construals of their professors and themselves, and thus, their answers to this question. Research in college classroom contexts suggests that students are more motivated and perform better, on average, when their professors endorse— and are perceived by students to endorse—more growth (vs. fixed) mindset beliefs (Canning et al., 2019; Muenks et al., 2020; Rattan et al., 2012). For example, in two longitudinal studies conducted at four different American universities by Muenks et al. (2020), over 1,000 students enrolled in introductory STEM classes reported their perceptions of their STEM professors’ mindset beliefs near the beginning of the semester. Then, students completed experience-sampling surveys immediately after their STEM classes to assess their day-to-day psychological experiences in those classes. Results revealed that when students perceived a professor to endorse more fixed (vs. growth) mindset beliefs, they experienced more psychological vulnerability in that professor’s class—they felt less like they belonged there, were more concerned about being negatively evaluated, felt more like an imposter in the class, and experienced more negative emotions during class. This psychological vulnerability, in turn, predicted students’ engagement and performance in the class, as well as their interest in the course and in the professor’s STEM discipline more broadly. Specifically, when students perceived their professor to endorse more fixed (vs. growth) mindset beliefs, they were more likely to skip class, considered dropping the class more, and ultimately earned lower grades in the course—even when controlling for past performance. Other studies demonstrate that faculty’s actual mindset beliefs are also predictive of students’ motivation and performance in class, suggesting that faculty engage in specific behaviors that implicitly communicate their mindset beliefs to students (Canning et al., 2019; Rattan et al., 2012; Rissanen et al., 2018). For example, in another institution-wide study, Canning et al. (2019) found that when college faculty self-reported more fixed (vs. growth) mindset beliefs, students performed worse in fixed mindset professors’ courses, on average. Taken together, these findings suggest that students’ interpretations of their ability to succeed in college classes, as well as their actual achievement in those classes, are shaped by the mindset beliefs that their professors endorse and communicate in class. When students perceive that their professors endorse fixed mindset beliefs, they are less confident in their ability to succeed and have more negative psychological experiences in those courses, which contribute to poorer course performance.

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Institutional Messages About Students’ Performance Another way that institutions shape college students’ answers to the question “Can I do it?” is through the communications that they send to students who are struggling. For example, when students are struggling in class, they often receive early alert notifications that warn them about their poor performance. At the end of the term, students who fail to meet the performance standards set by their university are typically placed on academic probation. These early alert notifications and probation notification letters are the most common ways that institutions communicate to students that their performance has not been satisfactory. Typically, these notifications detail the steps that students can take to improve their academic standing and avoid dismissal from the university (rather than simply notifying students about their poor performance). However, research on early alert systems and the probation notification process shows that many students who receive these institutional messages do not improve their academic standing, and are often more likely to leave their university (Eimers, 2000; Fletcher & Tokmouline, 2010; Lindo et al., 2010; Pfleging, 2002; Sneyers & De Witte, 2018). Why do institutional processes intended to help struggling students appear to fail so many? In short, because students’ construals matter, and the content of these notifications can significantly shape students’ construals of their ability to return to good standing. University notifications implicitly communicate to students how they are viewed by their university and whether they can be successful there. Despite the goal of these communications—to help students return to good standing—research suggests that the inferences students draw from them can be quite negative. For example, researchers have found that students report high levels of negative emotions—including shame, stigma, and guilt—upon receiving probation notification letters (Brady et al., 2020; Silverman & Juhasz, 1993). These messages and the emotions they engender shape students’ construals about themselves—causing students to question whether they belong at their university (Brady et al., 2020) and discouraging them from engaging in productive behaviors that could improve their probation status (Goffman, 1963; Pekrun, 2017). Thus, when struggling students infer from institutional messages that the university views them as deficient or that they do not belong in college, these notification processes may ironically backfire—causing students to believe less, not more, in their ability to succeed in college. By considering the meaning that students are likely to make from these notifications, researchers and administrators can revise school notifications to help struggling students construe the situation and their ability to succeed in college more positively. For example, Brady et al. (2020) revised a university’s standard probation notification letter to be more sensitive to

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the construals and psychological experiences of students placed on probation. They found that students who viewed the standard (unrevised) letter reported feeling singled out and hopeless about returning to good standing when they first received their probation notification letters. To address these construals, the researchers appended stories from students who had successfully recovered from academic probation to the revised notification letter—showing students that they were not alone in navigating the probation process and providing hope and productive strategies that previous students found useful for returning to good standing. Results of this study revealed that the revised “psychologically attuned” probation notification letter and stories from past students reduced students’ anticipated shame and stigma, as well as their anticipated intentions of dropping out. In some field trials, it also increased the proactive behaviors of students placed on probation, and increased their likelihood of returning to good standing (Brady et al., 2020; Waltenbury et al., 2018). Findings such as these provide evidence that institutional messages shape how struggling students construe their ability to succeed in college. When these messages fail to consider students’ construals and the psychological and motivational experiences those construals engender, even well-intentioned messages can backfire—leading students to question their ability and undermining their success in college.

Students Wonder: Why Should I Do It? Throughout their college careers, students will encounter tasks that are difficult, uninteresting, and/or tedious (e.g., studying for exams, staying engaged during a particularly dry lecture, etc.), but ultimately necessary for their success in college. In these moments, students are likely to question whether they should devote their time and energy to following through on these tasks. Extensive research suggests that students will be more motivated to engage with academic tasks if they construe them as personally relevant—that is, if the student perceives a personal, meaningful connection with the tasks they need to do (Dewey, 1913; Priniski et al., 2018). What factors, then, determine whether students perceive personal relevance in academic tasks that facilitate success in college? In other words, what factors help college students answer the question “Why should I do it?”

Utility Value According to expectancy–value theory, people may choose to engage with tasks for a variety of different reasons (Eccles, 1983, 2009; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). One reason that a person might choose to pursue and persist on a task

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is because they perceive that the task has utility value—that is, because they perceive the task to be relevant and useful to their goals or life outcomes. If students perceive that an academic task has utility value, they believe that the task will be useful to them beyond the classroom—to assist them in everyday life, for example, or to accomplish some current or future goal (Eccles, 1983). Thus, perceiving that a task has utility value (i.e., that it is relevant or useful in other areas of life) motivates students to pursue and persist on tasks that they may have initially found uninteresting or unenjoyable (Eccles, 2005). In fact, when students pursue tasks for these reasons, they often become more interested in those tasks over time (Reber et al., 2018). Research suggests that when a task does not seem immediately enjoyable or interesting to a student, thinking of ways that the task could help them outside of the classroom can increase students’ interest in the task and their motivation to complete it. For example, when learning a new mental math technique in one of their college courses (e.g., Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015; Durik & Harackiewicz, 2007; Durik et al., 2015), students may be inclined to wonder, “When will I ever use this?” If students do not perceive that the math technique has any utility value—that is, if they perceive that the technique is not useful for anything outside of the classroom—they are less likely to be interested in the technique and less motivated to learn and practice it. However, if students do perceive ways that the technique could be useful and relevant to them—for example, in calculating tips at restaurants or in figuring out their car’s gas mileage—they are likely to be more interested and motivated to engage with it. Many studies demonstrate that when college students construe course content as relevant and useful outside of the classroom (i.e., when students perceive that course content has utility value), they express more interest in the content and perform better in the course than students who do not construe the content in this way (Canning & Harackiewicz, 2015; Canning et al., 2018; Hulleman & Harackiewicz, 2009; Hulleman et al., 2010). For example, Canning et al. (2018) encouraged students enrolled in an introductory biology course to reflect on the utility value of the course content. Participants completed up to three writing prompts—one for each unit of the course—asking them to choose a concept covered in class and to write about how the concept might be useful and relevant to their own life or others’ lives. Results revealed that writing about the utility value of course content improved students’ performance in the course—students who wrote even one utility value essay performed better than students who wrote no utility value essays (Canning et al., 2018). Students’ perceptions of utility value also predicted whether students enrolled in the next course in the biology course sequence, and predicted whether STEM majors decided to persist

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in their major. That is, students who reflected on the utility value of their biology course content were more likely to enroll in the second course of the biology sequence and were less likely to abandon their STEM major compared to students who did not write utility value essays. These findings suggest that reflecting on the utility value of course content can help students construe that content as personally relevant, which improves their interest, motivation, and performance in their college courses.

Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Another factor that affects students’ construals of the relevance of academic tasks is their purpose for learning. Whereas some students report learning for self-oriented reasons (e.g., because learning is intrinsically interesting and enjoyable or because it benefits one’s self-interests), others also report having a self-transcendent purpose for learning (Reilly & Damon, 2013; Yeager & Bundick, 2009; Yeager et al., 2012). That is, some students report wanting to learn not only to benefit themselves, but also to have some positive effect on the world beyond the self. For example, a student may desire to learn so that they can serve their community or to advance a cause that they value. How can a self-transcendent purpose for learning help college students answer the question “Why should I do it?” Research demonstrates that adopting a self-transcendent purpose for their learning leads students to perceive proximal academic tasks as more personally relevant and meaningful (Yeager & Bundick, 2009), which increases their motivation to engage with the tasks and persist on them (Yeager et al., 2014). Moreover, research suggests these self-transcendent motives may be especially effective in motivating behavior when tasks are aversive (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). Thus, when college students are confronted with academic tasks that are difficult, uninteresting, and/or tedious, adopting a self-transcendent purpose for learning can help students construe the tasks as more meaningful and personally relevant, which increases their motivation and persistence. A chemistry student who finds balancing equations boring or difficult, for example, might remind themselves of their goal to help others who are battling cancer by becoming an oncologist. Doing so helps the student construe the task as meaningful and in line with their self-transcendent purpose for learning, which makes it feel less aversive to work on the equations and increases the student’s motivation to persist in chemistry. Studies show that encouraging students to reflect on their self-transcendent motives for learning improves their motivation and persistence (Yeager et al., 2014). In one study, for example, high school seniors with intentions to go to college were asked to report their motives for going to college and

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how meaningful they found everyday academic tasks to be (see Study 1 of Yeager et al., 2014). Then, participants completed a self-regulation task to observe whether students would persist on relatively aversive academic tasks (e.g., completing boring math problems). The researchers found that students who reported more self-transcendent motives for going to college were more likely to engage in self-regulation and persist on the boring math problems. To examine whether these self-transcendent motivations had longer term effects, college enrollment data were obtained so that the researchers could examine whether these students were still enrolled in college at the end of their first semester. Results revealed that students who reported more selftranscendent motives for going to college were more likely to still be enrolled in college at the end of their first semester. Another study demonstrated the causal effects of reflecting on and sharing one’s self-transcendent motives for learning. Yeager et al. (2014) in their Study 3 instructed students enrolled in a psychology course to consider how psychology might be used to make the world a better place. These students read stories that described other students’ self-transcendent motives for learning psychology. These stories conveyed to students that it is normative to have self-transcendent motives, and they encouraged students to generate and reflect on their self-transcendent motives for learning psychology. Students then created messages to share their motives with others. Afterward, students were asked to complete a tedious online exam review activity for their psychology class, consisting of over 100 multiple-choice questions, and were encouraged to “learn deeply” from the activity, rather than guess on each question. Results revealed that reflecting on and sharing their selftranscendent purpose for learning psychology spurred students’ motivation and persistence. Students spent nearly twice as long on the review questions when they had reflected on and shared their motives (compared to those who did not). Taken together, these findings suggest that reflecting on and sharing one’s self-transcendent motives can bolster students’ motivation and persistence in college—particularly when confronted with less enjoyable academic tasks.

Students Wonder: Is My Identity Valued Here? Higher education has a long and unfortunate history of excluding and devaluing members of particular social groups (Wilder, 2014). As a consequence of this history, many groups remain underrepresented and stigmatized in college today. Because higher education has historically catered to an exclusive group of students (typically White men from economically privileged

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backgrounds) and continues to lack racial/ethnic and class-based diversity, students who do not fit this demographic prototype of success may wonder how they will fare when they enter college. When a person perceives that they may be treated negatively or devalued in college because of the groups to which they belong, they construe the college environment as identitythreatening. This construal elicits a state of psychological discomfort that can disrupt cognitive processes and contribute to academic underperformance (Major & O’Brien, 2005; Schmader et al., 2008; Steele et al., 2002). What factors, then, determine whether students construe the college environment as identity-threatening or identity-safe? What helps college students answer the question “Is my identity valued here?”

Belonging Uncertainty Researchers have long theorized that humans have a fundamental need to belong—to feel a positive sense of connection to others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Maslow, 1968). Indeed, feeling like one does not belong has been linked to a host of negative psychological and physiological outcomes (for review, see Baumeister & Leary, 1995), including weaker academic performance among students (Strayhorn, 2018; Walton & Cohen, 2007; Walton et al., 2012). Research suggests that people may be more uncertain of their belonging and acceptance by others when their group has historically been stigmatized, devalued, disrespected, or excluded in a setting (Murphy & Taylor, 2012; Walton & Cohen, 2007). When people question their belonging and acceptance in a context (termed belonging uncertainty; Walton & Cohen, 2007), they become vigilant to cues in the local environment that signal whether others in the environment are likely to value, respect, and include them or to devalue, disrespect, and exclude them. Perceiving cues in the environment that suggest that one’s group does not belong evokes identity threat, which can lead people to withdraw from the environment, further depressing their sense of belonging in a self-reinforcing cycle (Walton & Brady, 2020; Walton & Wilson, 2018). Research suggests that focusing on students’ construals of belonging during important life transitions can be particularly important to building and sustaining motivation and performance. Beginning college is an important life transition that is difficult for many students, at least initially. As students adjust to college life, they will undoubtedly experience some adversities— feeling intimidated by professors, for example, or struggling to make friends in one’s classes. Although all students grapple with adversities to some extent, students from socially advantaged and disadvantaged social groups may construe these adversities very differently. Because they have more social capital

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and can rely on college-educated family and friends to normalize the challenges that often accompany the college transition, students from advantaged groups tend to construe adversities as a normal and temporary part of the college adjustment process. However, students from disadvantaged groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minority students, first-generation students, lower socioeconomic status students) are more likely to feel isolated in these experiences, and, given their group’s historical exclusion, tend to construe these challenges as evidence that their group may not be valued and may not belong or be accepted by others in college (Murphy et al., 2020; Walton & Cohen, 2007, 2011). That is, due to persistent cultural stereotypes that impugn disadvantaged students’ intelligence and abilities, continued numeric underrepresentation, and group-based segregation on many college campuses, students from disadvantaged social backgrounds are more likely to question whether “people like them” will belong and be valued in college—and are more likely to infer from daily adversities that they may not. When students feel that they may not be valued by their peers, faculty, staff, and the institution at large, they are more likely to disengage socially and academically, further weakening their sense of belonging and depressing their academic performance (Walton & Brady, 2020; Walton & Wilson, 2018). Studies that encourage students to construe the adversities they face in college as normal and transient have been shown to bolster disadvantaged students’ sense of belonging and success in college (Brady et al., 2020; Broda et al., 2018; Murphy et al., 2020; Walton & Cohen, 2007, 2011; Walton et al., 2015; Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016). For example, Murphy et al. (2020) implemented a social belonging intervention among more than a thousand 1st-year students at a large, broad-access, majority-minority public university. In their 1st-year writing course, students read stories from a diverse group of upper-year students describing the academic and social challenges they faced as they transitioned into college. These stories communicated the idea that belonging is a process (not an outcome that one achieves or does not achieve) and that challenges were common to students during the college transition. The stories also modeled different strategies that upper-year students identified as being effective for coming to feel a sense of belonging at that college. After reading these stories, students engaged in a writing exercise designed to help them personalize and communicate the central messages conveyed in the stories to future classes of 1st-year students at their college. Results revealed that this belonging program, delivered as part of the 1st-year curriculum, improved disadvantaged students’ sense of belonging, performance, and persistence in college. Although the program did not reduce the number of adversities that students encountered on a daily basis, students from disadvantaged social backgrounds (African American, Latino/a, Native

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American, and first-generation college students) who received the belonging materials were less inclined to construe those daily adversities as a sign that they did not belong in college compared to their disadvantaged peers in the control condition (Murphy et al., 2020). That is, the program helped moor students’ sense of belonging so that it no longer fluctuated up and down based on the amount of adversity they experienced on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, the intervention improved the GPAs of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in the term following the intervention’s implementation and increased the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who maintained continuous enrollment through their 2nd and 3rd year of college. These findings suggest that students’ construals of the adversities they experience affect their sense of belonging, performance, and persistence in college. A long history of stigmatization in higher education and segregation on college campuses can lead disadvantaged students to question their belonging each time they encounter adversity or other situational cues that suggest that their group may not be valued or respected in college—even in contexts where their group is the numerical majority (Murphy & Taylor, 2012; Murphy et al., 2007). By communicating to students that challenges and adversities are common, manageable, and not linked to their group membership, institutions can bolster disadvantaged students’ sense of belonging and, in turn, their persistence and performance in college.

Difference-Education Whereas research on belonging uncertainty focuses on reducing identity threat in college by reassuring students that certain adversities are relatively common and not linked to their social identities, other research seeks to reduce identity threat in a different way—by encouraging students to reflect on the ways that their identities do shape their experiences in college. The idea behind this difference-education approach is that although some groups face identity-relevant challenges as they navigate college, they also bring with them identity-based strengths that can help them overcome those challenges (Stephens et al., 2014). Without an adaptive meaning-making framework to understand these different experiences, college students who are struggling may feel isolated and be less certain about what can be done to overcome the challenges they face. Reflecting on the ways that identity shapes students’ experiences in college—in both positive and negative ways—helps students construe their differences as more contextual, empowering, and motivating. That is, this reflection helps students understand that people’s different experiences in college simply stem from having different experiences in different contexts prior to college—not from any fixed, innate qualities of students

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themselves. It also helps students recognize the ways in which their past experiences can be leveraged as assets as they navigate college. The existing research on difference-education focuses primarily on firstgeneration college students (those who are the first in their families to obtain a 4-year college degree) and continuing-generation college students (those with at least one parent who has obtained a 4-year degree). Extensive research demonstrates that first-generation students struggle in college, relative to their continuing-generation peers. First-generation students typically come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Lee et al., 2004; Nunez & Caccaro-Alamin, 1998), and they have less social capital in college (Housel & Harvey, 2009; Martin et al., 2014). Because they know fewer people who have navigated college previously, first-generation college students have less “insider knowledge” to draw upon as they navigate the bureaucratic, academic, and social landscape of college. As a result of these and other backgroundspecific obstacles, first-generation students tend to feel isolated in college (Ostrove & Long, 2007), have difficulty taking advantage of college resources (Housel & Harvey, 2009), and ultimately perform worse in college than continuing-generation students (Pascarella et al., 2004). Studies encouraging students to reflect on the positive and negative ways that their backgrounds affect their experiences in college have successfully eliminated the social class achievement gap that often exists between first- and continuing-generation students (Stephens et al., 2014; Townsend et al., 2019). For example, in one study, over 100 incoming freshmen at a private university attended a student panel about the transition to college led by a diverse group of senior students (Stephens et al., 2014). When the panelists highlighted the different ways in which their backgrounds shaped their experiences in college, student participants were more likely to construe diversity positively—they were more likely to report that people’s different backgrounds matter in college, and they were more likely to believe that people who share their similar background can succeed in college. These construals appeared to be especially helpful for first-generation students. A year after attending the panel, first-generation students who learned about the role of difference in shaping students’ college experiences reported taking advantage of college resources more often than did firstgeneration students who did not learn about the role of difference. This increased tendency to seek institutional resources to help them navigate college improved first-generation students’ cumulative GPAs, effectively eliminating the achievement gap between first- and continuing-generation students. A 2-year follow-up demonstrated that the positive effects of learning about difference are enduring. First-generation students who had learned

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about the role of difference were more willing to discuss their backgrounds and were better able to cope with stressful college situations than were first-generation students who had not learned about the role of difference (Stephens et al., 2015). Taken together, these results suggest that reflecting on the identity-based strengths and challenges that are likely to shape students’ experiences in college can help students construe these differences more positively and provide useful strategies and feelings of empowerment to navigate challenges ahead. This difference-education approach can reduce identity threat among first-generation college students by reminding them that their differences are not innate, do not always place them at a disadvantage, and can instead be an asset in college. With identity threat assuaged, first-generation students are less inclined to disengage from the academic environment—they are more likely to take advantage of the resources available to them in college, which helps improves their performance.

Cultural Mismatch Other work has investigated how university norms and expectations can elicit social identity threat among certain students. Whether university norms and expectations are identity-threatening to a student depends on the cultural norms that students grow up with, have internalized, and bring with them to college. Research has identified two broad sets of cultural norms that shape how individuals think, feel, and behave (Markus & Kitayama, 2010). Independent cultural norms involve acting on one’s environment, being unique and distinct from others, and pursuing personal interests (Markus & Kitayama, 2003). Independent norms are commonly found in middleand upper-class Western cultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Stephens et al., 2007). “I’ll do it my way” is an example of an independent cultural norm that is prevalent in American society. In contrast, interdependent cultural norms involve adjusting to one’s environment, connecting with others, and pursuing collective interests (Markus & Kitayama, 2003). “We’ll do it together as a community” is an example of an interdependent cultural norm. Interdependent norms are commonly found in Eastern cultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) and in working-class Western cultures (Stephens et al., 2007). How do the cultural norms that shape students’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior affect how they experience university norms and expectations when they get to college? Research has demonstrated that American universities overwhelmingly promote independent norms and expectations for their students (Stephens, Fryberg, et al., 2012). In college, students

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are expected to “figure out who they are” and “pursue their passion,” for example. Because these norms and expectations are familiar to students from middle- and upper-class Western backgrounds, these students are likely to feel comfortable in American college environments—they are likely to experience college as a cultural match. However, because these norms and expectations are less familiar to students from working-class or Eastern backgrounds, they are more likely to struggle with the independent norms that pervade American college settings. These students may feel less valued and welcome in college and less capable of succeeding there. Thus, perceiving a mismatch between one’s own cultural norms and background and the norms of the dominant university culture can be identity-threatening—undermining students’ sense of fit, well-being, and performance in college. Some research has investigated how cultural mismatch affects firstgeneration students’ experiences and success in college, as first-generation students typically come from working-class backgrounds where interdependent norms are valued and taught (Pascarella et al., 2004). One study found that incoming first-generation college students reported more interdependent motives (and fewer independent motives) for attending college, compared to middle- and upper-class students (see Study 2 of Stephens, Fryberg, et al., 2012). These motives, assessed before students set foot on campus, predicted their grades at the end of their 1st and 2nd years of college —independent motives were positively associated with 1st- and 2nd-year GPAs, whereas interdependent motives were negatively associated with 1stand 2nd-year GPAs. Other studies have demonstrated this relationship between cultural match/mismatch and academic performance causally. For example, Stephens, Fryberg, et al.’s (2012) Studies 3 and 4 presented students with a welcome letter from their university president that either communicated an independent university norm or an interdependent norm. Whereas continuing-generation students were relatively unaffected by the norm communicated in the president’s letter, first-generation students experienced the norms differently. When the welcome letter communicated an independent norm, first-generation students performed more poorly on verbal reasoning (Study 3) and visual-spatial (Study 4) tasks than did continuing-generation students. However, when the letter communicated an interdependent norm, first-generation students performed just as well on these tasks as did continuing-generation students. Moreover, first-generation students (but not continuing-generation students) had higher cortisol levels and more negative affect in response to the independent (vs. interdependent) norm (Stephens, Townsend, et al., 2012).

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These findings suggest that the norms and expectations that are typical in American universities can systematically disadvantage students from working-class backgrounds—leading them to construe the college environment as identity-threatening, causing physiological stress and disrupting performance. Fortunately, however, these findings also suggest that this disadvantage is not inevitable. By simply expanding norms to include interdependence, universities can reduce identity threat—signaling to all students that they are seen, valued, and capable of success in college.

Discussion and Implications Social psychological approaches to college student success consider how students’ construals of themselves and their environments shape their motivation, behavior, and performance in college. In this chapter, we have reviewed social psychological research demonstrating the role of construal in shaping college students’ responses to three central questions: Can I do it? Why should I do it? Is my identity valued here? This work shows that students’ construals of their ability to succeed in college, the relevance of academic tasks and course material, and the identity safety (vs. threat) of the college environment can powerfully shape their success. We argue that social psychology’s focus on construal provides an important theoretical and empirical perspective that can improve our understanding of how and why college students succeed, as well as inform our efforts to improve college students’ success. Although other disciplines aim to promote college student success primarily by introducing new and extensive resources to students or the college environment—many of which are important, useful, and effective in supporting college students’ success—social psychological approaches posit that significant advances can be made by understanding how students construe themselves and the resources and opportunities already available to them in college. The research we have summarized in this chapter demonstrates that large gains in motivation, persistence, and performance can be achieved by providing students with adaptive frameworks to interpret their experiences in college. This work suggests that interventions aimed at improving college student success need not always be time- and resource-intensive. Research reviewed previously in the chapter has demonstrated that students can come to adopt adaptive frameworks through a variety of brief exercises that require only modest resources. These have included in-class writing assignments (Canning et al., 2018; Murphy et al., 2020), 60-minute online modules delivered at the beginning of the academic term or before students arrive on campus (Walton & Cohen, 2011; Yeager, Walton, et al., 2016), panels

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of senior students who are willing to share their stories with more junior students (Stephens et al., 2014), and revised probation notification letters (Brady et al., 2020). Moreover, many of these social psychological interventions are scalable, capable of being standardized and delivered to many students across many contexts (e.g., growth mindset interventions; Yeager, Romero, et al., 2016). Despite these impressive benefits, we must note some important caveats and limitations to this approach. First, in acknowledging the role of construal in student success, it is easy (and inappropriate) to blame struggling students for their construals. Too often, social psychological intervention efforts fall into this trap—attempting to change students’ construals solely by teaching them to think differently about themselves or their environments (see Murdock-Perriera et al., 2019, for a review). Indeed, social psychological interventions focused on students’ construals can be problematic if students’ colleges and universities do not support these construals (Yeager et al., 2019). That is, in university and college settings where the central intervention messages are not true (e.g., where students do not come to feel that they belong over time) or where the strategies seeded by these interventions are not actually available to students (e.g., when students cannot easily access academic advisors or build positive relationships with faculty), these interventions are less likely to be effective. For example, if certain groups experience stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination on campus, the message that adversities are normal, transient, and not linked to their stigmatized social identity will likely ring hollow to these students—and could undermine students’ motivation and performance, as well as their trust in the institution. Certainly, when cues in the college environment communicate hostility, disrespect, or disregard, the onus should not be on students to reframe these cues into more pleasant ones. Future work should consider the structural changes that can be made to institutions of higher education to encourage adaptive construals among students. Researchers and administrators should ask, “What are the features of this college/university that are leading students to make negative construals about themselves and this environment?” and “What can we do to change them?” Relatedly, although some research has shown that students’ construals can shape their success in college when resources are held constant, it does not mean that material, structural, interpersonal, and financial resources are not important or necessary to promote college student success. Interventions that target students’ construals are only helpful to the extent that students and institutions are equipped with sufficient resources to support students’ success (Walton & Yeager, 2020). For example, teaching students to adopt growth mindset beliefs (the construal that ability is malleable) is unlikely to

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affect their course performance if the professor of that course does not provide meaningful opportunities for students to learn and develop. Although it is an important question for future research, we would speculate that the effectiveness of social psychological interventions is likely moderated by the extent to which colleges and universities provide sufficient material, structural, interpersonal, and financial support for students to meaningfully act on their construals. The power of construal is that it provides a meaningmaking framework that motivates students’ behavior and performance— but if institutions do not provide supports and resources to help students achieve success (e.g., sufficient financial aid, access to academic advisors), then greater motivation and adaptive behaviors (like help-seeking) are less likely to result in greater college success. Social psychology’s focus on construal adds an important piece to the college student success puzzle, but of course it is not the whole picture. The optimal approach to college student success is likely to be an interdisciplinary one. Future policy and intervention efforts should consider concrete student- and institution-focused resources and students’ construals: Do students and universities have the resources they need? Are students construing the resources available to them in a way that facilitates their motivation and performance? To answer these questions, colleges and universities should assess students’ construals when evaluating the efficacy of their policies and practices—and consider the institutional messages and features that shape how and why students construe their college environment as they do. It is ultimately the responsibility of colleges and universities to ensure that the college environment signals to all students that they are welcome, valued, and capable of succeeding in college—and to provide the resources that make those construals so.

Notes 1. Many different terms have been used in the social psychological literature to describe people’s interpretations, including subjective construal (Ross & Nisbett, 1991), mindsets (Dweck, 2008), stories (Wilson, 2011), and meaning making (Walton & Wilson, 2018). 2. Recently, researchers have cautioned against describing mindset primarily as a stable individual difference (Dweck, 2017; Gross-Loh, 2016). Although there is some evidence that people’s mindset beliefs can be chronically accessible along the fixed–growth mindset continuum (e.g., Robins & Pals, 2002), more recent work demonstrates that mindset beliefs can also be changed based on scientific information or articles (e.g., Nussbaum & Dweck, 2008) or through programs that communicate the idea that ability is malleable (e.g., Blackwell et al., 2007). This suggests

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that all people have access to both growth and fixed mindset beliefs, and that we move between them based on situational factors—an approach consistent with the person–situation interaction that is at the heart of social psychology.

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7 STEM STUDENT SUCCESS Strategic Learning, Mentored Research, and Structural Change Becky Wai-Ling Packard and Rachel A. Hirst

T

his chapter focuses on how college students succeed in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. We outline key theories and concepts guiding this work before synthesizing relevant research and practice. In addition, we acknowledge and strategize about potential pitfalls as well as implications for policy. Our hope is that readers will appreciate both the advances within the STEM student success literature and the areas in need of further development. To begin, we want to locate ourselves as the authors undertaking this chapter. We recognize our own disciplinary backgrounds (educational psychology and biological sciences), which has shaped our thinking about student success in STEM. In addition, we have undertaken collaborations with colleagues from across STEM (in engineering, computer science, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and geosciences, among others), and through the research literature, we have aimed to capture nuances in student success across STEM disciplines. We believe that advancing undergraduate STEM student success requires a deliberate equity lens (AAC&U, 2015). We are both first-generation college graduates ourselves who have dedicated our careers to better understand and advance the success of students historically excluded from STEM fields (e.g., low-income students, students of color, women). As faculty, we work on STEM student success within undergraduate liberal arts institutions. Hirst began her career teaching at a community college, and both of us have invested time in developing community college partnerships (Hirst et al., 2014; Packard et al., 2011). Community colleges emphasize open access and 147

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educate racially and socioeconomically diverse student populations, about 45% of undergraduates overall; 50% of students of color and/or low-income students start at community colleges (Ginder et al., 2018; Hewlett, 2018; Jenkins & Fink, 2016). Yet community colleges are often overlooked when considering strategies to invest in STEM learners’ success (Labov, 2012). We aimed to underscore student success contributions from multiple institution types as we generated the chapter. In order to construct and organize the chapter, we asked what makes STEM student success distinct from college student success generally, if at all. What advances may not be represented elsewhere in this book if we do not capture them? Despite difficult choices, we focused the chapter on three dimensions: becoming a strategic STEM learner, mentored research as a mechanism for participating in a STEM disciplinary community, and the promise of structural change within and across institutions. The first section of the chapter focuses on how STEM students and faculty alike can be strategic in their learning. Introductory gateway course sequences are in the spotlight, because this is where much of the challenge has been with regard to student attrition, and where much of the promising activity around improving student success is developing. Informed by socialcognitive and sociocultural theories of learning, we explain how faculty can guide students to be strategic learners, including how they structure student preparation and practice. At the same time, classrooms need to cultivate a sense of belonging, and advances in active learning and inclusive teaching alike contribute positively. In the second section, we argue that student success in STEM goes beyond the formal classroom setting. An undergraduate research experience is a key mechanism for college students to participate in a STEM disciplinary community, whether in a lab or in the field. The design and impact of research experiences have been informed by robust empirical study. Students learn complex STEM knowledge and gain new skills through research, while they develop their identities as future scientists, mathematicians, or engineers. Guided by theoretical perspectives on science identity and communities of practice, we describe multiple initiatives making a difference as well as barriers to scaling. Much of the student success derived from these experiences depends on quality interactions with mentors and sufficient time to invest in this important work. In the third section, we articulate the need for systemic change. Currently, student success efforts tend to take place in pockets of excellence: a classroom in one department, a research lab in another department, and even a dozen faculty members collaborating across multiple institutions through a grant initiative. Advances are needed in faculty development, institutional equity,

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and college completion—across institutions—in order to improve STEM student success at scale. Guided by organizational change and ecological theories, we are learning more about how to change systems to better support student success. An investment in institutional and multi-institution reform, by changing our systems, will help more STEM students succeed and cross the finish line.

Strategic Learning In this section, we focus on how students engage in strategic learning that is predictive of STEM student success. In our effort to talk about what students do in order to achieve in STEM courses, we also need to describe how faculty cultivate environments where students have an opportunity to excel. We see student success as involving this duality: Students need to enact strategic learning, and faculty are responsible for creating the conditions conducive for learning. Although STEM courses and majors certainly vary across institutions and departments, there is still a pervasive traditionality to many introductory STEM courses. For decades, traditional introductory courses have been linked to the lack of undergraduate STEM student success (Mervis, 2010; NASEM, 2016; Seymour & Hewitt, 1997); introductory courses still often serve a gatekeeping function due to a lack of engagement (Gasiewski et al., 2012) or lecture approach (Freeman et al., 2014). Very few on-ramps exist where college students can transition into STEM, with most initiatives focusing on curbing the loss of students (Packard, 2015). Fortunately, gateway course reform is very central and top of mind at the national level, as indicated by the many National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) volumes dedicated to these topics from 2016 to 2019 (see Table 7.1). In addition, many federal agencies and foundation initiatives sponsor programs to help support curricular reform, whether focused on the content, design, or pedagogy within introductory courses (see Table 7.2). Further, much of the literature in key STEM disciplinary pedagogical journals (e.g., Cell Biology Education, Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of Engineering Education) reports on the ways in which introductory courses spark interest, cultivate talent, and foster student success. Next, we summarize relevant theories and key findings to help readers gain a foundation for how students learn and succeed. For an excellent summary of this body of work, we recommend How People Learn (National Research Council, 2000) and How People Learn II (NASEM, 2018).

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TABLE 7.1

Relevant National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Reports Year

Report

2016

Barriers and Opportunities for 2-Year and 4-Year STEM Degrees: Systemic Change to Support Diverse Student Pathways

2017a

Supporting Students’ College Success: The Role of Assessment of Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies

2017b

Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities

2018

How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures

2019a

The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM

2019b

Together We Can Do Better: A Gathering of Leaders in Academia to Prevent Sexual Harassment: Proceedings of a Workshop–in-Brief TABLE 7.2

Federal Agency and Foundation Initiative Agency or Organization

Program

National Science Foundation

Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES)

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Inclusive Excellence

Association of American Colleges and Universities

Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM (TIDES)

National Institutes for Health

Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC)

Theories and Concepts Cognitive theories of learning have prompted instructors to organize learning in a way whereby learners test their developing mental models for how things work. Piaget’s (1936) theory of cognitive development, which only became prominent in the 1960s, still shapes today’s classrooms, as illustrated by the importance of experimentation. Within a cognitive perspective focused on how students engage in complex problem-solving, theorists viewed human

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minds as similar to programmable computers (Newell & Simon, 1972). This is illustrated through instructional efforts to identify and “debug” faulty mental algorithms within students’ math problem-solving (Brown & Burton, 1978) or surfacing and then dismantling misconceptions students have about the nature of motion (McCloskey et al., 1983). Today, many teaching efforts across STEM disciplines take into account students’ initial algorithms or misconceptions as a first step in helping students develop their understanding and improve learning (e.g., Aydogan & Can, 2010; Treagust, 1988). Currently, social-cognitive theories of learning prominently shape much of the current research on STEM student success. Bandura’s (1986) socialcognitive perspective postulated that an individual’s self-beliefs, cognitive processes, and learning environment all contribute to a student’s learning. This theory retained the idea that humans strive to figure things out, while adding the complexities of the psychological self and social interactions. We highlight three key concepts which are consistent with and informed by a social-cognitive theory of learning: metacognition, self-regulated learning, and self-efficacy. First, metacognition refers to how students make sense of their own learning process, including their strengths and areas for progress (Flavell, 1979). Seeing humans as agents in their own learning means they can be enlisted to improve their own success. Recent research demonstrates that metacognitive skills develop over time and are observably different when comparing introductory and senior biology students (Stanton et al., 2019). Although research on metacognition has been accumulating for decades, the recent proliferation of articles in STEM education journals and books dedicated to this topic (e.g., McGuire, 2015) has clearly raised the visibility of metacognition for STEM educators. Second, self-regulated learning refers to an intentional and iterative feedback loop involving self-assessment, evaluation of progress, and decision-making to modify strategies (Zimmerman, 1990, 2002). If students are intentional and strategic, having these metacognitive skills means they are more likely to engage in self-regulated learning; they are also much more apt to troubleshoot when facing learning difficulties (Schunk, 1995; Winne, 1995). Advances in technology and pedagogy have helped to support students’ self-regulated learning in today’s STEM classrooms (Garcia et al., 2018; Sletten, 2017). Third, self-efficacy refers to the self-perception students have for their capability within a particular domain or for a certain task (Schunk, 1991, 1995). Self-efficacy is domain-specific, meaning that this self-perception can vary widely within a person from subject to subject; one can have high self-efficacy in math and low self-efficacy in computer programming. According to Pajares (1996),

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efficacy beliefs help determine how much effort people will expend on an activity, how long they will persevere when confronting obstacles, and how resilient they will prove in the face of adverse situations—the higher the sense of efficacy, the greater the effort, persistence, and resilience. (p. 544)

Unfortunately, this means when people have low self-efficacy in a domain, they may avoid that subject; in one study of students in engineering, those with low self-efficacy who received a low test grade avoided subsequent study (Hsieh et al., 2012). Researchers are disentangling gendered norms within self-efficacy, as there is some evidence that self-efficacy is more predictive of persistence for women in STEM than for men (Hutchinson et al., 2013). The good news is self-efficacy can increase through smaller successes and effective feedback (Schunk, 1983), even in the most challenging technical areas of study (Hutchinson et al., 2013; Kinnunen & Simon, 2012). A fourth important concept, scaffolding, is guided by a sociocultural theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Much like scaffolding placed around a building while under construction, scaffolding in educational settings is an approach that provides learners with concrete supports as they are being introduced to new concepts or methods; over time, students are coached, and the instructor can slowly remove or “fade” those supports (Larkin, 2001; Palinscar, 1986). When the scaffolds are explained to students, they gain greater benefit because then they understand how to recognize the scaffolds, what they are intended for, how to use them, and for how long they will be present (Sabel et al., 2017).

Advances With these theories and concepts in mind, we turn to how these advances most often show up in the curriculum to guide STEM student success. First, we illustrate how faculty can provide guidance to students as they engage in preparation for class and what that scaffolding might look like, whether in class or supported by academic peer mentors. We also discuss the centrality of formative feedback for developing self-efficacy while practicing and learning new material. Often these strategies are embedded in class, through active learning strategies and in conjunction with peer instruction. Next, we outline potential pitfalls that can impede the effectiveness of these strategies and ways to counter them in support of student success. Finally, we underscore the critical importance of creating an inclusive classroom climate in support of STEM learning.

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Deliberate Preparation and Scaffolding Faculty create the goals they have for their classes, including what they expect the students to know at the end of each unit or demonstrate at the end of the semester through summative assessments. Deliberate preparation refers to guidance from the professor about how to prepare for class effectively. When faculty guide students’ preparation for that learning, students have a better opportunity to be successful. For example, providing students with “exam blueprints” outlining what will be assessed can help students by improving their expectations for the course (Young et al., 2019). In one case, when faculty provided online lectures geared toward preparing students for inclass work and activities and online homework questions, students improved their learning in an upper-level physical chemistry course, as demonstrated by an increase in exam scores by approximately 12% (Gross et al., 2015). In another case, online reading quizzes were found to be helpful for community college students to get ready for their learning (Pape-Lindstrom et al., 2018). Encouraging biology students to reopen quizzes near the exam time was linked to better performance in an introductory course (Walck-Shannon et al., 2019). At Xavier University, which produces the largest number of African American students with degrees in biological sciences, faculty altered their introductory course assessments to include metacognitive methods (e.g., opportunities for students to self-evaluate and remediate); without reducing the rigor of exams, faculty observed an increase in student pass rates by 10–20% (Carmichael et al., 2016). In another study, researchers compared a control section in general chemistry to a section that had metacognitive training and found the metacognitive training boosted student final exam performance by 10% among the learners who had previously been in the lowest quartile of achievement (Casselman & Atwood, 2017). Providing cognitive scaffolds in the form of an enhanced answer key with reflection questions can help students realize how they prepared and what they can do to improve, and these efforts are enhanced when students receive explicit instruction on ways to use the scaffolds (Sabel et al., 2017). Not all preparation happens while a student is enrolled in class; some preparation is offered through minipreparatory modules prior to enrollment. In organic chemistry, there is some evidence that a minicourse (3 weeks in duration) taken online beforehand can help to increase student performance in a subsequent organic chemistry course by approximately one-third of a letter grade (Fischer et al., 2019). Along a similar vein, for decades, spatial visualization course modules (e.g., one-credit minicourses) have effectively boosted the subsequent success of students in engineering (Sorby & Baartmans, 2000). In chemistry (Oliver-Hoyo & Babilonia-Rosa, 2017) and

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computer science (Crescenzi et al., 2012), the use of diagnostics with targeted remediation efforts is still developing. One advance in the area of scaffolding is having peer mentors involved, either by facilitating weekly problem-solving sessions (Reisel et al., 2014) or peer code review meetings (Pon-Barry et al., 2017). The peer mentors may be called study group leaders, peer leaders, peer assistants, or supplemental instructors; although these roles are all technically different, they all involve seasoned peers who have recently completed the course for which they are mentoring (Barnard et al., 2018; Bowling et al., 2015; Talbot et al., 2015). A primary benefit of peer mentoring is that newer students, whether studying computer science or precalculus, learn effective strategies as they practice difficult problems collectively, with sessions offered on a weekly basis to all students, not only to those struggling with the course (Liou-Mark et al., 2010; Pon-Barry et al., 2017). Courses that embed peer mentors reduce racial disparities in student performance (Peterfreund et al., 2008; Rath et al., 2007). Students benefit from learning from their peers, and in turn, peer mentors demonstrated increased commitment and confidence in their studies in STEM (Anagnos et al., 2014; Barnard et al., 2018; Bowling et al., 2015). Active Learning With Formative Feedback Opportunities for students to gain formative feedback, which is feedback intended to help students improve their learning and refine their emergent understanding, will help students prepare for their higher stakes assessments such as end-of-term exams. Active learning strategies allow students to gain formative feedback in real time. One common way to support active learning is by incorporating personal response devices, whether a clicker, a phone, or a tablet, as a way to gauge initial understanding and targeting common misconceptions among the possible answers so students can catch their own errors before a higher stakes exam (Keough, 2012). Another second common way is to engage students in peer instruction. This method, originally developed in physics education, enlists classmates with different answers to debate in order to revise and solidify their understanding (Mazur, 1997). Often, these two methods are combined. Faculty can pose questions that gauge students’ emergent understanding, to which students often engage in class individually, then with peers, before rechecking their understanding (Pearson, 2019). Students who use clicker questions to assess emergent learning are more likely to earn higher grades and were less likely to drop or fail an introductory chemistry course (Bokosmaty et al., 2019).

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A meta-analysis of more than 200 studies demonstrated that students enrolled in active learning classrooms observed greater student success, whereas students in lecture-based classrooms were 1.5 times more likely to fail the course (Freeman et al., 2014). Despite these positive outcomes, in reviews of peer instruction across biology, chemistry, computer science, and physics, researchers found the implementation of peer instruction varies (Crouch & Mazur, 2001), and in turn, so does the effectiveness (Vickrey et al., 2015). When applied in computing settings, researchers found students may leave peer-to-peer discussions with unresolved misconceptions; instructor intervention helped to improve understanding (Zingaro & Porter, 2014). Students may resist active learning exercises if they do not understand why they are engaging in active learning and if they are skeptical of the benefits (Finelli et al., 2018). Transparent communication can help students understand the reasons for engaging in particular tasks (Winkelmes et al., 2016). If students do not trust their instructors, they are less likely to engage in active learning (Cavanagh et al., 2018). Although research, drawn primarily from biology classrooms, has consistently underscored how active learning can close equity gaps for firstgeneration, low-income, underrepresented racial minority (URM), as well as female students (see Haak et al., 2011; Preszler, 2009), there is also some emergent work suggesting that there is still more work to do. Eddy et al. (2015) offered evidence that students, depending on gender, race-ethnicity, and nationality, vary in their anticipation of what peer experiences will be like within active learning exercises (e.g., inclusive or exclusionary). In addition, Cooper and Brownell (2016) described concerns from LGBTQIA students about active learning exercises for reasons of possible exclusion by peers. Further, Ballen et al. (2017) found that sense of belonging increased only for non-URM students during active learning. Although active learning does support student success in STEM, this is not the only essential feature of the classroom. There is also a need for inclusive practice. Instructors need to establish a sense of community in the classroom where students from varied social identity groups feel included and welcomed. According to Ambrose et al. (2010), students arrive in classrooms with complex social identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, and more). Inclusive teaching practices refer to a set of pedagogical approaches where faculty intentionally strive to recognize those identities as assets and foster a sense of belonging, often by supporting student agency and voice (Dewsbury & Brame, 2019). Communicating transparently improves the sense of

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fairness and trust with the instructor (Winkelmes et al., 2016). Ambrose et al. (2010) suggested that faculty can help students by actively working to dispel stereotypes and shape an environment where there are equitable interactions both from faculty to student and peer to peer. In addition, a study of successful African American undergraduate engineering students underscored how equality matching within faculty–student relationships, where faculty “treat students as an equal member in the quest for knowledge,” played an important role in fostering student success (Newman, 2011, p. 197). Furthermore, STEM classroom climate may be enhanced by small classroom sizes where connections to faculty may be more easily fostered, as illustrated by recent work in community college engineering classrooms (Hankey et al., 2018). Peers who share similar identities can also promote a sense of belonging that can improve persistence (Stout et al., 2011). Packard (2015) also underscored the need for inclusive mentoring by faculty and peer mentors alike, which can take the form of communicating belief in student success and seeing students’ identities as assets they bring with them into interactions (see Cohen et al., 1999; Pon-Barry et al., 2017). A recent NASEM (2017a) report, which focused on the contribution of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies to STEM student success, recommended expanding research and engaging in replication of research with regard to understanding the malleability of belonging and relevant interventions to foster belonging. Although this emergent work is encouraging, particularly for groups historically excluded from STEM, there is a need for further work to establish a stronger basis for understanding. The implications for sustained faculty development as a component of this expanded understanding, and for institutions as they aim to achieve equity in student success, will be an area of discussion in the third section of this chapter.

Student Success in Research and the Field To understand student success in STEM, there is a need to locate STEM learning within an expansive range of formal and informal learning spaces to include classrooms, courses, research laboratories, and the field. Indeed, STEM student success does not only reside within classrooms. Many students in colleges and universities are in emerging adulthood, a time when they are trying on professional identities (Arnett, 2010). Thus, it is not just about students seeing themselves as a science, technology, engineering, or math student. College is also a time where it matters if students can see themselves as a scientists, technologists, engineers, or mathematicians. Integrating students into professional disciplinary practices is important, and often takes

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the shape of undergraduate research experiences; this is shown in the large body of evidence around this practice and increased resourcing of undergraduate research across institutional type (NASEM, 2017b).

Theories and Concepts From a theoretical perspective, how do individuals develop a science or engineering identity? Holland et al.’s (1998) theory positions identity development as identity work, one where individuals navigate and negotiate identity within complex environments; self-understanding is situated within contexts of power and through interaction with others within educational settings. Identity work can be supported through the actions of faculty, mentors, and advisors who, through their credibility, are able to communicate a sense of recognition to students about their belonging in the field (Carlone & Johnson, 2007). Researchers have examined students’ identity work in engineering, which not only reveals the gendered nature of engineering but also underscores how sense of belonging may be threatened for those historically excluded (Gonsalves et al., 2019). Given how pervasive stereotypes are in science and engineering, students may engage in identity negotiations by contending with stereotypes as they strive to formulate their sense of what it is to become a “science person” for themselves (Schinske et al., 2016). Within STEM fields, although apprenticeship is emphasized, so is participation within a broader research team often involving newer undergraduates who work alongside upper-level students, graduate students or postdocs, and faculty (Aikens et al., 2016; Hauwiller et al., 2019; Packard et al., 2014). When the lab team is viewed as a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), novice students enter as community newcomers who learn from more seasoned members about particular research practices, undertake more central and complex tasks over time, and develop their identities in the field. Finally, the concepts of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1997) and social capital (Coleman, 1988) are both relevant. In order to be invited or accepted into a lab, a student often needs to know how to approach a faculty member or gain help to construct a compelling application. This knowledge is the cultural capital that many students do not have, meaning they are less familiar with academic environments and/or with processes to gain access to a science lab. In many cases, the lack of cultural capital in STEM is more salient for certain groups, including first-generation college students and community college transfer students (see Starobin et al., 2016), and this is a clear barrier to access to these excellent opportunities (Bangera & Brownell, 2014). Being part of a lab network creates so many opportunities

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for mentoring and connections that propel students into the future; social capital is a tangible benefit of participating in undergraduate research (Thompson & Jensen-Ryan, 2018).

Advances Next, we summarize findings about the benefits and challenges of undergraduate research within three contexts. We start with traditional undergraduate research experiences, on which much of the energy has focused to date. Then we focus on course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), particularly on their rise at community colleges but also their effectiveness at 4-year institutions. Finally, we turn to alternative research experiences that institutions are exploring when traditional or course-based research is not feasible. Traditional Undergraduate Research Experiences Traditional apprenticeship research opportunities typically involve a single student working under the supervision of a researcher on a project determined by the research mentor (Brownell & Kloser, 2015; Seymour et al., 2007). Positive student outcomes for undergraduates who engaged in summer research include increased knowledge, competitiveness for graduate school, and commitment to the field (Sadler et al., 2010; Seymour et al., 2007). Many benefits exist when students return for a second summer of research (Thiry et al., 2012). An entire volume (NASEM, 2017b) is dedicated to best practices in undergraduate research experience (URE) design, implementation, and assessment. Early research opportunities have been effective at retaining students from community colleges in STEM disciplines and increasing the likelihood that they graduate with a STEM degree (NASEM, 2017b). The CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP) provides community college students with a yearlong faculty-mentored research experience. This program is a collaboration among 10 associate’s degree–granting colleges within the City University of New York System. CRSP participants were more likely to transfer to a more research-intensive 4-year institution and reported an increased sense of belonging in college (Nerio et al., 2019). Another initiative featured a collaboration between community college faculty and students along with faculty at a private 4-year college, where the research capacity for community college faculty was expanded and the STEM transfer pathway was supported as illustrated by the number of transfer students and their heightened aspirations for graduate school (Hirst et al., 2014). Although it may be beneficial to have the uninterrupted weeks of summertime to work on a project, there is also a contrasting perspective

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that such approaches are more difficult to sustain for at least two reasons. First, one factor limiting the scale of students within summer research programs is the availability of faculty mentors. One viable alternative to a traditional apprenticeship model involves the team-based collaborative learning model (CLM), where a group of students work under the supervision of multiple instructors to conduct research together according to a defined curriculum. Within the competitive summer research program at Georgia State University, selected students were randomly assigned to a traditional apprenticeship model (AM) program, where they worked under the supervision of a research mentor on an ongoing research project, or they were placed in a CLM program. The CLM program produced student outcomes similar to the AM program, including but not limited to an increase in scientific research self-efficacy and science identity (Frantz et al., 2017). A second challenge to scaling undergraduate research is faculty lacking the capacity for summer research, particularly at institutions that are not research intensive, due to lab access or resource issues (Hewlett, 2018; Hirst et al., 2014). Bangera and Brownell (2014) discussed additional barriers to participation in traditional apprenticeship UREs, including the lack of awareness by many undergraduates about the existence of these opportunities, how to gain access to these opportunities, and the bias in how faculty select students to participate in research. They propose that by providing all undergraduates with access to CUREs, they can make scientific research more inclusive. Thus, we turn next to CUREs in order to examine what has been learned in that domain. CUREs CUREs involve embedding scientific research into courses where all students have the opportunity to ask scientific questions under the guidance of an instructor (Auchincloss et al., 2014). More CUREs now exist in order to structure access to this important opportunity as a component of students’ undergraduate STEM experience. The Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), out of the University of Texas Austin, is a great example of a CURE program that has engaged thousands of 1st-year undergraduates over the past 10 years (Beckham et al., 2015). The FRI program consists of a two-part series; firstsemester students enroll in a research methods course, and then they continue into one of 30+ research streams (e.g., big data in biology, geometry of space) where they participate in small group research, and have the option of continuing into a third semester, whether in the summer or sophomore year (see https://cns.utexas.edu/fri for more information). A large-scale study of this program revealed that students who participated in all three semesters of

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FRI were more likely to graduate with a STEM degree and to graduate within 6 years (Rodenbusch et al., 2016). In a high-enrollment CURE required of all introductory biology students, participation in a project examining point mutations in the tumor suppressor gene (p53) enhanced students’ ability to interpret data (Brownell et al., 2015). Instructors experimenting with onesemester CUREs find that these experiences contribute to students’ commitment to the field and sense of ownership over their lab work, whether at the introductory level (Chen, 2018) or upper level (Williams & Reddish, 2018). This evidence suggests that CUREs can result in student outcomes similar to traditional UREs; there are even networks that support faculty interested in this work (e.g., CUREnet). One exciting development is that CUREs have been demonstrated as effective and possible at a range of institutional types. CUREs have been a sustainable way for community colleges interested in promoting a culture of undergraduate research (Hewlett, 2018). The Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI), started at Finger Lakes Community College, is a national network of 115 community colleges focused on broadening participation in undergraduate research at community colleges and providing resources for community colleges to develop and implement research at their respective institutions (see www.ccuri.org). The CCURI model takes into account known barriers for implementation of research at community colleges and provides a set of recommendations for overcoming these barriers. Although CUREs can provide positive student benefits comparable to UREs, there are still barriers to implementation including faculty time, highenrollment courses, and lack of facilities and research infrastructure, to name a few (NASEM, 2017b). This has prompted a look into short-term research experiences (SREs), which include course modules to be implemented at the end of a traditional laboratory course. An example of an SRE is the San Diego Biodiversity Project, where students are involved in a broader multiinstitutional research project (between 2- and 4-year institutions) documenting invertebrate biodiversity on their campuses (Butler et al., 2014). Students expressed excitement about doing research in the SRE, because they perceived they were contributing to the broader scientific community and society (Hanauer et al., 2018). These types of experiences can make access to authentic research opportunities, although shorter in length, more feasible at a wider range of institutions, where the intensity of CURE experiences may be too challenging to bring to scale.

The Importance of Quality Mentoring We have discussed the importance of exposure to authentic undergraduate research as a critical mechanism for promoting student success in STEM.

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Whether supported through a traditional URE, a CLM-supported URE, a CURE, or an SRE, effective mentorship by faculty is crucial for students to obtain the full benefits of their research experience. A qualitative study examining negative mentoring experiences among life science undergraduate research students at 10 different institutions in the United States identified seven ways that students experienced negative mentoring: absenteeism, abuse of power, interpersonal mismatch, lack of career support, lack of psychosocial support, misaligned expectations, and unequal treatment (Limeri et al., 2019). Another study found similar results, which linked a negative summer research mentoring experience to plans to depart the field, as students question their belonging and commitment to the field (Packard et al., 2014). There is evidence to suggest that there is a great deal of variability in the quality of mentoring experienced. A recent report (NASEM, 2019a), The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM, summarized many challenges facing science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine mentoring that threaten quality. Much of the matching between mentors and mentees happens by chance; moreover, formal mentor training is not a common practice at many institutions, and the effectiveness of research mentoring is not typically taken into account as part of the criteria for tenure and promotion (NASEM, 2019a). Fortunately, the report also provided recommendations for how to make mentoring more intentional, effective, inclusive, and accountable. We point to multiple recommendations that are especially relevant. First, the report encourages the use of an evidence-based approach to mentoring. The research base has grown substantially, yet many are not informed by research as they engage. There are multiple effective organizational formats (including dyadic and group) as well as modalities (including online), and those designing mentoring need to be aware of these various options and what can make them more (or less) effective. Importantly, the report urged institutions to look at how to reward effective mentorship as a part of promotion and tenure, such as including statements on how the candidate has worked to improve their mentoring or evidence of coauthorship with students. If this is a critical part of faculty work, then it needs to be counted and contribute in a visible way. Otherwise, the resourcing will continue to be inadequate and mentoring will continue to vary widely in effectiveness and prevalence. Additionally, the report underscored the need to recognize and respond to identities in mentorship, particularly for those historically minoritized. Mentors need to gain cultural awareness and competence in order for their practice to be effective. The report also highlighted the problem of negative mentoring, and what is in place for mentors to improve their craft. Institutions need to be aware of the best practices in mentoring, provide the necessary mentor training and support for faculty,

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and hold faculty accountable for their work as mentors. This is not likely an easy task. This challenge to improve mentoring quality, consistency, and accountability is just one dimension of the challenge to promote and scale undergraduate research experiences. In order to carry out undergraduate research experiences at scale and promote student success in STEM, there is a need for serious time, for creating and sustaining authentic experiences and also for the quality of the mentoring. Given the overwhelming evidence linking undergraduate research to student success and its inclusion as a high-impact practice, it behooves institutions to think about how to provide this experience to more students, and not just as an elite experience reserved for some. This discussion prompts us to shift gears to discuss systemic reform for student success in STEM.

Systemic Change for STEM Student Success In this section, we address the need for systemic change in order to create STEM student success at scale. Although much is already known about how to promote student success in STEM, these efforts still largely occur within individual classrooms by a subset of faculty or involving students enrolled within specialized programs across a range of campuses. How do we propel more integrated, systemic change within and across institutions?

Theories and Concepts As described in the NASEM (2019a) report focused on improving STEMM mentoring, an ecological model is useful for considering the system of change, because our attention is drawn to macro-level (e.g., university policies on tenure and reward structures) and micro-level (e.g., faculty–student interaction) contributors as well as how factors are nested and interconnected to one another. In other words, it may be just as useful, for example, to consider how families and colleges connect to one another as how they each connect to students. And although for mentoring the quality of interpersonal interactions certainly matters in how mentoring is received, it is also the case that without significant resourcing and recognition, highquality mentoring is unlikely to become consistently supported throughout institutions. A similarly complex approach is necessary to change student success in STEM. Elrod and Kezar (2016, 2017) proposed a very useful conceptual model for systemic institutional change that can facilitate STEM student success. In their model, they illustrate a river analogy, where the river reflects the rapidly

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changing conditions within higher education. Those traveling along the flow of the river may encounter obstacles where their progress is blocked and team members may have to strategize within a “reform eddy” until they can break free of the obstacle. Leaders need to engage in vision setting and those working with leaders need to align their change efforts to that leadership vision in ways that leverage their institutional capacity; at the same time, leaders need to gauge their community’s readiness to undertake reform. Institutions can then begin to implement strategies and measure results, while feeding back into and informing the vision. Their model’s emphasis on assessing institutional capacity shares important features described by those using an ecological model to assess assets and gaps (e.g., Flynn et al., 2011).

Advances We advocate for at least three distinct threads that can help undergird systemic change for STEM student success. First, coordinated and sustainable faculty development efforts are needed that recognize the complexity of this work. Faculty Development Faculty need to change their approaches and also question their assumptions about learning and who can learn in STEM. Harvey Mudd changed how students enrolled in introductory courses by organizing sections based on students’ prior experience, so students with similar levels of prior experience were learning together; this effort created greater student success in subsequent courses and gender parity in the composition of computer science majors (Alvarado et al., 2012). Similarly, Carpi et al. (2017) described their institution’s commitment as a Hispanic-serving institution to integrate undergraduate research, with dramatic impact on STEM graduation rates. How do we get more faculty to change their introductory courses or majors in this systematic manner? Research on evidence-based practices to change instruction has grown in STEM fields (Borrego & Henderson, 2014). One promising avenue opened when faculty organized into learning communities of practice to change the culture (Herman et al., 2018). Faculty learning communities typically involve yearlong engagement of around a dozen faculty and/or staff (Cox, 2004). This approach is associated with “lasting and effective classroom reforms” (Sirum & Madigan, 2010, p. 198). Although having multiple entry points is useful in the form of one-time workshops, unfortunately one-time efforts do not create sustained change in the ways longer term community-based efforts do (Borrego & Henderson, 2014; Henderson et al., 2011). Although faculty learning communities can be effective, without intentionality, a campus could end up with a scattered set of individual faculty

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classrooms doing great work. Wieman et al. (2013) advocated for department- or unit-level change when constructing these reform efforts, as pedagogical change is unlikely to stick without department sponsorship or resourcing even if one individual faculty member is willing to change (Fagen et al., 2002; Wieman et al., 2013). The resourcing of this work needs to be serious too; whether this involves a multiyear investment in subject-matter experts or another form of faculty support, this can reduce faculty quitting the effort in the initial phases (Wieman et al., 2013). Much of the national effort is to help link institutions undertaking these efforts so they also have a national-level faculty learning community, whether HHMI’s Inclusive Excellence program or NSF’s INCLUDES alliance (see Table 7.2). This is not just about teaching differently; indeed, faculty may need to change their mindset (Rattan et al., 2012) in order to adopt evidence-based practices such as active learning (Aragón et al., 2018). This is further reinforced by efforts to engage faculty in inclusive teaching as the basis of reform, as doing so involves confronting one’s own positionality, privilege, and identity (Macdonald et al., 2019). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Alignment With Data-Informed Self-Assessment Second, we argue that STEM reform efforts, when effective, align with campus efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Many campuses are invested in DEI work, yet sometimes these efforts exist in parallel to STEM reform efforts despite the fact that much of the urgency around STEM reform pertains to DEI (Whittaker & Montgomery, 2014). Indeed, this disconnect can simply be an artifact of silos in university settings, where each office is undertaking different work. For example, after administering a campus climate survey to the campus, a DEI office may find that the climate in introductory STEM courses is hostile for Black and Latinx students. A campus with an NSF ADVANCE grant may identify the factors contributing to the departure of women and URM faculty but never connect with the student success or retention office that sees those same issues as affecting student departure. A team in the chemistry department with a disciplinary grant may undertake a review of STEM persistence and observe inequities in persistence when examining the progress of first-generation or transfer students. Unless someone on that chemistry grant team is also on a DEI steering committee, these two groups may not connect to compare notes and think together about improving outcomes. One key recommendation to promote STEM student success is to connect data analysis efforts, or at least the discussions that arise from those data analyses, across students, staff, and faculty. This might involve connecting those with ADVANCE grants to those with NSF INCLUDES or HHMI Inclusive Excellence grants. They might start by engaging in an institutional

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equity scorecard self-assessment (e.g., Bensimon & Malcom, 2012; Felix et al., 2015). In doing so, the institution does more than collect and analyze data; they reflect on what they see in order to formulate an action plan to improve equity. An initiative that also features institutional self-assessment, followed by external peer review and action planning, is just starting to gain traction in the United States. Sea Change is sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (https://seachange.aaas.org/) and is part of a larger international movement for gender and racial equity that was modeled after the Athena Swan initiative in the United Kingdom and Ireland; it has also recently expanded to Australia (where this initiative is called SAGE) and Canada (where it is called Dimensions). One component of this work involves recognizing institutions that have undergone this type of work through an awards system; in some cases, these awards are linked to funding. We anticipate seeing more work of this kind in the coming years that connects data systems, institutional-level action planning for equity, and certain outcomes. Indeed, some of the goal is to examine whether such systems can function as an institutional policy lever for change. One question is whether institutions will be compelled to undergo change; another is whether to change their requirements for tenure and promotion to provide rewards or recognition for better quality mentoring and contributions toward an equitable learning environment. In some cases, the hope is that an institution that has been recognized for undergoing institutional self-assessment and change processes will see better recruitment and retention of students, staff, and faculty; in other cases, countries have aligned certain grant structures to reward those who have earned such distinction. We acknowledge the visibility of the NASEM (2019b) report documenting the devastating impact of sexual harassment in STEM fields and the urgent call for institutional and cultural change. Much like the work on STEMM mentoring, we see the work on DEI and STEM reform as requiring organizational resourcing and recognition. If STEM reform work can align with these institutional equity efforts, then we anticipate more consistent resourcing and increased institutional priority. The more institutional policy can support certain standards for behavior, as well as retain self-assessment and reflection methods for meaningful action, the more likely it is for us to imagine changes on the student success front. College Completion and Affordability Third, STEM student success reform efforts need to be informed by and linked to efforts to improve college completion and affordability. Only about 60% of 4-year college students and 40% of community college students

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complete their degrees (Shapiro et al., 2018). In addition, although 80% of community college students intend to earn a 4-year degree by transferring, the reality is that only a small percentage of students successfully do (Belfield et al., 2017; Jenkins & Fink, 2016). For example, over 40% of students who transferred to 4-year institutions that serve higher proportions of higher income students earned a bachelor’s degree within 6 years of community college entry, compared with only less than one-third of students who transferred to 4-year institutions that enroll higher proportions of lower socioeconomic status students (Jenkins & Fink, 2016). Only 30% of part-time students transfer from a community college and complete a 4-year degree within 6 years in comparison to the 60% completion rate of full-time students (U.S. Department of Education, 2017–2018). The rising costs of college and lack of affordability for most students is well documented, making college attendance, completion, and transfer in a timely manner incredibly challenging for low-income students (Goldrick-Rab, 2016). The federal support for students receiving federal Pell Grants has only increased by approximately $1,000 over the past 2 decades. To place this in perspective, in Massachusetts, where we reside, that federal-level funding now defrays only a fraction of public in-state tuition, which has gone up manifold amounts in the same window of time (at our state flagship university, the increase is over $10,000). The public disinvestment in higher education in some states has placed the responsibility on the backs of families. However, some states are investing in providing free tuition statewide or regionally for community college initiatives—for example, Tennessee Promise (www.tn.gov/tnpromise.html) or Complete College Georgia (https://completega.org/). Although this work on opening access to the community college represents a significant step forward in access for many, we also acknowledge this is just one component in a larger system. In our work focused on STEM transfer initiatives, we know there is still further to go to improve the transfer function of community colleges. Those requiring developmental courses in math are least likely to transfer successfully (Crisp & Delgado, 2014). Labov (2012) elaborated that although many challenges face community college students planning to transfer in STEM fields, there are also advances, including community colleges offering 4-year degrees that may help. Campuses that work to become transfer-ready with institutional agents in place to promote transfer success can make a difference (Dowd et al., 2013), as can mentoring and faculty advising initiatives that become embedded into the institutional fabric (Bacon & Packard, 2018). We anticipate tremendous energy in the reform efforts that will directly or indirectly impact STEM student success. Change can occur both within individual classrooms and through multicampus initiatives. Although the

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work is daunting, we are encouraged by case examples of campuses working to create systemic change in support of student success with a deliberate equity lens (Elrod & Kezar, 2016; McNair et al., 2020). We hope readers will look closely at this work and be inspired into action. The more intentional we can be about these efforts, the more likely it is that we will see more STEM students achieve success and cross the finish line.

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Peterfreund, A. R., Rath, K. A., Xenos, S. P., & Bayliss, F. (2008). The impact of supplemental instruction on students in STEM courses: Results from San Francisco State University. Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 9, 487–503. https://doi.org/10.2190/CS.9.4e Piaget, J. (1936). Origins of intelligence in the child. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pon-Barry, H., Packard, B. W., & St. John, A. (2017). Expanding capacity and promoting inclusion in introductory computer science: A focus on near-peer mentor preparation and code review. Computer Science Education, 27(1), 54–77. https:// doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2017.1333270 Preszler, R. W. (2009). Replacing lecture with peer-led workshops improves student learning. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 8(3), 182–192. https://doi.org/10.1187/ cbe.09-01-0002 Rath, K. A., Peterfreund, A. R., Xenos, S. P., Bayliss, F., & Carnal, N. (2007). Supplemental instruction in introductory biology I: Enhancing the performance and retention of underrepresented minority students. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 6(3), 203–216. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.06-10-0198 Rattan, A., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). “It’s ok—not everyone can be good at math”: Instructors with an entity theory comfort (and demotivate) students. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(3), 731–737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .jesp.2011.12.012 Reisel, J., Jablonski, M., Munson, E., & Hosseini, H. (2014). Peer-led team learning in mathematics courses for freshmen engineering and computer science students. Journal of STEM Education, 15, 7–15. https://www.proquest.com/scholarlyjournals/peer-led-team-learning-mathematics-courses/docview/1614300661/se2?accountid=12605 Rodenbusch, S. E., Hernandez, P. R., Simmons, S. L., & Dolan, E. L. (2016). Early engagement in course-based research increases graduation rates and completion of science, engineering, and mathematics degrees. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(2), Article 20. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-03-0117 Sabel, J. L., Dauer, J. T., & Forbes, C. T. (2017). Introductory biology students’ use of enhanced answer keys and reflection questions to engage in metacognition and enhance understanding. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(3), Article 40, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-10-0298 Sadler, T. D., Burgin, S., McKinney, L., & Ponjuan, L. (2010). Learning science through research apprenticeships: A critical review of the literature. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(3), 235–256. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20326 Schinske, J. N., Perkins, H., Snyder, A., & Wyer, M. (2016). Scientist spotlight homework assignments shift students’ stereotypes of scientists and enhance science identity in a diverse introductory science class. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(3), Article 47. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0002 Schunk, D. H. (1983). Ability versus effort attributional feedback: Differential effects on self-efficacy and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(6), 848–856. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.75.6.848

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Schunk, D. H. (1991). Self-efficacy and academic motivation. Educational Psychologist, 26, 207–231. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.1991.9653133 Schunk, D. H. (1995). Inherent details of self-regulated learning include student perceptions. Educational Psychologist, 30, 213–216. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15326985ep3004_7 Seymour, E., & Hewitt, N. M. (1997). Talking about leaving: Why undergraduates leave the sciences. Westview Press. Seymour, E., Hunter, A., Laursen, S. L., & DeAntoni, T. (2007). Establishing the benefits of research experiences for undergraduates in the sciences: First findings from a three-year study. Science Education, 88(4), 493–534. https://doi .org/10.1002/sce.10131 Shapiro, D., Dundar, A., Huie, F., Wakhungu, P. K., Bhimdiwala, A., & Wilson, S. E. (2018). Completing college: A national view of student completion rates— Fall 2012 cohort (Signature Report No. 16). National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Sirum, K. L., & Madigan, D. (2010). Assessing how science faculty learning communities promote scientific teaching. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 38(3), 197–206. https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.20364 Sletten, S. R. (2017). Investigating flipped learning: Student self-regulated learning, perceptions, and achievement in an introductory biology course. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 26, 347–358. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956016-9683-8 Sorby, S. A., & Baartmans, B. J. (2000). The development and assessment of a course for enhancing the 3-D spatial visualization skills of first year engineering students. Journal of Engineering Education, 89(3), 301–307. https://doi .org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2000.tb00529.x Stanton, J. D., Dye, K. M., & Johnson, M. (2019). Knowledge of learning makes a difference: A comparison of metacognition in introductory and senior-level biology students. CBE Life Sciences Education, 18(2), ar24. https://doi.org/10.1187/ cbe.18-12-0239 Starobin, S. S., Jackson, D. L., & Laanan, F. S. (2016). Deconstructing the transfer student capital: Intersect between cultural and social capital among female transfer students in STEM fields. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 140, 1040–1057. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2016.1204964 Stout, J. G., Dasgupta, N., Hunsinger, M., & McManus, M. A. (2011). STEMing the tide: Using ingroup experts to inoculate women’s self-concept in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 255–270. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021385 Talbot, R. M., Hartley, L. M., Marzetta, K., & Wee, B. S. (2015). Transforming undergraduate science education with learning assistants: Student satisfaction in large enrollment courses. Journal of College Science Teaching, 44(5), 24–30. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/transforming-undergraduate-science-education-with/docview/1683316395/se-2?accountid=12605 Thiry, H., Weston, T. J., Laursen, S. L., & Hunter, A. (2012). The benefits of multi-year research experiences: Differences in novice and experienced students’

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reported gains from undergraduate research. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 11(3), 260–272. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.11-11-0098 Thompson, J. J., & Jensen-Ryan, D. (2018). Becoming a “science person”: Faculty recognition and the development of cultural capital in the context of undergraduate biology research. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(4), Article 62. https://doi .org/10.1187/cbe.17-11-0229 Treagust, D. F. (1988). Development and use of diagnostic tests to evaluate students’ misconceptions in science. International Journal of Science Education, 10(2), 159– 169. https://doi.org/10.1080/0950069880100204 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics. (2017– 2018, Winter). IPEDS outcome measures component. Vickrey, T., Rosploch, K., Rahmanian, R., Pilarz, M., & Stains, M. (2015). Researchbased implementation of peer instruction: A literature review. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.14-11-0198 Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press. Walck-Shannon, E. M., Cahill, M. J., McDaniel, M. A., & Frey, R. F. (2019). Participation in voluntary re-quizzing is predictive of increased performance on cumulative assessments in introductory biology. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 18(2), Article 15, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.18-08-0163 Whittaker, J. A., & Montgomery, B. L. (2014). Cultivating institutional transformation and sustainable STEM diversity in higher education through integrative faculty development. Innovations in Higher Education, 39, 263–275. https://doi .org/10.1007/s10755-013-9277-9 Wieman, C., Deslauriers, L., & Gilley, B. (2013). Use of research-based instructional strategies: How to avoid faculty quitting. Physics Education Research, 9(2), Article 023102. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.9.023102 Williams, L. C., & Reddish, M. J. (2018). Integrating primary research into the teaching lab: Benefits and impacts of a one-semester CURE for physical chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 95(6), 928–938. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs. jchemed.7b00855 Winkelmes, M. A., Bernacki, M., Butler, J., Zochowski, M., Golanics, J., & Weavil, K. H. (2016). A teaching intervention that increases underserved college students’ success. Peer Review, 18(1/2), 31–36. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/teaching-intervention-that-increases-underserved/docview/1805184428/se2?accountid=12605 Winne, P. H. (1995). Inherent details in self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 30, 173–187. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3004_2 Young, K. J., Lashley, S., & Murray, S. (2019). Influence of exam blueprint distribution on student perceptions and performance in an inorganic chemistry course. Journal of Chemical Education, 96(10), 2141–2148. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs .jchemed.8b01034 Zimmerman, B. J. (1990). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational Psychologist, 25, 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15326985ep2501_2

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8 INEQUALIT Y IN H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N Sociological Understandings of Student Success Josipa Roksa, Blake R. Silver, and Yapeng Wang

S

ociological contributions to student success are primarily focused on questions of inequality. Regardless of the theoretical tradition, the primary way that sociologists have examined student success in higher education is by studying how educational opportunities vary across sociodemographic groups. The two dominant sociological traditions reviewed herein—status attainment and social reproduction—have originated from concerns regarding socioeconomic inequality. Thus, much of the literature has centered on examining socioeconomic disparities in college experiences and outcomes. More recently, a growing body of research has also explored racial/ethnic and gender inequities in higher education. The literatures examining these three dimensions of inequality—socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender—however, are rarely integrated. Combining insights across the different dimensions of inequality would amplify their contributions to understanding college student success. The next distinguishing feature of a sociological approach is that it is fundamentally structural. Sociologists understand students’ experiences in college in relation to broader societal structures. Education is not an independent actor—it both reflects and contributes to inequality in society at large. This has several notable implications for how sociologists approach the question of student success. In the status attainment tradition, scholars consider structural features such as educational expansion, examine inequality across institutional types, and study college pathways (i.e., how students travel through college) as central aspects of success. In the social reproduction tradition, education plays a key role in reproducing social inequality, in part by converting family cultural resources into academic success. 179

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These ideas have implications not only for how sociologists study higher education, but also for how they conceptualize implications for practice. The primary goal of policies and practices is to reduce social inequality. Given that education reflects inequalities in society more broadly, that can be quite challenging, often making sociological implications abstract. More importantly, this approach highlights the centrality of intentionality. Because we live in a highly unequal society, the only way colleges and universities can reduce inequality is by being proactive and intentional. Higher education institutions will keep contributing to inequality in students’ experiences and outcomes until they explicitly acknowledge and address those issues. In times of increasingly scarce resources, challenging existing social structures that produce large inequities is as difficult as it is crucial.

Socioeconomic Inequality Socioeconomic inequality is at the core of both the status attainment and social reproduction traditions. Socioeconomic background is often conceptualized as a reflection of parental income, education, and/or occupation. Those various dimensions are frequently combined into a socioeconomic status indicator in the status attainment tradition or into different class categories such as middle versus working class or more versus less affluent in the social reproduction tradition. At times, scholars also examine those dimensions separately, paying particularly close attention to parental occupation and education. Until recently (e.g., Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Haveman & Smeeding, 2006), sociologists have not dedicated as much attention to income as a unique dimension of inequality. In this chapter, the term socioeconomic background collectively refers to these different dimensions of inequality. When discussing specific findings, we use the terms preferred by the authors. Although both the status attainment and the social reproduction traditions focus on questions of inequality, they approach those questions in notably different ways and rely on different methods (primarily quantitative for status attainment and qualitative for social reproduction). These differences emerge in part because of the unique origins of the two traditions. The status attainment tradition began by focusing primarily on social mobility and asking how individuals can obtain more education as a path to desirable labor market outcomes (Blau & Duncan, 1967). The social reproduction tradition emphasized the role of education in reproducing social inequality by rewarding the ways of knowing, being, and acting of socioeconomically advantaged groups (Bourdieu, 1973; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Over time, however,

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status attainment scholars have increasingly examined different structural dimensions of educational systems (such as expansion and differentiation), appreciating the constraints placed on mobility. Social reproduction scholars have also begun to consider ways in which cultural resources can be used to foster social mobility. The two traditions, however, remain largely separate and thus will be discussed in turn.

Status Attainment The question of college success in the status attainment tradition centers on examining the relationship between socioeconomic background and degree completion. In their seminal work, Blau and Duncan (1967) argued that education is the primary mechanism that links family background with labor market outcomes. Subsequently, a number of studies have suggested that there is no association between one’s socioeconomic origins and subsequent labor market outcomes among college graduates (Hout, 1988; Karlson, 2019; Torche, 2011).1 Equalizing educational attainment, especially the completion of college degrees, is thus a key component of reducing socioeconomic inequality. This raises the question that has animated much research in this tradition with respect to student success: Why are students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds less likely to complete college? This focus on degree completion means that status attainment scholars have dedicated limited attention to other outcomes such as grades (Charles et al., 2009) or skill development (Arum & Roksa, 2011). The first answer offered by the status attainment tradition regarding why students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are less likely to complete college relates to vertical stratification (i.e., inequality in access to different levels of education). Sociologists have long studied educational outcomes as a series of progressions through educational levels (Mare, 1980). According to the Maximally Maintained Inequality argument, socioeconomic inequality at a specific level of education will not decrease until virtually all students from socioeconomically advantaged groups reach that level of education (Raftery & Hout, 1993). By extension, inequality in college completion will not be reduced until virtually all students from socioeconomically advantaged groups complete college. Pfeffer and Hertel (2015), for example, showed that father’s occupation has a stable association with son’s educational attainment over time, despite dramatic educational expansion. The second explanation for less socioeconomically advantaged students’ lower likelihood of completing college degrees is horizontal stratification (i.e., inequalities in educational experiences at a given level of

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education). These inequalities include college majors, pathways through higher education, and institutional characteristics such as type and selectivity (for a review, see Gerber & Cheung, 2008).2 Lucas (2001) argued that socioeconomically advantaged groups are able to get access to qualitatively better education at any given level of education, which he termed effectively maintained inequality. This argument implies that students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds will have access to experiences or institutions that are less conducive to degree completion, including attending 2-year institutions or less selective 4-year institutions and pursuing indirect pathways through higher education. The empirical literature corroborates those predictions. Students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are less likely to enter more selective 4-year institutions (An, 2010; Davies, 1997). This, in turn, has consequences for degree attainment, as selectivity of 4-year institutions is related to the likelihood of persistence and degree completion (Brand & Halaby, 2006; Zarifa et al., 2018). Adjusting for self-selection, Brand and Halaby (2006) showed that attending an elite college has a causal effect on a higher probability of obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Moreover, students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to begin their education in community colleges (Lee & Frank, 1990; Milesi, 2010), and students who begin their postsecondary education at community colleges and intend to obtain a bachelor’s degree are less likely to do so than those who start in 4-year institutions (Long & Kurlaender, 2009; Milesi, 2010). To understand the role of community colleges in degree attainment, sociologists have noted their structural location in the system of higher education, and in particular their open admission policy. Community colleges admit all students interested in attending higher education, but then, faced with the reality of limited opportunities, often dampen students’ expectations, engaging in what Clark (1960) termed “cooling out.” Brint and Karabel (1989) extended this argument by describing the ways in which community colleges divert students from transfer pathways and channel them into short-term and vocational programs. The openness and broad mission of community colleges allows them to enroll a large proportion of disadvantaged populations, but a lack of structured pathways and adequate guidance, often reflecting resource constraints, means that many of those students do not succeed on their path to a degree (Rosenbaum et al., 2009). Recent research also indicates that for-profit colleges contribute to inequality in college completion between more and less socioeconomically advantaged students. For-profit colleges have experienced a dramatic expansion: Their enrollment increased by 400% between 2000 and 2010, whereas

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overall postsecondary enrollment increased by only 35% (Gelbgiser, 2018). Although for-profit colleges provide postsecondary educational opportunities for historically underserved students, including students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds, they may not help these students achieve success (Deming et al., 2012; Gelbgiser, 2018). Gelbgiser (2018), for example, showed that students from low and middle socioeconomic groups are more likely to attend for-profit colleges and less likely to obtain college degrees than comparable peers at other types of institutions. Horizontal stratification is not just about institutional types but also about students’ pathways through college. Sociologists have focused on two areas of divergence in college pathways: delaying college attendance and changing institutions. Students who delay college entry are less likely to complete their degrees (Andrews, 2018; Bozick & DeLuca, 2005; Zarifa et al., 2018). Notably, students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to delay college entry, which contributes to their lower likelihood of degree completion (Denice, 2019; Roksa & Velez, 2012). Similarly, students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to change institutions, which is also related to their lower likelihood of degree completion (Goldrick-Rab, 2006; Goldrick-Rab & Pfeffer, 2009). In addition, how students move across institutions varies by socioeconomic background. Students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to interrupt their enrollment when changing institutions (Goldrick-Rab, 2006) as well as experience reverse transfer (moving from 4-year to 2-year institutions; Goldrick-Rab & Pfeffer, 2009), both of which contribute to disparities in college completion. Roksa (2011) has argued that employment presents another central dimension of horizontal stratification. Students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to dedicate longer hours to paid employment, which is negatively related to degree completion (see also Bozick, 2007). Working during college has become more prevalent over time regardless of family background, but the inequality in hours worked between students from more and less advantaged families remained relatively stable and even increased for those attending 4-year institutions full time between the 1980s and 2000s (Weiss & Roksa, 2016). Working during college is thus another potential contributor to socioeconomic disparity in degree completion. Considering the Mechanisms The status attainment tradition has overwhelmingly focused on documenting the patterns of socioeconomic inequality, without explaining the mechanisms underlying these disparities. At times, the mechanisms are

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not discussed at all, or they remain largely implied but not studied. Some recent work, however, has aimed to be more explicit about the mechanisms underlying the observed patterns of inequality. For example, Alon (2009) proposed that two related mechanisms underlie socioeconomic inequality in access to different types of institutions: social exclusion (educational institutions set up exclusionary criteria that differentially impact students from different socioeconomic backgrounds) and adaptation (when exclusion criteria change, more advantaged groups are better able to adjust). For example, when competition for admission to college is high, the importance of test scores as an exclusion criteria increases, and the advantaged groups have adequate knowledge and resources to adapt to this change. Although focused on college access, these mechanisms could be extended to explain inequalities in degree completion. The most direct way status attainment scholars have considered what mechanisms link socioeconomic background and degree completion is by examining educational expectations. The Wisconsin model of status attainment, developed as an elaboration of the work by Blau and Duncan (1967), included variables such as educational expectations of students and their significant others (parents, teachers, and friends; Sewell et al., 1969). In addition to showing that educational expectations predict degree attainment (Bozick et al., 2010; Johnson & Reynolds, 2013), sociologists have examined questions related to change over time and congruence in expectations between parents and children. The association between socioeconomic background and educational expectations has weakened in recent decades, signaling decreasing inequality (Goyette, 2008). However, the gap between expecting to earn a college degree and reaching that level of education became more pronounced over time between students whose parents had at most a high school education and those whose parents completed college (Reynolds & Johnson, 2011). Stability of expectations and the congruence between parents’ and children’s expectations are also consequential. Long-term, persistent expectations are more efficacious at predicting college attainment than volatile expectations (Bozick et al., 2010; Johnson & Reynolds, 2013). This has implications for inequality, as students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds tend to have more stable expectations. Moreover, congruence between parents’ and students’ expectations increases the likelihood of enrollment in 4-year colleges as well as more selective institutions, even net of students’ and parents’ expectations (Kim & Schneider, 2005). However, it is not clear whether congruence in educational expectations between parents and students is related to degree completion.

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Social Reproduction Whereas the status attainment tradition provides extensive descriptions of the contours of inequality, the social reproduction tradition illuminates the mechanisms that produce that inequality. The central focus of this tradition is on cultural capital, which refers to individuals’ familiarity with the dominant culture, encompassing cultural knowledge, information, linguistic skills, and styles of interaction (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Recent conceptions of cultural capital in education have focused on students’ familiarity with the norms and expectations of educational institutions, which can facilitate successful interaction with institutional representatives such as teachers and administrators (Lareau & Weininger, 2003). The social reproduction tradition has illuminated how socioeconomic inequality is reproduced across generations, and in particular the role of schools in this process. Bourdieu (1973) argued that schools expect middleclass knowledge and styles of presentation (i.e., cultural capital), but do not teach them. Students from middle-class families, who understand the norms and expectations of educational institutions, can smoothly navigate school settings and are rewarded with better grades and continuation to higher levels of education. Educational institutions thus effectively convert family cultural capital into educational success, and at the same time hide socioeconomic inequality by implying that the process is meritocratic. In the higher education context, cultural capital plays an important role in both academic and social realms. Students from different socioeconomic backgrounds begin their college journeys with different understandings of norms and expectations about coursework and engagement with instructors. Collier and Morgan (2008) showed that students with college-educated parents are able to successfully interpret the implicit expectations of faculty members, whereas first-generation students frequently struggle to understand syllabi, anticipate criteria for grading, and communicate with faculty. Without a general familiarity with the norms of higher education, first-generation students encounter a range of barriers to academic achievement. Students from various socioeconomic backgrounds also enter college with very different conceptions of social engagement, which shapes their adjustment and engagement with peers. Stuber (2011) noted that uppermiddle-class students enter college viewing social interaction as a key component of the college experience, whereas working-class students are more inclined to focus on academic engagement and career preparation (see also Mullen, 2010). Middle-class students are thus eager to become engaged in various extracurricular activities, and they have the cultural capital needed to navigate the process of finding and selecting advantageous forms of engagement. Working-class students, however, may focus on academics and miss

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out on engaging with their peers, in both formal and informal settings. Less socioeconomically advantaged students thus often come to feel disconnected from their more advantaged peers (Aries & Seider, 2005; Lee, 2016), which can decrease their engagement on campus as well as their sense of belonging—experiences that higher education scholars have shown are related to a range of outcomes, from grades to retention and degree completion (Mayhew et al., 2016). Even among students who seek to become socially involved in college, socioeconomically advantaged students have greater ease auditioning several groups to find welcoming spaces quickly. Less socioeconomically advantaged students, who have more limited information, frequently enter and leave a number of social groups, engaging in an emotionally taxing trial and error process (Silver, 2020a). Although relationships with peers are complex and can have divergent implications for academic success, students who engage with friends around academic topics often find additional support and resources to facilitate their success (McCabe, 2016). Building friendship networks and participating in extracurricular activities are often conceptualized as social capital—resources that are embedded in relationships with others (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988). These relationships can provide access to information, opportunities, financial resources, and socioemotional support. Social capital complements cultural capital in contributing to social reproduction as the two types of capital can be converted from one form to the other and thus amplify inequality. One of the most extensive studies explicating the ways in which higher education reproduces socioeconomic inequality is Paying for the Party, which followed a group of women from the time they moved into their 1st-year residence hall through graduation and early postcollege transitions (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013). The authors described three main pathways students followed through the university, the most prominent of which were the “party pathway” (emphasizing social experiences) and the “professional pathway” (focusing on preparation for lucrative careers, often involving graduate school). Both required extensive social, cultural, and financial resources. The professional pathway was “narrow, fast-paced, and zero-sum” (p. 181). Students had to identify this pathway early, often apply to specific majors, and combine academic engagement with valuable out-of-class experiences such as internships. To be successful on the party pathway, students needed extensive financial resources, knowledge of the party scene, and familiarity with majors that were amenable to time-intensive social engagement. Less socioeconomically advantaged students did not fare well on either of these pathways and were disproportionately likely to leave the institution and end up with less desirable postcollege outcomes.

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The third pathway—the “mobility pathway”—held the promise of supporting less socioeconomically advantaged students as they sought upward social mobility through higher education. An effective mobility pathway needs institutional support to ensure that tuition is affordable, that students can navigate the university without parental intervention, and that coursework is accessible for students who attended underresourced high schools (as less advantaged students often do). This necessitates extensive resources for financial aid, academic advising, and late entry programs for some majors. Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) found that the mobility pathway lacked these kinds of resources and failed to support the vast majority of less socioeconomically advantaged students, with the exception of a small group of students who were selected to participate in a high-intensity scholarship program that provided academic, social, and financial supports. Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) also suggested that socioeconomic inequalities in students’ experiences and outcomes do not emerge simply because of students’ social and cultural capital, but also because of their parents’ social, financial, and cultural resources. Hamilton (2016) further explored this line of argument in Parenting to a Degree, which described three groups of parents: helicopters, paramedics, and bystanders. Whereas helicopters, who were mostly from affluent backgrounds, were ever-present and worked hard to facilitate their students’ social and professional success, bystanders, who were overwhelmingly less affluent, had little to no direct involvement in their students’ experiences in higher education, resulting in frequent mistakes and detours. In subsequent work, Hamilton et al. (2018) described more affluent parents as “college concierges.” These parents leveraged their cultural, social, and financial resources to provide students with support. Many called their students frequently, directing them toward resources like tutoring and extracurricular outlets. College concierge parents also intervened in housing situations, ensuring their children were comfortable in residence halls that provided a good fit for their social and/or academic priorities, and relied on their networks to provide internships and other career opportunities. Through these activities, affluent parents facilitated students’ social and academic success as well as career preparation. Conversely, less affluent parents often felt like outsiders—given their limited knowledge about the college context, they struggled to provide guidance and often left decision-making to students (see also Roksa & Silver, 2019). The focus of the social reproduction tradition on inequality, and especially the differential distribution of cultural (and other) resources by socioeconomic status, has often branded it as reflecting “deficit thinking.” Although it may appear as such on the surface, the social reproduction

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tradition does not blame students or families, but rather the educational system. Sociologists have been explicit that there is nothing inherently “good” or “bad” about different parenting styles or specific cultural understandings, behaviors, and preferences (i.e., cultural capital; Hamilton, 2016; Lareau, 2011). Educational institutions, however, are structured in ways that reward the parenting styles and cultural capital of socioeconomically advantaged groups. For example, higher education institutions reward students who know what office hours are, understand implicit norms and expectations about self-presentation and help-seeking, and know how to engage with faculty and peers (Jack, 2019). Less socioeconomically advantaged parents often provide a great deal of emotional support to their students, which is positively related to academic performance and persistence (Roksa & Kinsley, 2019; Roksa et al., 2021). These parents offer whatever resources they have at their disposal (Roksa, 2019), but their socioeconomically advantaged counterparts can leverage extensive social, cultural, and financial resources to aid student success. In short, it is not the students or families, but the institutions, that bear the responsibility for inequality and the onus for change. The Prospect of Mobility and Variation Across Institutions The social reproduction tradition has been critiqued for providing a myopic view of the role of cultural (and social) capital by emphasizing reproduction and not considering the prospect of mobility. Whereas Bourdieu’s original work (1973, 1986) argued that cultural capital is developed through socialization in the family and primarily plays a role in social reproduction, DiMaggio (1982) offered an alternative cultural mobility model. In this model, cultural capital can be acquired later in life, especially in schools, and can facilitate the success of less socioeconomically advantaged students. The literature on cultural mobility is not as robust, and most of it focuses on K–12 education (e.g., Dumais, 2006; Kisida et al., 2014; Roksa & Potter, 2011), but a few recent studies highlight how it may be manifested in higher education (e.g., Bueker, 2019; Jack, 2019; Roksa et al., 2020). Jack (2016, 2019) studied low-income students attending an elite higher education institution. A subsample of these students, whom he referred to as the “privileged poor,” attended boarding or preparatory schools before their transition to higher education. Boarding and preparatory schools offer a small number of scholarships to talented students from less privileged backgrounds, and students learn about those opportunities through their high school teachers or recruiters who visited their schools. Through exposure to elite high school settings, the privileged poor acquired cultural capital that facilitated their adjustment to college. These students knew how to engage with peers and “enter[ed] college primed to engage with professors and [were] proactive in doing so” (Jack, 2016, p. 1). Low-income students who attended

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their local public high schools, however, experienced formidable challenges transitioning to an elite college. Many of them acquired cultural capital over time, but it was often not until the end of college that they developed some degree of comfort interacting with faculty and peers. A related critique of the social reproduction tradition is that it assumes that all educational institutions are the same—they all expect students to possess middle-class ways of knowing and doing and thus reproduce social inequality. Although socioeconomic inequality is observed across all institutional types, some researchers have considered how students’ experiences may vary across different higher education settings. In a comparative study of an elite private college and a public state college, Aries and Seider (2005) found that lower income students at both institutions struggled with discrepancies between their sense of self before and during college as they gained new forms of cultural capital. However, heightened inequality at the elite private college amplified lower income students’ awareness of class-based differences—observed in how the students dressed, spoke, and interacted— between themselves and their wealthier peers. These students reported feeling uncomfortable, intimidated, and inadequate in ways that were not common for lower income students at the state college. To understand the experiences of students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds at elite institutions, sociologists have often relied on the concept of habitus, which complements that of cultural capital. Habitus refers to deeply internalized dispositions—ways of understanding and reacting to the social world as well as understanding one’s own location in it (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Transitioning to an elite educational setting may seem natural to students from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, but it can create a conundrum for less advantaged students as it can generate tensions between working-class habitus (found in their families) and elite habitus (prevalent at their colleges). Working-class students thus often feel like they do not belong either at home or at college (Lehmann, 2014). They may feel the need to create distance from their communities of origin (Hurst, 2010; Lee & Kramer, 2013), or come to view their family members as failures or cautionary tales (Langenkamp & Shifrer, 2018; Rondini, 2016, 2018). Lee and Kramer (2013), for example, described how working-class students perceived that their parents and siblings viewed them as “elitists” or “snobs.” This led some students to limit engagement with their families and others from their home communities who were not upwardly mobile. Social mobility thus has a notable price, which sociologists have described as the “hidden injuries of class” (Lehmann, 2014, p. 2). At the opposite end of the spectrum from elite institutions are community colleges (and arguably broad-access institutions more generally), which overwhelmingly enroll students from less socioeconomically advantaged

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backgrounds. Sociologists have dedicated less time to understanding the role of cultural capital in community colleges, although one notable line of inquiry highlights the challenges students face in navigating these institutions. For instance, Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum (2003) noted that community colleges frequently offer an abundance of potentially confusing choices, which pose challenges to student success. By contrast, institutional structures that minimize choices can help prevent students from making mistakes that could jeopardize their success (Person et al., 2006). Scholars in other fields have also recently highlighted the value of providing structured pathways in community colleges (e.g., Bailey et al., 2015). Although less socioeconomically advantaged students face challenges navigating all higher education institutions, some of the challenges may be amplified at community colleges due to limited resources, and thus a limited ability to provide the guidance, advising, and mentoring that could facilitate success of less socioeconomically advantaged students. Emerging research highlights another institutional context that may play a role in amplifying socioeconomic inequalities in student success. McMillan Cottom (2017) described how for-profit institutions prey upon students who have high aspirations for their careers but lack the cultural capital to successfully navigate higher education. Many less socioeconomically advantaged students struggle to understand differences between what McMillan Cottom described as nonprofit “traditional higher ed” and for-profit “lower ed.” She observed, for instance, that students who were unable to name specific academic interests were steered by recruiters toward generic “applied” technology or business programs with low completion rates and poor postgraduate outcomes. For-profit institutions’ recruitment and enrollment strategies rely on intentional sales techniques and capitalize on students’ anxieties, stress, and fear to draw less socioeconomically advantaged students to their institutions (Campbell & Deil-Amen, 2019). These strategies exploit students’ limited knowledge and understanding of higher education, further amplifying socioeconomic inequalities.

Racial/Ethnic and Gender Inequality Since both the status attainment and social reproduction traditions are rooted in concerns regarding socioeconomic disparities, scholars in both traditions have dedicated less attention to other forms of inequality. That is not to say that sociologists are not concerned with racial/ethnic and gender inequalities in higher education. There is indeed a strong and growing body of

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research on racial/ethnic and gender disparities in college, but that research is rarely integrated with research on socioeconomic inequality in a meaningful way (see a review in Arum et al., 2018). The underlying assumptions and approaches may be similar, especially in the status attainment tradition, but the literatures (and corresponding findings) exist in separate domains. The social reproduction tradition is particularly splintered in this regard, with separate literatures as well as distinct concepts and frameworks often being utilized to understand each form of inequality.

Status Attainment Racial/ethnic disparities in degree completion in national samples largely reflect inequalities in socioeconomic resources and high school opportunities (Ciocca Eller & DiPrete, 2018; Roksa, 2012).3 Colleges attended, however, also make a difference. Small and Winship (2007) showed that attending a more selective 4-year institution increased college graduation rates more for African American than white students, and that institutional selectivity accounted for more than one-third of the between-institution variance in African American graduation rates. Many of the debates in this literature are related to affirmative action and the mismatch hypothesis, which implies that students who are less academically prepared will perform less well when attending more selective institutions. Research finds no evidence of the mismatch hypothesis for any racial/ethnic group, and instead reveals the opposite pattern, wherein the likelihood of graduation for all groups, including racial/ethnic minority students, is higher at more selective institutions (Alon & Tienda, 2005). Similarly, Fischer and Massey (2007) reported that African American and Latinx students attending selective colleges who had SAT scores below the institutional average had higher GPA and persistence than their peers with SAT scores at or above the institutional average. Although attending selective institutions may be beneficial, underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups are still less likely to complete degrees than white students at those institutions (Alon, 2007; Alon et al., 2010). A range of experiences before as well as during college may contribute to these disparities. Charles et al. (2009), for example, reported that African American and Latinx students attending selective institutions were more likely to experience financial stress and various stressful life events within their family and friendship networks, such as unemployment, illness, divorce, homelessness, unplanned pregnancy, and deaths. These adverse life events were related to racial/ethnic minority students growing up in more segregated and impoverished neighborhoods. Both financial stress and exposure to stressful life events were related to academic performance and helped to account for some

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of the differences in academic achievement between white students and their African American and Latinx peers at selective institutions. College major has also received some attention in the literature on racial/ ethnic inequality in degree completion, but the findings are more mixed. Goyette and Mullen (2006) reported that African American and Latinx students were less likely to choose arts and sciences majors relative to vocational majors. Focusing on selective institutions, Charles et al. (2009) found no racial differences in choosing math and science courses and majors, net of controls for precollege and college experiences. Gelbgiser and Alon (2016) even reported that African American students were more likely to choose math-oriented majors than white students, controlling for a series of social, academic, and institutional factors. They also showed that math-oriented majors were associated with lower graduation rates, and that this was especially the case for African American students, which contributed to disparities in college completion between the two groups. College major is a central factor in the discussion of gender inequalities in higher education. Most of the literature has focused on documenting persistent gender segregation across fields of study and subsequent labor market outcomes (see a review in Gerber & Cheung, 2008). At least one study also noted a link between gender segregation across majors and degree completion. Alon and Gelbgiser (2011) showed that different majors provided different immediate learning environments regarding grading norms, academic intensity, and social support. Majors with a greater representation of women, such as those in the humanities and social sciences, were associated with a higher probability of college completion. Recent discussions of gender inequality in graduation rates (which now favors women) have often highlighted women’s stronger academic performance (Buchmann & DiPrete, 2006), although the extent of female advantage varies depending on students’ college pathways, such as whether they start in 2-year versus 4-year institutions or delay entry into higher education (Carbonaro et al., 2011).

Social Reproduction Although the social reproduction tradition has focused on understanding socioeconomic inequality, a few recent studies have explored how cultural capital and habitus may contribute to racial/ethnic disparities as well. Some of these efforts have involved distinguishing between two forms of cultural capital: the dominant form described by Bourdieu (1986) and nondominant forms, which include interactional styles used by historically marginalized groups to demonstrate authenticity and membership within a community (Carter, 2005).4 For instance, Johnson (2019) argued that African American and Latinx students who attended predominantly white high schools drew

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on dominant cultural capital acquired in those settings to comfortably navigate majority-white peer groups at their predominantly white university. Meanwhile, other African American and Latinx students relied on nondominant cultural capital to build relationships with same-race peers at the institution. By bonding over racial or ethnic similarity, these students were able to manage some of the stressors of college life at a predominantly white institution (PWI) and find valuable academic support within their social networks. In addition to shaping peer networks, cultural resources linked to ethnic identity may influence the strategies students use to navigate relationships with family during college. The literature on familism explores how cultural preferences for prioritizing family needs over individual interests shape the experiences of Latinx students. Research indicates that familism can encourage Latinx students to attend college closer to home (Desmond & López Turley, 2009; Ovink & Kalogrides, 2015; Turley, 2006). Although this tendency may lead students to enroll in less selective colleges than they are academically qualified to attend, familism also connects many Latinx students to valuable social and emotional support (Auerbach, 2007; Deutschlander, 2018). Deutschlander (2018) reported that low-income and first-generation Latinx students were more likely to benefit from a cultural capital intervention that enlisted parents as a source of support than other racial/ethnic groups. These studies expose ways in which cultural resources can at times be used to counteract racial and ethnic inequality in higher education, facilitating student success. However, scholars have also shown that race-based cultural resources can be leveraged to reproduce social inequality. Bonilla-Silva (2018), for example, described how social and geographic segregation shape the ways individuals think about race. In particular, he depicted “white habitus” as “a racialized, uninterrupted socialization process that conditions and creates whites’ racial taste, perceptions, feelings, and emotions and their views on racial matters” (p. 121). Although racist attitudes and stereotypes remain common (Bonilla-Silva & Forman, 2000; McCabe, 2009; Torres & Charles, 2004), the “white habitus” of many PWI faculty, administrators, and students leads them to minimize racism or claim not to “see [skin] color.” This can further marginalize racial and ethnic minority students and have implications for their success (Feagin et al., 1996; Willie, 2003; Winkle-Wagner, 2009). Although some studies of racial/ethnic disparities have relied on the key concepts used to understand socioeconomic inequality (such as cultural capital and habitus), most of the literature considering the role of culture in racial/ethnic inequality in higher education has emerged apart from those discussions. For example, research shows that many racial and ethnic

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minority students describe feeling simultaneously highly visible on campus—where their behaviors are monitored by faculty, other students, and campus law enforcement—and, at the same time, isolated from peers (Byrd, 2017; Hamilton & Nielsen, 2021; Ray & Rosow, 2012). Feeling marginalized on campus impacts student success in notable ways. A hostile racial climate can undermine racial/ethnic minority students’ feelings of belonging and eventually lead them to disengage and leave higher education (Feagin et al., 1996; Hurtado & Carter, 1997). With regard to gender, scholars have developed a set of theoretical explanations that consider how cultural expectations for gendered performances shape students’ experiences, but this research remains largely separate from the literature on social reproduction of socioeconomic inequality. Researchers argue that women are held to rigid expectations around the performance of gender and sexual behavior, wherein the dominance of men is reinforced (Armstrong et al., 2010; Hamilton, 2007). For instance, Armstrong et al. (2010) claimed that a “sexual double standard” allows men to engage in hookups outside of romantic relationships but stigmatizes women who do the same. Moreover, Hamilton (2007) showed how the premium placed on women’s ability to “acquire men’s erotic attention” (p. 145) not only perpetuates sexism on campus, but is also used to subordinate lesbian women in particular. These types of cultural meanings and expectations can marginalize women and undermine their success in higher education.

Intersectionality Sociological literatures on gender and race/ethnicity in higher education are often disconnected from each other as well as from research on socioeconomic background. Moreover, the conceptual tools used to understand socioeconomic inequality in the social reproduction tradition (primarily cultural capital, but also social capital and habitus) are not commonly employed in studies of race/ethnicity or gender in college.5 This limits the impact and coherence of sociological contributions to understanding success in higher education. It also precludes more complex analyses that examine how different identities intersect to shape students’ experiences and outcomes. Intersectionality presents a way of understanding the complexity of the social world by considering how the mutual constitution of categories of experience—such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on—impacts lived experiences (Collins, 2009). Attempting to isolate the influence of a singular sociodemographic dimension overlooks the ways these dimensions interact to produce unique experiences. Much research in the status attainment tradition has focused on isolating the extent to which a particular sociodemographic characteristic (e.g., race/

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ethnicity) is related to outcomes, net of other factors (such as academic preparation or additional sociodemographic characteristics like socioeconomic background). When considering interactions, status attainment scholars have more often focused on how some groups benefit more than others from a particular educational experience (e.g., interactions between race/ethnicity and college selectivity). Research is slowly moving in the direction of considering interactions across different sociodemographic identities. For example, Buchmann and DiPrete (2006) examined interaction between gender and socioeconomic background and showed that although women across socioeconomic groups, on average, had a higher college completion rate than men, women from less advantaged families (e.g., families with less educated or absent fathers) were more likely to reach parity or surpass their male counterparts in college completion. The social reproduction tradition has likewise typically focused on examining one dimension of inequality at a time. In addition to being grounded in Bourdieu’s work that focused primarily on social class, this is in part a reflection of the data and methods employed. Relying on qualitative methods, scholars rarely have large enough samples to consider the intersections of various identities. However, there are growing calls for intersectional research, such as the recent edited volume Intersectionality and Higher Education (Byrd et al., 2019). And indeed, some studies have begun to explore how multiple identities shape students’ experiences. For instance, Armstrong et al. (2014) showed how a “slut discourse” was used to create and reinforce socioeconomic boundaries. They found that public shaming of less affluent women was used to contrast more affluent women as “classy,” conferring status and dominance over their working- and lower-middle-class peers. The stigmatization of less socioeconomically advantaged women pushed them to the margins of campus social life. Moreover, McCabe (2016) and Silver (2020b) examined how race/ethnicity and gender intersect with respect to friendship networks and experiences in extracurricular activities. Racial and ethnic minority students tend to have small, tight-knit social networks, which is especially the case for racial/ ethnic minority women (McCabe, 2016). Tight-knit networks provide valuable socioemotional support—alleviating some feelings of race-based marginalization—but they can be less effective at providing instrumental and academic support. Focusing on students’ social experiences, Silver’s (2020b) ethnographic observations and interviews revealed that students relied on intersectional stereotypes to find inclusion. In social groups, women often became “group moms” or “nice girls,” racial/ethnic minority men performed as laid back “cool guys” or entertainers, and white men took on identities as group managers and intellectuals. These roles both reflected and reinforced

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patterns of social inequality found in society more broadly, amplifying disparities in students’ sense of belonging in college. Race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic background are not the only social identities relevant in the higher education context. Recent research has shown that students’ experiences vary notably by sexual and gender identity, with lesbian, gay, bisexual (Beattie et al., 2021; Lee & LaDousa, 2015), and transgender (Garvey et al., 2019) students encountering unique challenges in the academic and social realms of college. Sociological research on various dimensions of inequality, including sexual identity, immigrant generation, and disability, is largely absent in higher education (Arum et al., 2018). In addition to examining intersectionality, expanding the range of social identities considered presents a promising avenue for future research.

Implications for Policy and Practice Sociological arguments can be perceived as disheartening when examined in relation to policy and practice. Given that inequality in higher education is related to inequalities in society more broadly, as long as we live in an unequal society (and in some respects increasingly so, given growing income inequality), higher education will remain unequal. The status attainment literature shows that socioeconomic inequality persists despite a major expansion of higher education (Pfeffer & Hertel, 2015; Roksa et al., 2007). And even when equality is achieved at one level of education, it often continues at other levels (Torche, 2011) or shifts to differences in students’ experiences (Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013). Moreover, even when explicitly racist and sexist policies are eliminated, the effects of histories of exclusion persist (England & Li, 2006; Hamilton, 2014; Hamilton & Nielsen, 2021), as do the more subtle forms of color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2018). Inequality is pernicious and difficult to eliminate. That reality notwithstanding, sociological studies often offer implications for policy and practice in their conclusions. In the status attainment tradition, those implications are often abstract. For example, one way to reduce inequality in degree completion is to eliminate inequality in access to different types of institutions, including 2-year versus 4-year colleges and 4-year institutions of various levels of selectivity. That is a tall order. A small number of studies conducted by sociologists address specific policies, such as affirmative action (e.g., Alon & Tienda, 2005; Fischer & Massey, 2007) or financial aid (e.g., Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Goldrick-Rab et al., 2016), although there is extensive work on both of these topics in other fields. In the social reproduction tradition, recommendations offered are not small tweaks to existing practices but fundamental reconceptualization of

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how institutions are structured and how they provide (or deny) opportunities to different groups of students (e.g., Armstrong & Hamilton, 2013; Hamilton & Nielsen, 2021). For instance, Armstrong and Hamilton (2013) recommended that universities curtail the party pathway, expand access to the professional pathway, and develop a more robust mobility pathway for less socioeconomically advantaged students. These efforts would require large-scale changes within universities, such as the addition of intensive personalized advising, extensive revision of the curriculum, and serious attention to Greek life (and the party scene more generally). Moreover, they would necessitate profound shifts in government policies, including increased funding for public higher education in order to decrease the pressure on colleges and universities to cater to those who can pay full tuition and instead attend to the needs of less affluent students. Absent those changes, practitioners are urged to be aware of differences in social and cultural resources and how the unequal distribution of those resources shapes students’ experiences and outcomes. Some studies do offer more narrow implications that will not eliminate inequality but can make a difference in students’ experiences and outcomes in the present moment. For example, higher education institutions can change how information and resources are offered. When resources are mandatory or integrated within the curriculum, they tend to be more effective at promoting success for students from diverse backgrounds (Person et al., 2006; Roksa & Silver, 2019).6 Likewise, research shows that building opportunities for faculty-facilitated dialogue into the classroom setting can foster more positive interactions across dimensions of racial/ethnic difference, creating a more welcoming campus environment that supports the success of diverse groups of students (Reyes, 2018; Saenz et al., 2007). Specific changes, such as explaining office hours, keeping dining halls open during breaks, and creating employment opportunities that connect faculty and students, can make a difference for low-income students, even though more extensive structural changes in both college and high school are needed for transformative impact (Jack, 2019). Perhaps most notably, the sociological literature highlights the role of intentionality. Inequality will not change unless we directly, actively, and continuously work to combat it. Racial/ethnic disparities will not dissipate simply because higher education has more diverse student bodies, nor will gender inequities in fields of study disappear by simply enrolling women in male-dominated fields. Racial/ethnic minorities face ongoing marginalization in higher education (Espenshade & Radford, 2013; Winkle-Wagner, 2009); students from less socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds feel out of place, especially at selective institutions (Aries & Seider, 2005; Jack,

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2019; Mullen, 2010); and women encounter exclusion in male-dominated fields (Blickenstaff, 2005; Gayles & Ampaw, 2014). When students are left to their own devices in the social and extracurricular realm, women are pressured to become “group moms” and racial/ethnic minority men are sidelined as “entertainers” (Silver, 2020b). By simply bringing students to campus without directly addressing inequality or providing students with the tools necessary to engage with diversity, higher education will continue to reproduce social disparities. If not uplifting, the sociological account is sobering and uniquely illuminating given the pronounced inequalities in higher education, which persist despite decades of change and discussions about reducing inequality. Some sociologists have argued that a group’s ability to mobilize politically is a necessary—if not always sufficient—condition for altering the patterns of inequality in higher education (Karen, 1991a, 1991b; Okechukwu, 2019). Others have called for collective action by various stakeholders and collaboration across institutions to provide a new vision for higher education (Arum & Roksa, 2011). At the end of the day, although none of us can change structures on our own, we all play a role in maintaining them, unless we are explicitly and directly contesting them. Sociological literature may not prescribe a specific course of action, but it does offer a call to action—a call that each of us can respond to in our own way.

Notes 1. A few recent studies have raised questions about and nuanced that argument (e.g., Manzoni & Streib, 2019; Witteveen & Attewell, 2017; Zhou, 2019). 2. Scholars across other disciplines have explored similar questions about selectivity, institutional type, and college major. We focus herein on reviewing only the sociological literature. Moreover, sociological literature on college major is focused primarily on gender, and thus is discussed in a subsequent section. 3. For consistency, in this section, we use the terms African American and Latinx to refer to those two traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic minority groups in higher education, although other terms such as Black, Latino, and Hispanic may be used across various studies. 4. Scholars in other fields have similarly argued for the importance of considering nondominant forms of cultural capital (e.g., Yosso, 2005). 5. Although this line of inquiry is more prevalent in K–12 education. 6. Although not written by sociologists, Redesigning America’s Community Colleges makes a compelling argument regarding the importance of structure (Bailey et al., 2015).

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Desmond, M., & López Turley, R. N. (2009). The role of familism in explaining the Hispanic-White college application gap. Social Problems, 56(2), 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2009.56.2.311 Deutschlander, D. (2018). Cultural capital and students’ experiences in college: The role of parents in facilitating students’ success [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Virginia. DiMaggio, P. (1982). Cultural capital and school success: The impact of status culture participation on the grades of US high school students. American Sociological Review, 47(2), 189–201. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094962 Dumais, S. A. (2006). Early childhood cultural capital, parental habitus, and teachers’ perceptions. Poetics, 34(2), 83–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .poetic.2005.09.003 England, P., & Li, S. (2006). Desegregation stalled: The changing gender composition of college majors, 1971–2002. Gender & Society, 20(5), 657–677. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0891243206290753 Espenshade, T. J., & Radford, A. W. (2013). No longer separate, not yet equal: Race and class in elite college admission and campus life. Princeton University Press. Feagin, J. R., Vera, H., & Imani, N. (1996). The agony of education: Black students at a White university. Routledge. Fischer, M. J., & Massey, D. S. (2007). The effects of affirmative action in higher education. Social Science Research, 36(2), 531–549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j .ssresearch.2006.04.004 Garvey, J. C., Viray, S., Stango, K., Estep, C., & Jaeger, J. (2019). Emergence of third spaces: Exploring Trans students’ campus climate perceptions within collegiate environments. Sociology of Education, 92(3), 229–246. https://doi .org/10.1177/0038040719839100 Gayles, J. G., & Ampaw, F. (2014). The impact of college experiences on degree completion in STEM fields at four-year institutions: Does gender matter? The Journal of Higher Education, 85(4), 439–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022154 6.2014.11777336 Gelbgiser, D. (2018). College for all, degrees for few: For-profit colleges and socioeconomic differences in degree attainment. Social Forces, 96(4), 1785–1824. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soy022 Gelbgiser, D., & Alon, S. (2016). Math-oriented fields of study and the race gap in graduation likelihoods at elite colleges. Social Science Research, 58, 150–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.03.005 Gerber, T. P., & Cheung, S. Y. (2008). Horizontal stratification in postsecondary education: Forms, explanations, and implications. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 299–318. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134604 Goldrick-Rab, S. (2006). Following their every move: An investigation of social-class differences in college pathways. Sociology of Education, 79(1), 67–79. https://doi .org/10.1177/003804070607900104 Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the price: College costs, financial aid, and the betrayal of the American dream. University of Chicago Press.

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engineering students. Sociology of Education, 92(1), 1–20. https://doi .org/10.1177/0038040718817064 Johnson, M. K., & Reynolds, J. (2013). Educational expectation trajectories and attainment in the transition to adulthood. Social Science Research, 42(3), 818– 835. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.12.003 Karen, D. (1991a). “Achievement” and “ascription” in admission to an elite college: A political-organizational analysis. Sociological Forum, 6(2), 349–380. https:// link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01114397 Karen, D. (1991b). The politics of class, race, and gender: Access to higher education in the United States, 1960–1986. American Journal of Education, 99(2), 208–237. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/443979 Karlson, K. B. (2019). College as equalizer? Testing the selectivity hypothesis. Social Science Research, 80, 216–229. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.12.001 Kim, D. H., & Schneider, B. (2005). Social capital in action: Alignment of parental support in adolescents’ transition to postsecondary education. Social Forces, 84(2), 1181–1206. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0012 Kisida, B., Greene, J. P., & Bowen, D. H. (2014). Creating cultural consumers: The dynamics of cultural capital acquisition. Sociology of Education, 87(4), 281–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040714549076 Langenkamp, A. G., & Shifrer, D. (2018). Family legacy or family pioneer? Social class differences in the way adolescents construct college-going. Journal of Adolescent Research, 33(1), 58–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558416684951 Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. University of California Press. Lareau, A., & Weininger, E. B. (2003). Cultural capital in educational research: A critical assessment. Theory and Society, 32(5–6), 567–606. https://link.springer .com/article/10.1023/B:RYSO.0000004951.04408.b0 Lee, E. M. (2016). Class and campus life: Managing and experiencing inequality at an elite college. Cornell University Press. Lee, E. M., & Kramer, R. (2013). Out with the old, in with the new? Habitus and social mobility at selective colleges. Sociology of Education, 86(1), 18–35. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0038040712445519 Lee, E. M., & LaDousa, C. (2015). Being “the gay” on campus. In E. M. Lee & C. LaDousa (Eds.), College students’ experiences of power and marginality: Sharing spaces and negotiating differences (pp. 169–185). Routledge. Lee, V. E., & Frank, K. A. (1990). Students’ characteristics that facilitate the transfer from two-year to four-year colleges. Sociology of Education, 63(3), 178–193. https://doi.org/10.2307/2112836 Lehmann, W. (2014). Habitus transformation and hidden injuries: Successful working-class university students. Sociology of Education, 87(1), 1–15. https://doi .org/10.1177/0038040713498777 Long, B. T., & Kurlaender, M. (2009). Do community colleges provide a viable pathway to a baccalaureate degree? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(1), 30–53. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373708327756

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9 CRITICAL AND POSTSTRUCTURAL C O N S I D E R AT I O N S F O R COLLEGE STUDENT SUCCESS Jodi L. Linley, Alex C. Lange, and Nicholas R. Stroup

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his volume illustrates the varied ways different scholars conceptualize and study college student success. In this chapter, we undertook a different examination of success; rather than exploring the concept from a disciplinary perspective, we discuss it from a paradigmatic viewpoint. In the following, we consider and challenge the concept of college student success through critical and poststructural theoretical perspectives informed by the history of higher education and the power dynamics involved in defining success. The history of U.S. higher education is inextricably tied to legacies of exclusion and colonization (Patel, 2016; Thelin, 2011); these forces, in turn, produce and reinforce certain notions of success. The version of success embedded in whiteness goes: If you simply pull your bootstraps up and get top grades in high school, you will earn entry into a prestigious institution of higher education (Goldrick-Rab, 2016). Then, if you integrate academically and socially (Braxton et al., 2004; Tinto, 1993), by learning and conforming to the hegemonic norms of that institution (Weidman, 1989), you will earn good grades, graduate, and secure a job in the work world where you will make a good salary and easily repay any debt you incurred to get your degree. This version of success reinforces (white) ideals of the individual student as the bearer of responsibility for success (Bensimon, 2007) and higher education as finite property to be hoarded (Harris, 1993). It ignores the racist histories of prestigious white institutions long characterized by systemic 208

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exclusion in order to produce white student bodies and alumni (Karabel, 2005). It elides the histories of institutions, such as historically Black colleges and universities (Anderson, 2010) or normal schools (Ogren, 2003), that have long welcomed and fostered successful students that elite predominantly white universities would not accept. The air of legitimacy that this predominant version of success carries with it has influenced the organizational identity development of new institutional types, such as HispanicServing Institutions (Garcia, 2017) and Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (Nguyen et al., 2018). It also leaves the historically entrenched markers of success for white men and white institutions untroubled and normalized (Palmer & Walker, 2019). Although the massification of higher education extended postsecondary educational opportunities to more people beyond white men (Gumport et al., 1997), the stratified system that resulted reifies and protects social advantage for the most elite and privileged (Cottom, 2017; Labaree, 2017). Look, for example, at racial enrollment trends. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are highly represented among community college enrollments and for-profit degree programs—institutions at the bottom of the stratified system—whereas white students remain highly represented at the top of the system in public and private nonprofit 4-year institutions (de Brey et al., 2019). Although BIPOC enrollment at elite institutions has increased over time, the effects of racism extend well beyond one’s college career to a lifetime of income and wealth inequality, most notably between Black and white communities (Chetty et al., 2019). Persistent racial inequities point to the perspectivelessness of common notions of success. Perspectivelessness is a concept coined by critical legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1988) in her essay about curricula and pedagogies that normalize the myth of objectivity in law and legal discourse. Crenshaw argued that the supposed neutrality of legal education discounts “the relevance of any particular perspective . . . by positing an analytical stance that has no specific cultural, political, or class characteristics” (p. 2), but neutrality and objectivity are embodiments of a “white, middle-class world view” (p. 3). By teaching from a perspectiveless viewpoint, law schools socialize their students to the false belief in objectivity, as if it were possible to “create, weigh, and evaluate rules and arguments in ways that neither reflect nor privilege any particular perspective or world view” (p. 2). We extend this concept of perspectivelessness to notions of success in higher education. Namely, the mythology behind the American Dream declares that one only needs to work hard to achieve success, whatever that may be. For many in the United States, the American Dream ideology requires one to attend college and earn a degree to see substantial returns on that investment. Indeed, students often pursue higher education as a

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private good, one that might increase their own social position (Labaree, 2017). But students start from different positions, so whereas some hope to gain social access through higher education, others are seeking to maintain their social advantage (Labaree, 2017). Although higher education is often discussed as an equalizing agent, it actually maintains stratification of racial, class, and gender inequities. As students access higher education from different social locations and positions, these hierarchies often become reinforced rather than flattened as a result of attendance. For instance, scholars note how higher education may effectively maintain inequality by giving those from higher social classes greater access to selective institutions (Alon, 2009). In other words, students with greater social advantage maintain those benefits through attending well-resourced institutions that bestow upon them greater access to networks and resources for future gain. Further, the good being sought is shaped by whiteness. Institutions may have opened their doors to BIPOC students, but they maintained the white institutional norms that were ingrained more than 200 years prior as if those norms were somehow neutral. Are these the conditions under which all students can succeed? Scholars of student success have by and large fallen into line with those norms, and they often measure success outcomes from a distant position that they suggest might be objective. This form of perspectivelessness perpetuates the dominant postpositivist paradigm that seeks to measure and replicate social phenomena as if “any research with people—who are not inanimate, static, and stable—can be replicated” (St. Pierre, 2016, p. 27). What postpositivism avoids is measuring the contexts and systems in which people’s lives happen; a postpositivist paradigm does not account for the role of oppression in student success. In this chapter, we offer critical and poststructural theories as a prism to examine and trouble the concept of college student success. The term critical here goes beyond its everyday meaning of important or crucial; as we will explain, critical theory is a philosophical paradigm that guides socially just research and practice. With poststructuralism, these theories become a method to tease apart and reconstitute fragmented meanings of societal understandings. We apply both critical and poststructural approaches as used by educational researchers and theorists to trouble prevailing notions of student success. The previous book chapters generally offer conceptions of success from disciplinary standpoints that bound knowledge to a particular inquiry of interest, whereas critical and poststructural theories here serve as cross-disciplinary lenses through which one might bring new or further attention to power, oppression, and discourse. Although disciplines and fields act as containers of knowledge, the paradigmatic perspectives we discuss act as a prism through which to examine those containers.

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We have organized this chapter into four sections. We first provide an overview of critical and poststructural theories, noting their distinctions and commonalities, presenting them as a metaphorical prism through which student success notions might be viewed. Second, we provide a brief overview of current scholarship that challenges taken-for-granted notions of college student success from critical and poststructural perspectives. Third, we discuss three questions imbued by this more critical view of student success. We conclude the chapter by looking forward, questioning how success is a worthy measure of further study. Ultimately, we argue that the prism of critical and poststructural perspectives challenges the presumed assumptions behind success as a righteous pursuit of educators. Simultaneously, this prism prompts more questions than answers to how one should define success, emphasizing the process of defining success is as important as the definitional boundaries of success one constructs. Before outlining critical and poststructural theories, we provide an account of our collective and individual positionalities that situate how we hold the prism we present here.

Positionality We each come to this chapter as scholars who held careers as full-time educators on college campuses. Though our responsibilities and reporting units varied, we each worked to help students succeed in college. Also, we have each achieved some degree of college student success, as we either have or are currently pursuing terminal degrees. Our embodied experiences of being classified as successful along our journeys inform how we think about notions of student success. We wrote this chapter while our time overlapped at the University of Iowa. Our scholarly interests include critical conceptions of student socialization, development, and success. We all identify as queer and one of us as transgender; we bring our lived experiences of working and studying in cisheteronormative environments to our work. We each also benefit from whiteness to various degrees, both personally and systemically. Our individual and collective work—both as educators and scholars— makes us want everyone to succeed in college. Simultaneously, we wonder if dominant perspectives of student success perpetuate a vision of degree progress and completion that validates higher education as a competitive, private commodity and diminishes it as a public good accessible to all. We consider the consequences of the definitions we adopt and employ. Whose definition of success should we as researchers and administrators emphasize and prioritize? Scholars’ definitions? Those of administrators or policymakers? What about students themselves? It is from these questions and experience we write this chapter. Next we further detail our individual positionalities.

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Linley (she/her) grew up on a farm in a rural area where going to college was not an expectation. She breezed through elementary and secondary schooling and thought she was prepared for college. Her adjustment to a large institution from a remote, rural setting was difficult, though, and she spent a semester on academic probation in her 1st year of college. Her sense of success shifted away from grades and schooling during college toward her work experiences, especially those in first-year experience initiatives such as admissions and orientation. Her conception of success became much more closely tied to purpose, and she sought experiences that helped her define and refine her sense of purpose. Not focusing on grades had a lasting impact and almost prevented her from pursuing graduate education. She was admitted conditionally to one master’s program. As a master’s student, she began to thrive again academically. Her academic success in a master’s program and later in a doctoral program is a reflection of curricula and experiences connected to Linley’s sense of purpose. Linley is now a tenured associate professor of higher education and student affairs. She studies college student meaning-making about campus culture and campus diversity messaging, minoritized (namely, LGBTQ+) college student success, and higher education socialization. In her long-standing career in student affairs, Linley coordinated first-year experience programs, as well as success programs aimed to empower BIPOC, low-income, and first-generation students and faculty at predominantly white institutions. As a student, Lange (they/them) has always been good at school. Living in the Ft. Lauderdale-Miami area, Lange’s friend groups, neighborhoods, and schooling environments were composed of people of various races and ethnicities. Although never a top or straight-A student, they knew how to do well enough to earn satisfactory grades in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education; their involvement in clubs and organizations was the way they often achieved success. Lange’s attempts to do well enough were a way of keeping loved ones at a distance to not have their sexuality or gender identity be an issue. Lange wound up being a direct admit to an honors residential college located on its own campus within a larger university. The experience humbled Lange—a first-generation college student—as they never believed themselves to be as smart as their peers. Over time, however, faculty and peers helped Lange rethink what counted as success. Instead of grades and degree completion, learning as a value and practice became dominant. As a student affairs educator, Lange promoted students’ success through LGBTQ support services and leadership development. Their most recent work examines how transgender students get into and experience college. Through this research, Lange has worked alongside transgender students to understand how they might define success for themselves and their peers that conforms to and departs from the current student success research.

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Stroup (he/him) attended primary and secondary schools that were racially and ethnically diverse, and he benefited greatly from the extra attention he received because he was a white kid in those systems. Though labeled smart by others, Stroup was nearly dismissed from his magnet high school due to bad grades and struggled with academic transitions when moving between secondary and postsecondary institutions. He felt shame in accessing resources designed to raise his grades in college and covered over his classroom struggles by pursuing smart-sounding cocurricular activities. Upon self-reflection, Stroup began wondering who set up educational systems to impose psychological burdens and how students could use their agency to resist while still embracing schools as places to learn. Prior to doctoral study, Stroup worked to support the academic mission of his employing schools in the functional areas of academic advising, orientation, and residential education. His research now focuses on global postsecondary socialization theories and graduate education. In his teaching, Stroup asks students to interrogate what constitutes success in their personal higher education journeys.

An Overview of Critical and Poststructural Theories When light passes through a prism, the light refracts and disperses into various different wavelengths. This dispersal of light appears in various colors received by the eye and interpreted as color in the brain. This refraction allows individuals to examine the components of light separately (e.g., red, orange, blue, violet) rather than observe it all at once (i.e., in its white form). Extending the metaphor to our chapter, a prism composed of critical and poststructural theories allows researchers to examine different components of power and success (as individual colors) rather than study the phenomena all at once (as white light). In this section, we provide a brief overview of critical and poststructural paradigms. Although these theoretical perspectives share some foundational assumptions, they also diverge in important ways. Here, we provide a broad overview of these theories. We encourage interested readers to look further into the authors and works cited in the text for an in-depth discussion of these theoretical perspectives, especially in one’s discipline.

Critical Theories Emancipation, liberation, and democracy converge at the heart of critical theories. Max Horkheimer, the cultural theorist who is arguably the most prolific scholar of critical theory, cofounded the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany, often referred to as the Frankfurt School. There, Horkheimer and colleagues established critical theory as the

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interdisciplinary study of problems that resulted from domination in human communities. Although Horkheimer and his colleagues legitimized critical theory as a social and philosophical theory via the Frankfurt School, marginalized communities had already been liberating and continued to emancipate themselves outside the establishment of the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School elevated critical theory to an institutional level, and it has taken many forms since its initial formation in Germany. What makes a theory critical, according to Horkheimer (1972), is the extent to which it acts as a liberating influence. In other words, critical theory is only as good as the change it makes to the human condition and specifically for people systemically dominated by others. The Frankfurt School theorists further delineated three criteria for critical theory: Critical theory must be explanatory, practical, and normative. Although we as authors loathe the idea of bounding ideas into a set of principles or tenets, the three just named were central to the Frankfurt School’s conceptualization of critical theory. According to Horkheimer, for critical theory to be explanatory, it needs to provide an explanation about the social problem under question. For it to be practical, it must clearly identify change agents necessary for improving the social condition. And for it to be normative, it needs to articulate critique while offering practical, achievable goals for change. These first-generation critical theorists focused on inquiry that brought about human liberation such that people were the producers of their own histories, not subjects to be controlled. Their primary focus was on transforming a capitalist society into a democratic one where people had control over their own conditions and access to social resources. Troubling the Frankfurt School’s tenets of critical theory, Jürgen Habermas, a prominent second-generation critical theorist, elevated a reflexive understanding of the role of the researcher in critical inquiry. Habermas (1971) argued that critical theorists should not aim to control social processes or influence power-holders to act in certain ways. Rather, Habermas advanced critical theory as that which catalyzes public, democratic processes of self-reflection. In contrast to postpositivist assumptions of a discoverable truth, Habermas’s idea of reflexivity centered and normalized a researcher’s own experiences as influencing their findings. This centering of multiple truths and coconstruction of knowledge overlaps with a constructivist paradigm (Guba & Lincoln, 1994) but is distinct in its focus on social transformation. Over the last several decades, various forms of critical theory have been operationalized in the study and practice of education; for instance, Paulo Freire’s (1970/2005) Pedagogy of the Oppressed served as a foundational text of critical pedagogy, and Gloria Ladson-Billings’s (1998) essay “Just What Is

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Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?” brought critical race theory (CRT) from critical legal studies (CLS) to education (for an overview of CRT’s roots in CLS, see Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). Additional forms of critical theory have emerged in education, such as critical whiteness studies (e.g., Matias et al., 2014), dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit; e.g., Annamma et al., 2013), Latinx critical race theory (LatCrit; e.g., Solórzano & Yosso, 2001), and Tribal Crit (e.g., Brayboy, 2006). Yet critical theories have not fulfilled their liberatory goals; systemic oppression continues to dominate higher education, and critical theory has not facilitated the liberation of those who are oppressed. Patton et al. (2015), noting this limitation specifically in higher education research, used the tenets of CRT as analytical tools to discuss three broad higher education topics: access and admissions, college student development, and student engagement. These scholars illustrated the ways research “would translate differently if framed by a CRT lens that centers race and racism” (p. 210). For example, these scholars used CRT to illuminate the overarching ahistoricism of college access research; CRT connects contemporary issues of access to the historical foundation of higher education as a system built for whites “while Native Americans and Africans were being slaughtered in the name of nation building” (p. 201). On the topic of student development, Patton et al. employed CRT to discuss the ways white students’ college experiences have been normalized as the standard to which all other students’ experiences are compared. CRT also unveiled the racelessness of student engagement research, pointing to a scholarly absence of the racial realities of People of Color in higher education. CRT uncovered the dominant narratives of each of these areas and led these authors to a set of principles for a critical race research agenda. It is our hope to further expose elements of college student success by coupling criticalism with poststructuralism.

Poststructural Theories The adjectives critical and poststructural often appear together to describe theory, because they often address similar topics but do so in different ways. Although both critical and poststructural approaches attend to power, potential, and liberation, these topics are truly central to critical theories. Poststructural theories, in contrast, frequently address these topics, but do not fundamentally center them. In fact, poststructural theorists might say there is no particular central concern to poststructuralism, because assigning centrality might imply that concepts have coherent cores (Derrida, 1967/1978). Instead, poststructural approaches tend to consider how and by whom meanings—any meanings—are generated, transformed, performed, and dissolved.

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A theorist closely tied with the sprouting of poststructuralist thought, Jacques Derrida (1967/2016) argued that there is an interminable difference—or an unclosable gap—between a person’s mental understandings and the linguistic world. According to Derrida, trying to fully grasp meaning about a concept like structure, success, or identity is futile. The practice of attempting to make meaning of structural forces, however, is not meaningless. In fact, it is powerful. A poststructuralist perspective points to the worthiness of a project of chasing around various meanings that give structure—or the illusion of structure—to the world. This is because the act of granting names and definitions to structures and social relations imbues them with power and often justifies hierarchies of social goods and values (Weedon, 1987). Consider, for example, the actions that colleges take “in the name” of excellence or “in the name” of justice. Would these actions be deemed universally worthwhile without these named and motivated discourses? Michel Foucault (1982) discussed how definition produces subjects through discursive struggles. Using educational institutions as an example, he described how defining routinized regulations, activities, roles, and communicative acts disciplines student bodies. Stewart (2017) took up this concept in a Foucauldian analysis of the U.S. higher education system’s historical project of slotting certain types of individuals into social roles, noting how “[s]tudents, as bodies belonging to the nation, were expected to submit to the college’s hierarchical observation and comply with its normalizing judgments” (p. 1043). Achieving such discipline of subjects would be considered a success for many institutions, no matter the lived horrors of an individual facing constant surveillance and pressure to comply. Moreover, Foucault detailed how patterned societal struggles always revolve around questions of identity determination and challenging regimes of power exertion. Following this reasoning would imply that named subjects produced from these struggles—like “student,” “faculty,” “administrator,” or “leader”—are entrenched in complex relationships where power is routinely exercised upon individuals and produces historical legacies that define societal goods (like “success”), differential statuses (like “successful” and “unsuccessful”), and stabilizing societal principles (like “some trade-offs are worth it in the pursuit of success”). Foucault (1982) argued that the perpetually contested definitions of subjects are the enablers of societal domination, which means liberation requires new subjectivities that refuse institutional identification. In the following, we use this lens to consider what it might mean to resist the domination of defining what it means to be a successful student. Poststructural theories do not merely resist fixed meanings or definitions, but fixed identities. Chris Weedon (1987) directed attention to, and called for resistance against, the historical project of defining biological sexual

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identity. Judith Butler (1988) called for an examination of the ways gender identity categories are presupposed, performed, and subverted. These poststructural calls instantiated queer theory, famously elaborated upon by Annamarie Jagose (1996) and Nikki Sullivan (2003), which often teases apart and deconstructs conventions of identity difference, identity constitution, and identity performance. Poststructuralism greatly influences higher education theory and practice (Peters, 1998). These influences take several branching forms, as several scholars have noted the sprawling enterprise of contemporary higher education (Giroux, 2015). As one example, Patti Lather (2010) critiqued academic inquiry and higher education policy using poststructuralist feminist discourses, pointing out and theorizing about the unfolding messiness of the educational research system. Following a poststructural tradition, her work reads against itself, pointing out the inherent tensions of empirical research and philosophical exploration (Lather, 2010). Although there is no single way to use poststructuralism in educational research or practice, we recommend the primer from Michael Peters and Nicholas Burbules (2004) to those seeking to explore these concepts further. With these initial concepts of critical and poststructural theories in mind, we now turn to the ways in which researchers study phenomena—like student success—using these perspectives. Specifically, we detail how scholars use these paradigms from an identity and system lens. These forms of analysis are not the only ones that exist, but they represent two approaches used by various scholars across disciplines in higher education studies.

Looking Through Identity Scholars use critical and poststructural theories to examine the lived experiences of those populations with privileged and minoritized identities. Because poststructural theories challenge the stability and taken-for-grantedness of identity, identity-based analysis is more often an interest of critical theorists. Of predominant interest to critical scholars are one’s social group memberships. Common social group categories include—but are not limited to—race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Within these social group categories, one belongs to particular groups within these broader categories. These categories and ensuing group memberships are socially constructed. As social constructions, these group memberships can appear natural when in reality they developed from particular social and historical processes within specific societies and cultures (Adams et al., 2016). In other words, they are not inherent, fixed classifications of people. These social constructions represent differences that make a difference in one’s life chances, livelihood, and life outcomes. As such, social group categories and memberships represent

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those classifications societies use to explain disparities in social realities and struggles over access to valuable resources. Those who experience privilege are bestowed unearned advantages and conferred dominance (Johnson, 2018). Those who experience marginalization or minoritization are subject to injustice. Minoritization as a term signals the process by which people are relegated to a minority status in a socially constructed context (Benitez, 2010; Gillborn, 2010). For instance, non-white people compose the global numeric majority but are often referred to as minorities. The term minoritized refers to the process where people are rendered as a minority group in specific societal contexts and hold less power in certain social systems. This point about minoritization emphasizes an important component of socially constructed identities and categories: They are not fixed. Instead, their meaning can change over time and depends on context (Weber, 2010). Using race as an example, it is hard for one to argue that race is not an important category to one’s life chances, experiences, and outcomes (Leonardo, 2013; Omi & Winant, 2015). One might be Asian, Black, Desi, Pacific Islander, or white, among other racial classifications. One’s racial identification can also involve a monoracial (being of only one race) or multiracial (being of two or more races) identification. Individuals and institutions have used these social group memberships or identities to “justify particular social, economic, and political practices that justified enslavement, extermination, segregation, and exploration” of non-white races (Adams et al., 2016, p. 7). Wealthy white people codified race in the United States to disrupt class-based coalitions (MacMullan, 2009). Historically and contemporarily, politicians use racial categories to regulate access to housing, public accommodations, and schooling, among other societal institutions (Rothstein, 2017; Taylor, 2016). The social classifications of race in these policies make race a real category for individuals despite not being based in individuals. Racial classifications have also changed over time. Scholars have documented how different cultural groups have become grouped under the category of “white” when they were not previously (e.g., Allen, 2012; Roediger, 2005; Sacks, 1994). In the early 1900s, a number of scientists claimed to be able to test who was actually white, often those who came from northwestern Europe (Sacks, 1994). Under this classification, people of Jewish descent were considered immigrant ethnics that did not get counted under the category of whiteness. Only later through affirmative action and other economic mobility pathways did ethnic Jewish people get counted as white in U.S. society. Other groups—such as Italians and Poles—became white through similar mechanisms, like the labor movement and New Deal reforms (Roediger, 2005). This malleability is a feature of social power: the ability to set who might have access to power and who cannot.

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One’s social group memberships can determine the degree of freedom or restriction they experience in the United States; however, individuals hold multiple social group memberships or identities simultaneously (Collins, 2019). These intersecting attributes of individuals uniquely shape their experience of privilege and oppression. Categories like race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion work simultaneously to determine one’s experiences of access and life outcomes (Andersen & Collins, 2012). When one examines these intersections of identity simultaneously, a broader picture of one’s life emerges. Single identity analysis fails to account for those with multiple privileged or marginalized identities. Black feminist scholars point to the ways single identity analysis limits one’s ability to seek redress for marginalization. Crenshaw (1991) used cases of Black women to demonstrate such limitations. For Black women seeking legal redress to discrimination, they had to argue either a gender-based or a race-based discrimination claim; they could not argue both simultaneously in the judicial system. Many scholars seek to explain social marginalization and oppression through single identity frames (Collins, 2015). These methods of understanding inequality of opportunity and outcome inherently leave out the experiences of multiply marginalized individuals. Said otherwise, analyzing multiply marginalized groups’ experiences—like Black women—through a single identity lens undercuts the compounding nature of oppression they experience. Taken together, scholars use identity analysis to understand how individual, institutional, and structural oppression affects members of certain social groups. In this way, scholars use critical theories to examine systems from the individual level up to the entire system.

Looking Through Structures Both critical and poststructural scholars draw attention to social constructions. Critical scholars often analyze social institutions for the mechanics of privilege and marginalization; poststructural theorists examine how institutions imbue and restrict meaning and definition for particular concepts. First, critical theorists directly interrogate institutions and structural forms of oppression to see how they affect individuals’ lives. Instead of studying individuals’ experiences as a means to understand oppression, these scholars study oppression broadly and consider how it affects multiple groups of people. Such researchers might find themselves thinking about the ways administrative procedures privilege some students while marginalizing others (Spade, 2015), inhibiting their ability to succeed in college. Others might interrogate existing theories of retention or adjustment that question the actions students must take to succeed and thrive in the first place (Tierney, 1999).

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Meanwhile, another set of scholars examines the ideologies that undergird higher education that may undermine success for a host of student populations (Stewart & Nicolazzo, 2018). Some scholars have written about the problem of a perspectiveless college environment and its link to student success. For example, Sylvia Hurtado and colleagues have studied campus racial climate and produced scholarship about diverse learning environments for decades. Hurtado et al.’s (2012, 2015) recent scholarship has pointed to the need for a critical perspective: “Too often our models and assessments focus on students and their involvements, neglecting a critical examination of institutional actors and practices” (Hurtado et al., 2012, p. 49). Samuel Museus (2014), noting the ways existing student success theorists gave “insufficient attention” to “racial and cultural contexts as critical factors in explanations of student success,” developed his culturally engaging campus environments model, a model that may be more applicable to the success of racially minoritized students while being relevant to all students (p. 192). By mobilizing critical perspectives, Hurtado et al. and Museus looked beyond students as the makers of their individual success; these scholars looked at the contexts in which students experience college. Second, poststructural theorists examine institutions through the discourses they produce and control. Given the instability and slippage of meaning, poststructural researchers describe how people have access to certain classifications and definitions. In other words, poststructuralists examine “the complex interworking of cultural, social, and institutional relationships” and how they “determine how people can self-identify in socially recognized and validated ways” (Denton, 2016, p. 61). For instance, Namaste (1996) explored the concept of gaybashing—the physical or verbal attacks, abuses, or assaults committed against a person who is perceived by the aggressor to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual—and troubled whether such practices were about one’s sexuality; instead, Namaste argued that these negative reactions were a result of one’s perceived gender transgression. Instead of gaybashing being an issue of attacking self-identified gay, lesbian, or bisexual people, those most at risk of aggression are effeminate men and masculine women deemed to live outside normative gender expectations. Here, Namaste pointed out that when one steps outside acceptable meanings of what it means to be a man or woman—being masculine and feminine, respectively—they become subject to violence. Instead of taking away attention from gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, naming this phenomenon as genderbashing draws attention to how gendered meanings discipline bodies in the public sphere. Again, this is a reminder that naming is powerful. Taken together, researchers attempt to expose and reimagine the procedures, institutions, theories, and discourses that shape the lives of individuals, communities, and societies writ large.

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Critical and poststructural scholars use various theoretical frameworks and perspectives to theorize and interrogate oppression in students’ lives. Some use critical (e.g., Habermas, 1971; Horkheimer, 1972) or poststructural (e.g., Derrida, 1967/1978) frameworks broadly. Other theories fall under these large paradigmatic umbrellas. For instance, a number of scholars across disciplines use CRT to understand the relationships among race, racism, and power (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Rather than focusing only on racially minoritized populations, researchers examine the way race and racism shape institutions, environments, and social group memberships. Researchers using CRT to examine success would seek to understand the role of race and racism in defining and achieving student success. A poststructural framework like queer theory challenges taken-forgranted notions of gender, sexuality, and identity (Jagose, 1996). Queer theory is not a theory about queer people; instead, it provides individuals with a lens to critique dominant ways of understanding identity, desire, relations, and transformation (Butler, 2004; Denton, 2020). A queered challenge to student success might question an investment in universal, normative definitions of success that privilege institutional metrics. Again, the prism of critical and poststructural theories allows us as scholars to break apart takenfor-granted or overlooked assumptions embedded in understandings of student success, while questioning who these assumptions do and do not serve.

Reimagination Exemplars From Critical and Poststructural Frameworks Critical and poststructural theories challenge the presumed nature of reality. Both paradigmatic perspectives examine forces and discourses that constrain individual and group agency. These worldviews can help scholars envision and reimagine new possibilities for success. In the following section, we detail exemplar scholarship by authors who used critical and poststructural theories to examine and redefine student success. Redefinition was key to being considered an exemplar; we focused on scholarship that challenged the usual metrics of student success, like persistence or completion, rather than work that simply studied the barriers to success through a critical or poststructural lens. For example, some authors use critical race theory to examine racial barriers to college access and completion. Although a great use of critical theory, such an examination leaves the idea of degree attainment unquestioned. One of the earliest theoretical reimaginations of student success came from Tara Yosso (2005). Predominant theories of cultural capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) position People of Color as often excluded from forms

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of knowledge and capital deemed valuable in U.S. society. These theories provide a technical explanation for how one has certain degrees of access to capital and knowledge deemed valuable, reproducing stratification and limiting social mobility. Yosso (2005) conceptualized community cultural wealth as a critical alternative to traditional notions of cultural capital. Rather than viewing Students of Color through a deficit lens as lacking cultural capital, this framing positions them as having particular abilities, knowledge, and skills as a result of being minoritized. Yosso’s formulation of community cultural wealth sees Students of Color as able to access multiple forms of capital, including aspirational, familial, linguistic, navigational, resistant, and social capital. In this way, Yosso posited a more critical framework of capital that recognized socially constructed power inequalities and how they privilege/ marginalize certain groups in society. Yosso’s focus is drawing attention to the benefits inherent to People of Color’s position and status in society rather than focusing on a system that may marginalize them. Other scholars examine the success of particular groups and communities through critical and poststructural theories. For instance, Duran et al. (2020) used intersectionality to examine the individual and structural obstacles of persistence for queer and trans college students. These researchers reviewed a host of retention and success theories from an intersectional lens, noting the shortcomings of existing approaches that did not use a critical lens to examine students’ experiences of persistence and departure. Building from this review, the authors used intersectionality to bring attention to structural inequities that may affect existing retention initiatives, resources, policies, and research. Extending this work, Garvey and Dolan (2021) used intersectionality and queer theory to examine queer and trans college student success. Rather than proposing a new framework for success, these scholars used existing insights into queer and trans students (i.e., campus relationships and space, finances, identity development) and the contexts these students inhabit in order to propose several recommendations to promote the success of these students. Together, these scholars demonstrate that examining the lived experiences of queer and trans people using critical frameworks requires greater attention to systemic forces on and off college campuses. The social construction—and stratification—of identity and social groups extends to the concept of success. Individuals and institutions define what counts as college student success through social and historical processes within a particular culture; they are not fixed in a particular reality. Indeed, these ideas have changed over time (Dorn, 2017; Labaree, 1997). In identity analysis, the differences that make a difference codify who has access to the metrics of success and who—by extension—can be successful. Through current institutional arrangements and prevailing ideologies of success, people

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are rendered as successful. Yosso’s (2005) rethinking of cultural capital opens up the ability for students to achieve success by expanding narrow conceptions of capital. Rather than relying on conceptions of success that put minoritized students at an automatic disadvantage, critical theories point to ways to challenge taken-for-granted notions of success from an identitybased perspective. Scholars have also reimagined student success using First Nation and postcolonial frameworks (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991; Pidgeon, 2008), two sets of theories that exist in the liminal space between criticalism and poststructuralism. Rather than only reimagining success and cultural capital like Yosso (2005), these scholars used Indigenous paradigms to reimagine definitions of success for all students. For instance, Kirkness and Barnhardt (1991) challenged institutions’ ideas of who held the responsibility for student retention and success; rather than the onus being on students, the authors argued institutions have a duty to better respect students’ cultural heritages through a curriculum relevant to diverse lives, emphasizing reciprocal relationships with others, and supporting one’s ability to control the affairs of everyday life. This reframing of student success does not remain limited to First Nations students in Kirkness and Barnhardt’s view; instead, this reconceptualization of success applies to all students. Pidgeon (2008) combined social reproduction theory and postcolonial frameworks to challenge dominant conceptions of success and retention that excluded Indigenous worldviews. Alongside this objection, Pidgeon forwarded a holistic framework of participation in higher education that engages not only the intellectual, but also the physical, spiritual, and emotional. Scholars rethinking higher education from this structural viewpoint seek to reconceptualize success for all groups of students at once. Additional work has examined the underlying ideologies of taken-forgranted educational experiences and practices. For instance, Stewart and Nicolazzo (2018) examined how whiteness as an ideology influences what are known as high-impact practices (HIPs), or those practices empirically connected to increased rates of student retention and engagement. Specifically, the authors drew attention to the methods to identify such practices and how the process epistemically and practically excluded minoritized (i.e., trans) and multiply minoritized (e.g., trans women of color) students epistemologically and practically. This interrogation of whiteness, coupled with the goal of liberation at the core of critical theories, allowed the authors to propose trickle-up high-impact practices as those that “frame student success and engagement from frameworks that resist ableism, ageism, settler colonialism, trans* oppression and heterogenderism, religious hegemony, and patriarchy” (p. 138). Instead of proposing a particular set of practices, the authors put forward a set of principles to develop practices that more critically measure

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and promote student success, with an attention to various, interlocking systems of power and oppression. Researchers have also used queer theoretical frameworks—most often associated with poststructuralism—to question the underlying definitions and assumptions of student success (Denton, 2020; Lange et al., 2019). For instance, Lange et al. (2019) organized the scholarship on queer and trans students into four different houses or areas of scholarship. Through one of these houses—the “House of Flourishing”—the authors examined how “queer people grow, develop, and become successful according to their own terms and standards and how institutions support those conceptions of success” (p. 517). These self-determined definitions of success include, for instance, students’ abilities to engage in kinship networks (Nicolazzo et al., 2017; Pitcher & Simmons, 2020). Both Lange et al. and Denton used queer theory to question the definition and underlying components of student success. Denton specifically troubled the concept of persistence as implying a fully agentic individual outside the system, policies, and practices of colleges and universities. Using queer theory in this way inherently prompts questions about the nature, structure, and outcomes of college. What if colleges and universities did not prioritize producing students ready to participate in economic and labor systems, but instead gave the cultivation of critical thinking precedence? How might higher education institutions use their resources and personnel to better economic conditions for their students rather than leaving success as an individual metric of job attainment? In line with poststructural theorizing, none of these authors have provided clear or simplistic answers to their troubling of success; instead, they have sought to raise awareness and more questions for educators’ considerations. Although we use the metaphor of refractions, where light splits apart, to discuss examples of identity and structural analysis, we now turn to the tensions inherent to critical and poststructural conceptions of student success using a metaphor of diffraction.

Critical and Poststructural Diffractions: Toward a New Paradigm for Student Success Diffraction occurs when light appears fundamentally different after encountering an obstacle, such as making an unexpected pattern after passing through a hole or bending around a corner. Diffraction is environmentally contingent and subject to the position of the light and the surrounding objects. Just like student success must be considered as situated in a particular context, we consider how, after refraction through the prism of critical and poststructural theory discussed previously, understandings of success

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might vary depending upon relevant environmental conditions. Here, we pose three diffracting questions about student success made visible by our discussion of critical and poststructural perspectives.

Diffraction 1: What Is the Constructed Relationship Between Students and Their Complex Contexts? Perhaps the reader has heard the trope about the first-generation college student who feels they are carrying the weight of their entire family or even community on their shoulders. Although it is an oversimplification of the first-generation student experience, this trope illuminates the tension between an individual and the contexts within which they are situated, as if an individual student’s perceived success or failure is a reflection of their community(ies). Students are not individual vessels moving through the sea of higher education; students are interconnected with and influenced by a fleet of parents, siblings, extended family, chosen family, peer culture, faculty, student affairs staff, teaching assistants, and employers. Moreover, students must navigate power relationships in all of their contexts. Whether it is a grandparent’s financial assistance or having to choose between working and studying, something is always at stake, and students are constantly making decisions in potentially contentious relationships. Success as a human experience is complicated by the many contextual influences on an individual, and a critical lens invites us to look at issues of power and agency in students’ lives. A poststructural lens helps us as researchers and administrators see that the responsibility is not on either individuals or their contexts, nor is it possible to account for all the responsible parties, all the stakeholders, and all the influences. The overwhelming multiplicity of our lives, combined with the beautiful and tragic serendipity of human experience, makes the notion of student success something that no amount of accounting can control for. Yet, although this is widely acknowledged, a critical lens shows why dominant notions of success endure because success remains as a social good to be achieved. Students remain judged as successful or unsuccessful due to the accounting of their achievements on GPA scales, credit accumulation schemes, salaries upon graduation, or other measures that can be enumerated and standardized. Critical and poststructural theories are concerned with pointing out this very tension: Our life experiences that cause hardship and pain are unevenly distributed and occur in nonlinear ways, yet we use normal distributions and assumptions of linearity to naturalize techniques for measuring student success. This standardization and enumeration is unnatural, yet socially desirable, because it affords an illusion of stable understanding of phenomena that are necessarily dynamic.

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It is worthwhile to pursue the spiraling illusion of understanding what contributes to student success, because these illusions meaningfully affect relationships and policies for students’ lives. As more interconnections are noted and notions of success unfurled, the image that appears shows that success is not a student’s alone. The social construction of a person as a successful student—whether successful because they graduated, avoided trauma, earned a salary that can be shared with family members, or held tight to their culture while away at school—has powerful meaning for anyone who holds a notion of what constitutes student success. In other words, a critical and poststructural reading recognizes the manufactured concept of student success in particular contexts, and it also curls around to an acknowledgment that the notions of student success that seem natural substantially affect how students live within their communities. We turn now to what that living entails.

Diffraction 2: Success to What End? Dominant conceptions of success focus on high rates of retention and degree completion. Approaching critical metrics of success instead would focus less on graduation rates and more on social justice outcomes, such as the liberation of minoritized people. Freire (1970/2005) argued people should participate in education as a practice of freedom, yet students are still faced with expectations to join and perform in a capitalist society for survival. Many youth are fed the social mobility argument—to get ahead in life (Labaree, 1997)—for higher education and buy into it as the sole definition of their success. If they earn a degree and obtain a salaried job with the potential for promotion, then they have succeeded. Herein lies the tension: For some students, this outcome does improve their and maybe their family’s social positioning, but it does not change the capitalist system they are joining. Yet, should the responsibility to liberate communities fall on the shoulders of individual students? When is surviving considered success? We cannot ignore the financial systems that constitute the stakes of higher education, and how students are often the embodied forms of those financial stakes. They are often referred to not by their names, but as “butts in seats,” “headcount,” “FTEs,” “clients,” and even “the reason you all have jobs.” These economic discourses are unpleasant and omnipresent. The financialization of student bodies and the student body usually only factors into discussions of student success when talking about the value of college, the cost-benefit analysis of certain initiatives, and the national landscape of student indebtedness. No matter the context, these are all instances in which student success is named as a proxy of organizational and institutional effectiveness, rather than about, say, the life of the student. This connection

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between student success and institutional effectiveness is intentional, yet can be harmful. Predatory higher education institutions openly prey upon prospective students, transforming them into economic bodies (Cottom, 2017; Eaton, 2020). Might it be considered a long-term success for a prospective student to outright reject a risky system that is dehumanizing by refusing to participate in it? Or to swirl—when students attend multiple institutions to complete their degrees or stop out (see Renn & Reason, 2013) for any host of reasons? Although a success from a student perspective, this would be a failure to many traditional stakeholders.

Diffraction 3: Should Success Be Defined Universally or Locally? Many groups already define what student success is and how it should be measured. At the institutional level, nonprofit and government agencies use graduation rates, students’ academic performance, and retention metrics as a proxy for success (Braxton, 2000). State governments have gone so far as to tie these metrics to funding for institutions (Dougherty et al., 2014). These definitions and parameters of success hold implications for the ways that institutions do and do not behave (Kelchen & Stedrak, 2016) while also being largely ineffective (Hillman, 2016). These metrics, in turn, become the local ways of measuring success, out of administrators’ legitimate fears of losing funding from a host of sources. These larger definitions often leave out students’ own conceptions of success, which go beyond academic performance to include their ability to develop personally, build community, and navigate college environments (e.g., Yano & Akatsuka, 2018; Yazedijan et al., 2008). Critical and poststructural perspectives of success might question the role of institutional definitions of success from a student perspective. How might students resist being subjected to definitions of success they did not craft? Postsecondary policymakers and administrators imbue these definitions with connotations of degree completion, a specific achieved goal. Inherent to this goal is an accumulation of experiences and a certain time frame of accomplishment. How might the meanings of success be replaced by feelings of preparedness, of pride, of collective and cooperative empowerment, of ongoing imagining? No matter a student’s academic discipline, these interwoven notions are and have always been goals of postsecondary educational systems (Association of American Colleges & Universities, 2007). They, however, are less easily measured, more loftily proclaimed in mission statements than quarterly reports, and more quickly traded upon in the language of stakeholders. Acknowledging this reality, critical and poststructural theories help us begin to question the need for a universal conceptualization of student

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success. One reason scholars elaborated critical and poststructural theories was to disrupt ideas of universal human experiences and advance the emancipatory aims of knowledge (Leonardo, 2004). Research repeatedly finds that majoritized students often outperform their minoritized peers on various success metrics, especially persistence and graduation (U.S. Department of Education, 2020). These repeated findings leave scholars to examine individual factors that may lead to success for a host of minoritized populations, including—but not limited to—students who are racially minoritized (Museus, 2014), Native (Keith et al., 2016), military-connected (Williams-Klotz & Gamsemer-Topf, 2017), or identify as LGBT (Mobley & Hall, 2020; Renn, 2020; Woodford et al., 2016). These scholars reconceptualize success and college outcomes not only through academic terms (i.e., persistence, knowledge acquisition) but also through metrics of mental health, social/community connection, and identity development. Of all the tensions we present in this chapter, this one is perhaps where a both-and approach may provide a resolution to this friction. Because of the efforts of state and federal governments to hold higher education institutions accountable to certain metrics (Miller, 2016), focusing on more nuanced definitions of success will be difficult for college administrators. At the same time, how might higher education institutions develop local definitions of success in addition to or that diverge from national, universal conceptions of success? Rather than thinking of factors like social connections and mental health resources as contributors to academic performance, might these be equally worthy student success goals? Such an approach would require rethinking the core functions and duties of institutional agents like academic advisors and faculty. When thinking about student success, critical and poststructural theories offer us a chance to proliferate new possibilities and ways to expand conceptions of student success.

Conclusion In this chapter, we examined student success through a paradigmatic lens and proposed critical and poststructural theories as a prism through which to reconceptualize college student success. We discussed two analytical refractions of the prism—identity analyses and structural analyses—and highlighted exemplars that have mobilized critical and poststructural frameworks toward reimaginations of what success means and for whom. Finally, we discussed three diffracting questions made visible to us through the prism of criticalism and poststructuralism. Central to our discussion is that these are unstable concepts that have socially constructed meanings fixed in particular times and spaces. Critical

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theorists look at the array of definitions of success alongside definitions of identity categories, remark on their creation and transformation, and consider the ways those definitions of success privilege certain groups. They would argue that scholars and practitioners seeking educational justice should consider the world through the power relations of these overlapping or divergent perspectives. They would also argue that it is important to name and thereby empower the existing assets of students in pursuing success on their own terms. Poststructural theorists would suggest that the way to achieve educational justice is to examine the forum where student success is contested in the first place. They would consider how the terms of the ongoing debate about success are linguistically manipulated to advance particular notions of success in the world. Success in itself is a construct to be questioned, not merely because of its definitional splay, but by the fact that success is a social production. The debate about student success is a debate about producing students, successfully, which means it is also about successful administrators, faculty, family, legislators, philanthropists, and all those who are supposed to care about student success. All these roles are dynamically produced and shaped by societal notions, and the stakes for being successful in those roles are also high. Just as the notion of student success arises and transforms through the definitional projects of the institutions and individuals that care who students are and what makes them successful, a poststructuralist approach might consider all these so-called higher education stakeholders and ask, what are the stakes anyway? Perhaps the stakes have to do with holding onto notions of validating the status quo of higher education. Broad social beliefs in higher education can appear self-evident by virtue of ongoing social projects to educate students. When considering what to do to advance college student success in these systems, what is pursued is not a single form of success itself, or even multiple forms of success, but rather a representation (like an admission letter or a diploma), quantification (like a graduation rate or a grade point average), trace (like a feeling of belonging or satisfaction), or other form of evidence that might serve as an image of success. But these are mere images. In detailing the affordances of poststructural theories for education, Cleo Cherryholmes (1994) reminded educational researchers that the meaning of a research finding, say, is found in tracing out in the imagination its conceivable, practical consequences. Of course, many of our images may turn out to be nothing but fantasies. Our beliefs, therefore, can always be wrong due to the contingency of the world and our incomplete knowledge of it. (p. 208)

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What was conceived of as a model of student success today may not align with tomorrow’s notions of student success—it may instead be a model of student frivolity, student failure, or student shame. Our belief in the promise of initiatives that promote particular forms of student success, even when bolstered by evidence of their supposed successful implementation, may be misplaced when these traditional notions hinge upon the illusion that a social reality is stable. Student success stakeholders who are skeptical of critical and poststructural challenges to traditional notions of student success may say, “Well, what are we supposed to do? You have not proposed any solutions! These are just more questions!” The poststructural scholar would likely agree, glad to have reanimated the discussion (see Smithers, 2020a, 2020b) and reiterate that any proposed rational propositions are contingent upon the definitions of success in the present moment and context. This is where critical scholarship is vital. A critical approach would look toward improving college student success outcomes by critiquing power structures and exploring possibilities for how defining success can be equitable. Yosso (2005), for example, promoted an approach to power in the form of community cultural wealth that considers how capital is produced and is mobilized for liberation. Such an approach does not seek to protect or legitimize prior approaches that have been based upon histories of subordination. It is then no wonder that there are more questions than answers in the research canon, because critical approaches are still newly emerging as legitimate in the scholarly field. Do we as authors and scholars still have interest in college student success? Of course. Student success is a social construction that has substantial meaning for all involved in the higher education apparatus. We should care about it. Using critical and poststructural theories affords us as scholars a way of looking at what the constructed label of being a successful student does to people, to organizations, and to society. As readers of this text consider college student success as light that passes through this prism of theory, we hope to have inspired consideration of how what appears to be a stable, neutral, clear, or white concept requires transformation to be more meaningfully understood. It is not enough to simply view the concept through the prism, but to hold it, turn it, cast the refracted light upon different surfaces, and note how it falls differently on different ground.

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10 A N I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY T H E O RY O F C O L L E G E STUDENT SUCCESS Nicholas A. Bowman, Milad Mohebali, and Lindsay Jarratt

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he previous chapters in this book each provided an overview of the theories, concepts, research findings, and implications from a particular discipline, field of study, or perspective: higher education; public policy; behavioral economics; social psychology; science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); sociology; and critical/poststructural perspectives. Some of these chapters overlapped in notable ways, but they mostly discussed different content. These chapters also vary considerably in how much the scholarship is driven primarily by exploring theoretical frameworks (e.g., sociology) as opposed to testing interventions (e.g., behavioral economics). In this chapter, we offer an interdisciplinary theory that draws upon the rich insights of the preceding chapters and moves toward a more comprehensive understanding of student success. Yet, the creation of this theory may also be informed by our own educational journeys, life experiences, and identities. Although all three of the authors have a master’s degree within the field of higher education, we have divergent training as undergraduates (K–12 education, psychology, and engineering) and in doctoral programs (higher education, educational sociology, and psychology and education). We also differ in other ways, which include socioeconomic background, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, language(s), dis/ability, and others. We intentionally sought to bring different perspectives into this work, as this theory seeks to integrate divergent strands of research and offer an understanding of student success that is not bound by dominant norms.

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The next section of this chapter provides several important considerations about the nature and scope of our work. We then offer a broad overview of the theory, followed by a detailed discussion of its interconnected components. The next chapter offers implications for practice, policy, research, and assessment.

Overarching Considerations for This Theory The use of “college student success” to describe this theory leads to an important question: What do we mean by “success”? Although students enter with many goals, we believe colleges and universities should facilitate graduation for all students who are seeking a postsecondary degree or certificate. A postsecondary credential can influence a variety of lifelong outcomes related to earnings, social mobility, physical health, mental well-being, civic engagement, and more (Hout, 2012; Mayhew et al., 2016; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Moreover, this theory is primarily grounded in literature that examined undergraduate students in the United States, and much of the theory was conceptualized with these students and institutions in mind. This theory may apply to colleges and universities in other countries or to graduate student success, but generalizing to those contexts and populations was not our primary intent. That said, the present theory sought to provide a conceptualization of college student success that could be useful across various institutional types. It is important to acknowledge that this theory (and arguably any theory) is not entirely comprehensive in nature. We sought to balance inclusiveness of relevant concepts with the need for some level of parsimony, because having a theory that is too complex or multifaceted may limit its usability when developing research questions or designing effective institutional environments. For example, although it seems that many of the factors contributing to retention within a specific college or university are generally similar to persistence in higher education at any institution, a true theory of college persistence would likely need to include an understanding of college transfer (whether vertical, horizontal, or reverse), swirling enrollment between institutions, and concurrent enrollment simultaneously at multiple institutions. This theory is more directly focused on retention within an institution than on college enrollment or changing institutions, especially because movement across institutions was generally not a focus of the previous chapters. In a related issue, this theory focuses on understanding and promoting college success from a student’s perspective, which means that much of the discussion is tailored with that endpoint in mind. Students obviously

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do not enter college as a blank slate; their prior experiences, journeys, and understandings affect not only college enrollment, but also their experiences and success during (and after) college. Connected to this issue, we are attentive to the myriad ways in which policymakers, institutional agents, and researchers attach meaning in both overt and covert ways to students’ identities and lived experiences. A discussion of broad “demographics” or “student attributes” can cluster individuals who may have great variety in the salience and centrality of these labeled identities and in how these relate to their experiences and construals. Some prior chapters in this book have sought to move thinking forward, such as the need to consider intersectional understandings of students’ experiences rather than focusing on single attributes (chapter 8 and chapter 9) or, more deeply, the need to destabilize an understanding of identity as fixed and static across context and time (chapter 9, this volume). Additionally, we are attentive to the ways that a focus on student experiences and construals can lead to misdiagnosing the fundamental nature of barriers to student success by connecting them to student identity or interiority instead of systems, structures, and environments (e.g., see Holland, 2008). For example, people may discuss problems of “race” rather than “racism” or “lack of financial resources” rather than “economic injustice.” These misattributions can result in deficit understandings of students, while also making invisible the structures that facilitate inequity and impede student thriving and success. Therefore, student success cannot be properly understood without deep consideration of the institution as well as the interplay between student and institutional factors, along with the broader contexts in which various dynamics occur. For the sake of parsimony, we do not offer an exhaustive review of the myriad contextual processes and forces that are layered on students’ experiences, or the complex ways in which institutions are nested within broader structures (e.g., accrediting organizations). We also acknowledge—but do not discuss in detail—that students’ experiences and behaviors may shape institutions in important ways (e.g., Dache et al., 2019; Hurtado, 2007), whereas we focus primarily on the directional effects from institutions to students. Finally, the present theory proposes that the factors shaping student success are both dynamic and highly iterative, with effects that tend to compound over time, and this conceptualization does not fit neatly into a linear temporal model of what happens during college (e.g., A  B  C  D). For instance, students are constantly engaging in experiences and making meaning of those experiences, which then affects their future experiences and outcomes. The experiences that are easily available to them depend, in part,

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on a variety of factors (e.g., undergraduate major, material resources, living situation), which themselves are often not static.

Advancing an Interdisciplinary Theory of College Student Success Figure 10.1 provides an overview of this interdisciplinary student success theory. The next few sections contain more detail than any diagram can convey, but some important features of this framework should be highlighted here. First, the dynamics that shape college student success begin well before college; both the student and institution are situated and have developed within a broader sociohistorical context with deep roots, and this legacy affects who is encouraged to attend college, where and how they can attend, and how likely they are to graduate (e.g., antonio & Muñiz, 2007). The sociohistorical and policy contexts also extend well beyond higher education and influence (future) students well before college enrollment. Figure 10.1. Overview of interdisciplinary theory of college student success. Sociohistorical Context Policy Context

Student Retention/ Persistence

Institutional Context

arrier al B ion t itu st In

Precollege Influences

Socialization Identities Psychological Attributes Academic Preparation Material Resources Educational Intentions

Type Experience Time Tenor

College Entry Considerations Where/When to Apply Where/How to Attend How to Transition to College

Proximal Context

Can I do it? Do I belong here? Why should I do it? Can I afford it? Construal

I n s t it u

a ti o n

rt po up S l

Policies Bureaucracy Programs Communication Agents

Second, college success is a product of the complex interplay between students and institutions. Institutional factors (policies, bureaucracy, programs, agents, and communication) affect student experiences in ways that differ as a function of students’ precollege influences (socialization, identities, academic

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preparation, educational intentions, psychological attributes, and material resources; see chapters 6–9 this volume). Thus, institutions can create barriers and support systems, represented by two arrows that circle around proximal context within Figure 10.1, that will affect students’ proximal context and college success. The examples in the chapter frequently illustrate how students at different institutions or even the same institution may have very divergent experiences, or they may interpret the “same” experience differently based on these precollege influences. Third, students’ construals (or meaning-making) of their experiences are central to understanding college success. Experiences and construals are part of an iterative loop, in which students engage in experiences and make sense of them in particular ways, which then leads to future experiences that are also interpreted. The divergence of students’ interpretations of the same experience has important implications for the potential consequences of that experience. Further, students’ construals play a large role in shaping their academic self-efficacy, sense of belonging, purpose and motivation, and even their perceived ability to pay (as indicated by the student questions toward the center of Figure 10.1), which then contribute to college student retention and persistence. These construals and subsequent outcomes are largely driven by student experiences, and these objective experiences differ substantially across individuals and groups in ways that often perpetuate longstanding inequities. Finally, this theory posits that some students’ experiences and construals may largely reinforce and solidify their initial answers to the four key student questions: Can I do it? Do I belong here? Why should I do it? Can I afford it? For other students, one salient experience—whether positive or negative—has the potential to dramatically affect future experiences and their level of concern about whether they belong, can succeed academically, or can afford college. Students may interpret and react to this salient experience in ways that either increase or reduce its impact. The institutional factors and contexts that are most relevant to a particular student can sometimes change quickly, and students have some—but not complete—control over their proximal context (i.e., the environments and people with whom they interact). The irregular shape of the proximal context border in Figure 10.1 conveys the malleability of this context over time. At the core of this theory on student success is a dynamic, iterative, evolving, and compounding process—a sequence of interconnected student experiences that both shape and are shaped by the interplay of context and student construal. In the detailed discussion that follows, we first provide a multidimensional classification system for studying and understanding student experiences. We then delve into the dynamics of student construal or

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sensemaking about those experiences and the ways in which student construal is a product of prior experiences and the contexts in which experiences are embedded. This leads to our theorization of students’ proximal contexts as the dynamic result of interplay between students’ experiences, construal of their experiences, and their institutional and sociohistorical contexts. Finally, we describe several questions or intermediate outcomes that not only contribute to student experiences and construals, but also are shaped by those construals in an iterative feedback loop that compounds over time.

Classification of Student Experiences To develop a conception of student success as an evolving story built upon myriad, interconnected experiences, it is foundational to explore the nature of student experiences. The present framework posits a classification system that includes three primary dimensions of student experiences: type, time, and tenor. An overview of this classification appears in Table 10.1. TABLE 10.1

Overview of Classification of Student Experiences Experience Dimension

Subquestion(s)

Brief Explanation

Type

What is happening?

Participation or engagement in a certain behavior Physical location; mode of communication Broad group of people; specific group; individual(s)

Where? With whom? Time

When? How often? How long?

Tenor

How positive or negative?

Time of day/week/year; timing during college Number of times; general frequency Time spent per day/week; number of months/years spent Student construal versus researcherdefined

Type Type can be described or subclassified through three questions: What is happening, where, and with whom? The “with whom” component may

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refer to broad groups of people (e.g., other students, instructors, staff, family), or it may refer to specific groups (e.g., members of a student organization) or individuals (e.g., when considering peer or social network effects). “Where” often refers to a physical location, which can vary in its level of generality (e.g., cultural houses, academic buildings, off-campus locations), or it may refer to the mode of communication, such as through social media or online coursework. “What is happening” could refer to participation in a particular structured program or practice (e.g., academic advising, first-year seminar), engagement in types of activities (e.g., informal conversations with peers, studying by oneself ), or even a lack of an experience (e.g., not attending class). The consideration of these three type-related questions may sometimes challenge the prevailing dichotomies of academic versus social or of college versus external (i.e., “not college”), because an apparent incongruence between what is happening, where, and with whom can lead to difficulty with making some of these distinctions. For instance, if two students within a classroom are talking about a nonacademic topic (e.g., sports), is this experience academic or social in nature? Does the definition of academic versus social matter if this conversation is occurring during a collaborative learning activity, or if these students continue the conversation after they walk out of the building? What if their conversation moves to academic topics, but they are now at a restaurant after class? Similarly, determining what counts as a “college experience” can be also quite difficult (which is why we prefer the phrase “student experiences”). Most people would consider a conversation between two students at the same university to be a “college experience” if they were sitting in a classroom, but what if these same students were at a non-university religious event off campus? Would it matter if their conversation at this off-campus event were about college coursework, their college peers, or a topic totally unrelated to college? What if these students were traditional-age and attended the same high school, so they had some of these conversations over winter break in their hometown? Therefore, academic/ social and college/external may sometimes be very useful descriptors, but they can also sometimes obscure the complexity of student experiences. Time Time is another experiential dimension that can be classified into subquestions: When, how often, and how long? “When” can refer to a point in time during students’ college enrollment (e.g., precollege, first semester), or it might consider the time of day, week, or year (e.g., evening or weekend classes, winter break). “How often” and “how long” both indicate the amount of exposure to an experience in somewhat different ways. “How

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long” may be measured by the number of hours per week engaging in experiences that occur regularly for many students (e.g., paid employment, studying), or it can refer to the period of time in which students have engaged in an experience (e.g., serving as a tutor for 2 academic years). “How often” can be assessed via the number of times that an event has occurred over a given duration for discrete and/or less common experiences (e.g., meeting with an academic advisor, being placed on academic probation). The amount of experiential engagement can also be measured via subjective ratings of frequency, such as “often” or “rarely,” especially when the experience is difficult to classify in these other ways (e.g., intergroup interaction, help-seeking behaviors). Tenor Tenor refers to the quality or valence of the interaction. Quantitative assessments of tenor can vary in the extent to which this dimension is researcherdefined versus student-defined. For instance, a researcher may review the existing literature and identify different conditions or characteristics of collaborative learning that predict improved student outcomes. That researcher may then ask students how often or how long they participated in each of these types of collaborative learning experiences, which could provide a somewhat objective measure of tenor (although students’ meaning-making about those experiences could still vary notably). In contrast, a researcher could ask students how often they have had “meaningful discussions” or “hostile interactions” with peers during class; these measures would inherently involve students’ construal in their assessment of tenor, which are useful for researchers interested in phenomena that inherently involve students’ perceptions of their experiences (e.g., psychological dimensions of campus climate).

Student Construals of Their Experiences In addition to the observable characteristics of student experiences, students’ construals of these experiences are central to understanding college student success. Construals refer to students’ subjective interpretations of events and the messages these experiences are perceived to convey (chapter 6, this volume). Considering student experiences in the absence of construals may leave out important information, because two students may interpret the “same” experience very differently; this construal will inform how they react to that experience, which then leads to future choices, experiences, and construals. A great deal of the construal process is automatic (chapter 6, this volume), but that does not mean that institutional environments cannot be designed to promote adaptive construals within students’ proximal contexts. Student experiences are part of a recursive cycle, in which students’

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construals of their experiences constantly feed into future experiences. Over time, students’ experiences will shape the nature of construals, as students start to perceive a particular type of experience to be similar in nature to their earlier experiences. The following example illustrates what this process might entail. When entering a large lecture classroom with stadium seating for the first time, many students would not think much about the decision of where to sit or how to get there. Students might decide to sit where there are fewer people or sit next to a friend. However, this same classroom entry experience would be construed very differently by students with a physical disability, who may have much stronger emotions and in-depth thought processes about where to sit. Students who use a wheelchair or crutches may stay at the very back of the classroom, perhaps because they do not have another accessible choice available. Students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing may want to be where they could simultaneously see an interpreter, the overhead slides, and the instructor. Thus, even before reaching their seat, students with physical disabilities may have strong emotional reactions and doubt about whether they are welcome within the classroom environment. We offer another commonly cited example in which the “objective” experience is identical, but students’ construals and reactions are likely to differ notably. A college instructor might require students to give a presentation in class, and she may compliment a student at the end of his presentation for being “articulate.” Many Black students are aware of the troubled history of this word, including its stereotypical implication that most African Americans are assumed to be inarticulate (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Marshall, 2020). Therefore, a Black student may have a strong negative construal if this word is used to describe his presentation and will probably feel less belonging, which may affect how he engages with that class and potentially other courses as well. In contrast, a White student who is unaware of this background information—and to whom the stereotype does not apply—may react positively to being called “articulate” (although it seems less likely that the instructor would use that particular word for White students). That use of “articulate” might instead lead this White student to have more positive engagement in this class and beyond. In both instances, students’ (and instructors’) construals have been powerfully shaped by their identities and prior experiences, as well as the contexts in which their experiences are embedded.

Precollege Influences That Affect Student Experiences and Construals Students bring with them a wealth of experiences, chosen and ascribed identities, goals, beliefs, and questions as they enter college. These qualities are

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often framed as “precollege,” perhaps indicative of the ways in which higher education is often seen as a breaking point or a major transition in their lives. It is important to account for the different paths that students have traversed to reach higher education and to acknowledge that students arrive as knowledge-bearers, thinkers, and learners. They are not empty vessels waiting to be filled, and college enrollment does not necessarily represent a break with their “past” selves, especially for commuter or nontraditional-age students. These precollege influences are themselves fluid; for instance, students’ identities, material resources, and psychological attributes can change considerably before starting college and during college. Additionally, precollege influences may shape the “starting line” for entering students; for example, a student whose academic preparation has included advanced placement or prior college enrollment will enter with some postsecondary course credit. Although these precollege influences may develop over decades, any attempt to measure them inherently constitutes a snapshot in time. Moreover, these precollege influences are related to one another either directly or indirectly via the shared impact of sociohistorical and policy contexts. In the following sections, we describe several categories of precollege influences: socialization and identities, psychological attributes, educational intentions, academic preparation, and material resources. Socialization and Identities Through social structures and interpersonal relationships, students have been socialized to understand and navigate the world in ways that are so deeply internalized that they manifest invisibly; these teachings become taken-forgranted assumptions about the world and their place in it. Socialization informs preferences and taste, knowledge, relationships, and even body posture and gestures (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984). Students have navigated relationships, communities, institutional structures, and policy contexts while developing and performing an understanding of themselves within these dynamics. This socialization has both direct and indirect influences on the ways in which students enter and engage with higher education. Socialization necessarily includes some understanding of how people group and categorize one another. Students have been ascribed identities; they have internalized or performed those identities (consciously or otherwise) in some cases, while rejecting the labels offered in other instances (Serpe & Stryker, 2011). This process of claiming, rejecting, or performing membership in social groups is inherently social and relational; it may develop over time and shift across contexts (Abes et al., 2007). That said, identities influence the ways that students are perceived and how others interact with them, how much they see themselves in the people around them, and the

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degree to which policy and structures are built to include or exclude students from those groups. Students’ identities clearly play an integral role in their experiences and outcomes before, during, and after college (see chapter 3, this volume; Mayhew et al., 2016; Quaye et al., 2020; Robbins et al., 2004). Although the complex experience of identity can be difficult to capture, research that tracks demographic characteristics has been essential in demonstrating patterns of inequity in higher education across each of these domains. That said, broad categorizations of identity may obscure variation within groups (e.g., Shelton & Sellers, 2000; Viano & Baker, 2020). Additionally, discussions about identities or demographics tend to focus on “marked” categories, which are generally those with less power in hierarchical social structures (e.g., Black students, first-generation students). Marked categories are often linguistically established as “other,” whereas more powerful categories remain unmarked as neutral, comprehensive terms and therefore are less visible (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). As a further layer of complexity, students’ experiences are powerfully shaped by the intersections across their myriad identities in ways that are rarely fully explored (chapter 8 and chapter 9, this volume). Many students are well aware of intergroup and power dynamics, especially if they carry marginalized identities (e.g., Cadenas et al., 2018; Harper & Hurtado, 2007; Kimball et al., 2016). As a result, students enter college with questions informed by the interplay of identity and experience. They may be asking themselves whether they will belong, whether they can succeed, and why they should do it (chapter 6, this volume). These questions are informed by the messages they have received from peers and family, teachers and schools, and community members and leaders. In contrast, other students may have little concern about these issues (Walton & Cohen, 2007), making the initial questions less salient unless presented with a new challenge. Psychological Attributes Psychological factors clearly inform educational success. In a useful conceptualization, Farrington et al. (2012) offer a framework of noncognitive factors that contribute to academic achievement; this content overlaps with the work that Packard and Hirst described in chapter 7 of this volume. The present framework draws upon four of Farrington et al.’s factors as precollege influences. Academic mindsets refer to a set of attitudes or beliefs through which students view themselves and their academics: growth mindset (the extent to which intelligence and performance are viewed as improvable with appropriate effort and strategies), self-efficacy (students’ belief that they can succeed academically), utility and purpose (the value of academic work for

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accomplishing future goals), and belonging (students’ belief that they have a place within the college or university). Academic mindsets affect three other types of noncognitive factors: academic perseverance (e.g., grit, conscientiousness, self-control, delayed gratification); learning strategies (e.g., metacognition, self-regulated learning, goal-setting, study skills); and social skills (e.g., empathy, cooperation, interpersonal skills). These three factors each directly shape students’ academic behaviors, which then influence academic performance. In general, academic perseverance will lead to more time spent on studying and completing assignments; learning strategies will result in more effective approaches for understanding and applying course material; and social skills will help students navigate relationships with instructors, peers, and support staff that can be critical for learning and achievement. Although Farrington et al. focused on grades as the primary outcome of interest, the same noncognitive factors may also influence nonacademic experiences and other outcomes that are critical to college success. Educational Intentions Intending to receive some level of postsecondary education may essentially be a prerequisite for college enrollment, but educational intentions may not be as strongly related to student success as some people may think. Students’ educational aspirations are almost universally high early in high school, but these aspirations tend to decrease by the high school junior year for some groups, especially for students from low-income backgrounds (Broer & Ikoma, 2015; Kao & Thompson, 2003). Moreover, a considerable number of high school seniors who plan to enroll in college in the upcoming fall term ultimately never do so (Castleman & Page, 2014), and some research indicates that educational intentions do not predict college graduation among students who do enroll after accounting for other precollege characteristics (Adelman, 2006). These findings illustrate Page and Nurshatayeva’s broader argument that people are not as able to anticipate the future as they would like to think (chapter 5, this volume). However, educational aspirations may be more useful for understanding college success if they are defined via students’ commitment to their goal of obtaining a postsecondary degree. Systematic reviews have shown that goal commitment is positively related to college academic achievement and retention (Pan, 2010; Richardson et al., 2012; Robbins et al., 2009), and it predicts retention above and beyond other precollege and psychosocial factors (Robbins et al., 2004). Therefore, consistent with other theories (e.g., Cabrera et al., 1992; Tinto, 1993), we emphasize the role of goal commitment rather than simply the intended level of educational attainment, as students who hold stronger intentions to graduate may engage with college

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in a different manner than those who are not strongly committed to their educational goals. Academic Preparation Students’ precollege academic preparation is critical for their ability to access many higher education institutions and to succeed when they arrive. We use the language of “academic preparation” to emphasize the role of school structures and resources in shaping these dynamics rather than “prior achievement,” which may suggest that students are entirely responsible for their own success. Consistent with this usage, national data indicate that the strength of students’ high school curriculum may be the strongest precollege predictor of 4-year college graduation (Adelman, 2006). Opportunities for obtaining academic preparation vary dramatically across schools and school districts as a result of substantial inequities, some of which stem from the role of local property taxes for supporting K–12 education (Martin et al., 2018). Academic preparation also differs considerably across students within the same school. Some of these effects are driven by tracking, which is the practice of placing K–12 students within a tiered curriculum based on perceived ability. Tracking can have a cumulative effect on learning outcomes over time due to continued differences in teaching, encouragement, resources, learning environments, and so on. For example, students who are “over-placed” into higher-track coursework (relative to their test scores) ultimately have greater educational attainment than their scores would predict, whereas the negative consequences of being “under-placed” into remedial coursework are difficult to overcome regardless of prior preparation (Tyson & Roksa, 2016). Considerable evidence illustrates biases in tracking practices, which leads to White, Asian, and affluent students being overrepresented in the most advanced tracks, whereas Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, and English language learner students are overrepresented in vocational, remedial, and special education tracks (Kanno & Kangas, 2014; Mickelson, 2015; Oakes, 1985; Tyson, 2011). These dynamics have a profound influence on subsequent college outcomes. Material Resources College also requires considerable investment. Clearly, students need material resources to pay for college and related expenses, which presents an even greater challenge with rising tuition and loan debt (Goldrick-Rab, 2016) and a policy context that amplifies and escalates these financial barriers (chapter 4, this volume). Student success interventions highlighted in the media frequently seek to address financial need, offering rent support, help with

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groceries and transportation, childcare, and small tuition grants (chapter 2, this volume). Material resources may have a pervasive influence on all aspects of students’ lives and decision-making, as students have finite amounts of time and finances to divide between college, working for pay, and other responsibilities and activities. In fact, 70–80% of undergraduates are employed during college, and about 40% of undergraduates work at least 30 hours per week (Carnevale et al., 2015). Despite this high level of employment, sizable proportions of college students experience food and/or housing insecurity (Broton, 2020; Wood & Harris, 2018), which can have a host of negative effects on students’ engagement, cognition, and well-being (Broton & Goldrick-Rab, 2016; Broton et al., 2018; Eisenberg et al., 2016). Not surprisingly, many students who drop or stop out of college do so for financial reasons (Goldrick-Rab, 2016).

College Entry Considerations That Affect Proximal and Institutional Contexts The ways in which students engage in the college search and entry process may also affect their success in college. Unfortunately, these considerations often unfold in ways that perpetuate inequality and benefit people who fit the stereotype of an entering college student (e.g., 18 years old, enrolls immediately after high school, comes from a middle-class or upper-class family, is supported financially by their parents, engages in an extensive college decision process; see Paulsen & St. John, 2002). Where and When to Apply Students have varying levels of “choice” in where to apply to college. For instance, a parent who works full-time and has limited financial resources may only apply to a single institution (e.g., their local community college), whereas a traditional-age, upper-middle-class student may conduct a nationwide search and submit many applications to find an ideal location. Page and Nurshatayeva (chapter 5, this volume) discuss substantial socioeconomic disparities in the number of college applications and the selectivity of those institutions; systematic efforts to change application behaviors sometimes— but not always—improve the degree attainment of lower-SES students. A related consideration is when students apply to college. Many selective 4-year institutions have regular admissions deadlines in January for the upcoming fall term, whereas other institutions have rolling admissions throughout the year (Moody, 2019; Ross, 2018). Some colleges and universities select a sizable proportion of their incoming class through early action or decision in October or November (Jaschik, 2019), which places students

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who are able to prepare very early at a notable advantage. Applying in the fall semester for a college with rolling admissions can also benefit students, because these students may have greater access to institutional resources. Where and How to Enroll Students who have been accepted at multiple institutions must then decide whether and where to enroll. This decision may shape college student success because students who want a bachelor’s degree are more likely to reach this goal when starting at a 4-year rather than a 2-year college; institutional selectivity and resources also contribute to a greater likelihood of graduation (chapter 3 and chapter 8, this volume; Mayhew et al., 2016). Institutional type could further influence student success. For instance, although the evidence is mixed, Black students who attend a historically Black college or university may be more likely to graduate than those attending a predominantly White institution (e.g., Pike & Robbins, 2019; Richards & Awokoya, 2012; Webber & Ehrenberg, 2010). An understudied consideration pertains to students’ modes of attending college, including how many credits students attempt and whether they attend coursework face-to-face, online, or a combination. Once again, students may or may not have much “choice” in these decisions: A parent who works full-time is likely unable to take full-time coursework, whereas the traditional-age student who conducts a nationwide college search may need to be enrolled full-time to be eligible for campus residence and/or some financial aid. The amount of course-taking can matter a great deal, as the number of credits enrolled per semester is positively and strongly related to the likelihood of transferring to a 4-year institution (e.g., Doyle, 2011; Wang, 2012) and receiving an associate’s or bachelor’s degree (e.g., Adelman, 2006; Calcagno et al., 2007). Moreover, students with various life obligations (e.g., employment, caretaking) and those who live in geographically remote areas may find it difficult, if not impossible, to attend courses in person. Although there is limited research to date, taking courses online instead of face-to-face appears to reduce course completion, academic achievement, and retention (Alpert et al., 2016; Bettinger et al., 2017; Figlio et al., 2013). How to Transition Into College Several different aspects of how students transition into college merit attention. The phrase “college transition” is normally used to describe the beginning of college, but some key events occur before students attend their first day of classes. For instance, students may complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) or attend a campus tour (in person or virtually). At many institutions, first-semester courses are determined during a

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summer orientation, so signing up for an earlier date could provide better course options. Students who enroll early at a particular institution may be able to access resources more effectively, such as signing up for summer orientation dates, applying for campus parking, or selecting desirable housing. These transitional activities may then affect students’ experiences and outcomes during college.

Contexts That Shape Student Experiences and Construals All human interaction is situated within larger contexts and social structures that both shape human interaction and, in turn, are produced, maintained, and occasionally disrupted through social interaction (McCall, 2013). Consistent with models that situate students within broader contextual environments (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1993; Hurtado et al., 2012; Perna & Thomas, 2006), we view these as extending broadly to include sociohistorical, policy, and institutional contexts that are largely nested within one another. These contexts have tremendous influence on who attends college, what type of college one attends, and what job placements and other opportunities may occur after college—as well the experiences that make up this journey and the ways students construe those experiences. Sociohistorical Context The sociohistorical context is a product of the social, cultural, and historical aspects of society. It contains both the collective ways in which a society imagines itself and the legacies of history, which (in the case of colonialist nation-states) are often built on foundations of violence, oppression, and exclusion toward some of its members. In the United States, centuries of systemic racism continue to harm Black and Indigenous members, as well as other People of Color, despite dominant discourse that relegates these forms of oppression to the annals of history (Zinn, 2014). As just one illustration of these dynamics, household wealth or net worth reflects cumulative intergenerational effects of systematic exclusion from accessing many colleges and universities, high-paying jobs, affluent neighborhoods, and other resources for improving economic standing. As a result, the net worth of the median White household in the United States is nearly 10 times larger than that of the median Black or Latinx household (McIntosh et al., 2020). The United States has some of the greatest income inequality among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2020). These figures reflect the compounded and ongoing consequences of historical legacies that powerfully influence the experiences of present-day students throughout their lives.

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Systems of oppression further complicate social stratification and students’ success. For instance, low-income students are more likely to be targeted by the for-profit college sector and receive what Cottom (2018) calls a “lower ed,” finding themselves with few support structures for success, large amounts of student debt, and limited upward mobility. In predominantly White institutions, Students of Color may find themselves in racist campus environments where they experience frequent microaggressions (Solórzano et al., 2000; Yosso et al., 2009). The legacy of colonialism, racism, and sexism in the sciences continues to negatively shape the experiences of women, Black, and Native students in STEM fields (Harding, 1983, 2008). The sociohistorical context can also make it difficult to design a one-size-fits-all approach to student success. Despite the frequent use and benefits of active learning pedagogy (Freeman et al., 2014; Mayhew et al., 2016), LGBTQIA students’ identities can become even more relevant and marginalized in a field imbued with heteronormativity (Bilimoria & Stewart, 2009). Policy Context Federal, state, and local policies also influence college students’ experiences, although the relationship between policy context and students’ access and success is seldom direct and is often “ambiguous and contradictory” (chapter 4, this volume). A great deal of research has explored the potential impact of certain policies; specifically, grants and scholarships have positive effects on the retention and graduation of students who receive this support (Nguyen et al. 2019; Sneyers & De Witte, 2018), whereas performance-based funding is generally unrelated to graduation outcomes (Hillman, 2016; Ward & Ost, 2021). This work has also found that the impact of policies may differ based on student background and institutional context, as students with fewer material resources and those who attend open-access colleges and universities are more likely to benefit from financial aid (Mayhew et al., 2016). Federal immigration policies provide another example of how the larger policy and legal contexts can affect students’ well-being and their experiences in higher education institutions. For example, changes and uncertainties around the legal status of undocumented students affect their ability to access federal and other financial aid programs (Gildersleeve et al., 2010), and some educational experiences like study abroad or service-learning activities can leave students feeling unwelcome and lead to anxiety and fear (e.g., Gonzales, 2016). Of course, the role of policy begins well before students enter college; they have lived in and navigated institutional contexts (e.g., formal schooling) that both shape and are shaped by policy contexts. Although those contexts may often be abstract or even invisible, others have directly shaped their educational careers (e.g., dress codes or graduation criteria).

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Institutional Context The institutional context encompasses the general environment of a specific college or university. Conceptualized across theories as the college environment (Museus, 2014; Tinto, 1975, 1993) or campus climate (Hurtado et al., 2008; Hurtado et al., 2012), institutional contexts may affect students very differently and contribute to systematic disparities across groups. Students’ perceptions of the campus environment or climate vary by students’ identities (Hurtado et al., 2008, 2012), which then results in different levels of belonging and chances of success. For instance, Cabrera et al. (2017) explain how spaces, climate, programs, and policies in predominantly White institutions (PWI) frequently create conditions for White students’ success while negatively affecting Students of Color. Students’ socioeconomic background can shape what experiences are available to them at institutions that are often designed to serve students from more advantaged backgrounds (chapter 8, this volume). Many features of the institutional context may be invisible or play an indirect role in students’ experiences and construals. Several student services could be centralized into a “one-stop office” or scattered throughout the institution, which could affect students’ ability or inclination to access these resources. The number of advisors or counselors employed by an institution may affect the availability of support or the degree to which these services proactively reach out to students. The financial health of the institution may affect availability of scholarships or the ability to develop innovative new programs that would enhance the student experience. The climate of a department likely affects their ability to hire and retain faculty from a wide range of backgrounds. Several aspects of the institution have the potential to directly shape student experiences; these features become salient influences in the development of a student’s proximal context within the college landscape.

Proximal Context: The Dynamic Interplay of Experiences, Contexts, and Construals Crucial to the present theory, the proximal context refers to the intersection of interpersonal and physical environments, contexts, and structures that students directly engage with and navigate; this context contributes substantially to the experiences that students have. The proximal context overlaps to some extent with the broader institutional context, but part of the proximal context is almost certainly outside of the institution (e.g., relationships with family, community members, or other friends; off-campus employment). However, the proximal context is not purely an external factor or influence on student experiences. In many ways, the proximal context is as much the result of cumulative prior experiences as it is an influence on current and

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future experiences. It evolves at the dynamic nexus of context and student construal, so it is therefore not static over time. Each student’s proximal context represents the unique confluence of their individual journeys, influences, and contexts. This context both shapes—and is shaped by—student experiences and construals in an ongoing, iterative process. Interpersonal relationships with fellow students, instructors, staff, or people outside of the college constitute a critical part of the proximal context. The link between interpersonal relationships and experiences is clear: Almost by definition, students will tend to interact with someone more frequently when they have an interpersonal relationship with them. The nature of the interpersonal relationship also informs the potential influence of the context, as some relationships come with explicit or implicit roles and responsibilities (e.g., employee, parent). Moreover, students’ prior experiences within those relationships—or with people in a similar role—will shape their construal of their current experiences. For instance, a student may interpret an awkward comment from someone as not meaningful or informative (“I don’t think that’s what he really meant based on our earlier conversations”) or as problematic (“I can’t believe that he’s making another comment like that”). Moreover, if a university administrator or staff member made this statement, then the student’s previous encounters with and perceptions of other administrators will almost certainly inform this construal, especially if the student has little or no personal relationship with that administrator. Students have some degree of agency or choice in creating their proximal context; for instance, they have considerable ability to decide with whom they interact, the curricular or cocurricular activities in which they participate, the courses they take, and the major(s) and minor(s) they pursue. Even before students first attend college, they make important decisions that define the parameters of possibility for their proximal context. Informed by their prior experiences and contexts, students make decisions about where and when to apply to college, where and how to attend, and how to transition into college. Once students start attending college, each experience further develops the contours of a student’s proximal context. At a residential institution, students may attend a floor dinner in their first week living in the residence hall, which creates an initial social network of peers with whom they might continue to interact. A deeply religious student might research local synagogues and service times to begin building a faith community within their proximal context. Another student might find themselves making a choice between completing recently assigned homework or attending a family event. Each choice might open new possibilities for the shape of their proximal contexts, while limiting others, as their unique path through college begins to take shape.

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However, a fair portion of the proximal context is not freely chosen, but it is instead facilitated or directly imposed. As discussed previously, many students have limited “choice” in their college entry process, and these early dynamics can constrain students’ options during college. The resulting institutional and proximal contexts may substantially influence student experiences by directing students toward or away from particular spaces, groups, and opportunities. To better understand the role of the institution, we highlight five types of institutional factors that influence students’ experiences and construals, and therefore the development of their proximal context: policies, bureaucracy, programs, agents, and communication. These features of the institution can serve both as supports and as barriers to student retention; the same feature might be both, depending on the student, the nature of their experiences, and their construal. Each of these factors is only relevant for a student’s success insofar as it appears in their proximal context. Policies The policy structures at colleges and universities are often complex and extensive, affecting various aspects of students’ experiences (although a student may only be aware of a small fraction of these policies). Potentially influential policies might include credits that students may or may not receive for coursework before entering the institution, placement into certain levels of college coursework, conditions for entering and satisfying requirements within a particular major, policies for remaining in academic good standing, use of preferred names and nonbinary treatment of gender, and student code of conduct that defines appropriate behavior and procedures for addressing conduct violations. These policies may be enforced more or less rigidly and may be created with varying levels of attention toward inclusion, which then determines the nature and extent of their impact. Institutional policies can have dramatic intended or unintended effects on student success. For example, two approaches that are presumably designed to help students who are struggling academically—developmental (or remedial) coursework and academic probation—often contribute to considerable declines in student retention (Sneyers & De Witte, 2018; Valentine et al., 2017). Moreover, policies that rely on normative gender assumptions negatively influence the experiences and sense of belonging of trans* students (Nicolazzo, 2016). Bureaucracy Bureaucracy results from institutional structures and policies, and it may lead to challenges with students’ navigation of the college environment.

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Administrative burdens have been discussed in the context of public services (Herd & Moynihan, 2018). For students, these bureaucratic burdens may include determining the collegiate policies and processes to which they need to attend, completing various requirements and forms (which may involve compiling and sharing documentation), and dealing with any problems resulting from noncompletion or misunderstandings, all of which can lead to considerable stress. Bureaucracy can reduce student success and increase inequities through differential frequencies of bureaucratic hassles (e.g., for financial aid or academic probation), different access to knowledge about how to navigate these, and differential construals of the same bureaucratic encounters. For instance, within an experimental study that exposed students to bureaucratic hassles, Reeves (2015) found that these had adverse effects on college sense of belonging only among first-generation students; this finding suggests that first-generation students may interpret such experiences as more threatening, perhaps as a result of greater uncertainty about their belonging. Fortunately, some of these challenges can be at least partially remedied through targeted efforts. Page and Nurshatayeva (chapter 5, this volume) discuss how colleges and universities can use nudges (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) to advance students’ success. For example, the institution can send a text message to remind students of a registration hold that could result in their withdrawal if it is not addressed promptly (see Page et al., 2020). That said, institutions should also seek to reduce bureaucracy to the extent possible, which may benefit both students and institutions. In one salient example, students may have the option to choose from thousands of courses to satisfy an array of requirements for their degree and/or major. Reducing the number of options by providing a smaller number of clear pathways may help students focus their efforts and make steady progress toward transfer or degree completion (Bailey et al., 2015). Programs Colleges and universities provide a wide range of institutional support services and programming to enhance students’ experiences and success. In chapter 2 of this volume, Kramer et al. classified recent institutional student success efforts into five categories: academic, advising, financial, social, and multifaceted. Some multifaceted initiatives have been particularly helpful for students from low-income backgrounds and/or those facing basic needs insecurity as a one-stop location to provide them with information about financial aid, advising, and academic support, as well as to assist them with their basic needs through emergency funds and support for food and housing (Goldrick-Rab et al., 2017).

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Programs have their most obvious intended influence on college success by affecting the experiences in which students engage, which may include improving the teaching and learning environment, providing assistance with selecting coursework that leads to intended degree and career outcomes, facilitating the development of community, or offering financial aid on a consistent or one-time emergency basis (chapter 2, this volume). Some programs may also shape students’ construals; for instance, “norming” campaigns may seek to provide information about how often students engage in certain types of behavior (e.g., studying, drinking alcohol) to make desired behavior seem more pervasive and therefore desirable. Agents Many student experiences with the institution occur via interpersonal interactions with agents, which then powerfully shape student outcomes (see Hurtado et al., 2012; Rendón, 1994). The role of faculty and administrators has received considerable attention in higher education research, as these agents certainly can help students understand the institutional context and then influence students’ experiences, construals, and outcomes. In a couple of construal-related examples, academic counselors, advisors or tutors may seek to reframe challenges with course material as a normal part of the learning process that many students encounter, so these should not be viewed as indicating a (fixed) lack of ability to succeed. Staff or faculty advisors in discipline- or field-specific programs may discuss how students’ current experiences are relevant to their future careers or to broad life goals (e.g., improving communities), which could then lead to a more positive construal of the purpose of course exams and assignments. Other agents also have considerable potential to influence students, regardless of whether their formal job responsibilities include engaging with students. Custodians comprise a frequently overlooked group of institutional agents who may cultivate sense of belonging as they meet students in residence halls or campus recreational spaces (Magolda, 2016). “Near-peers” may also be very important, as the personal experiences of these advanced undergraduates may be more influential than staff or faculty conveying the same information or advice about student experiences in college (Linley, 2017; Yeager & Walton, 2011). Communication Students receive a great deal of communication from their institution, which can come from a specific agent speaking for themselves, an agent communicating on behalf of a program or structure, or an automatic message sent

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to one or more (and potentially all) students. Communication can occur in various forms: face-to-face, video chat, email, phone calls, text messages, social media, websites, and more. These communications can vary notably in their clarity, transparency, frequency, proactiveness, supportiveness, and other characteristics. Finding an appropriate balance can be difficult; for example, communications may be ignored or not taken seriously if they occur too often, but important information should probably be repeated and provided through multiple channels. Importantly, communications can be tailored to influence desired college success outcomes. In one salient example, research on academic probation has found that the initial letter used to inform students of their probationary placement often leads to substantial negative emotions, whereas revising this letter with a student perspective in mind can lead to more positive emotional reactions, more adaptive construals of academic probation, and improved college grades (Brady et al., 2019; Waltenbury et al., 2018; Yeaton & Moss, 2020).

Student Outcomes and Experiences Over Time College student success must also be understood in temporal terms. Student construals and contextual constraints foster a dynamic and highly iterative process of interconnected experiences. Like links in a chain, students construe each new experience in relation to past experiences, as they develop a sense of the college context and themselves within it. This process evolves over time, so student success outcomes are often a product of many smaller, interconnected experiences (that said, some events can have a dramatic effect that immediately and substantially alters students’ outcomes). As a result, snapshots of students’ perceptions of college at one point in time may not yield the most accurate information about their eventual chances of retention, persistence, or graduation. Moreover, a positive or negative experience will likely have a larger effect on students’ construals or subsequent outcomes if it occurs during their first few weeks of college rather than in their junior year. When students have limited time in college and therefore far fewer experiences, they simply have less information on which to base their construals, so these are more malleable. For example, a low score on a midterm will likely have a more profound impact if it occurs on their first test during college instead of within a course in their fourth semester of college. This same logic may also be applicable to students who may not have much other information about higher education (e.g., through family or friends who have attended college).

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Student experiences and construals lead to a set of intermediate outcomes that then directly affect whether students are retained or persist in higher education. In chapter 6 of this volume, Williams and Murphy describe three questions students wonder about—whether consciously or unconsciously—that shape how they perceive their experiences and react as a result. Specifically, they argue that students wonder “Can I do it?”, “Why should I do it?”, and “Is my identity valued here?” We build upon this framework by arguing that students consider a closely related set of questions: Can I do it? Why should I do it? Do I belong here?, and Can I afford it? Stated differently, some key constructs that shape student construals and success pertain to academic self-efficacy, purpose and motivation, sense of belonging in college, and financial status and perceptions, respectively. These four constructs/ questions serve both to inform how students construe or perceive their experiences and as intermediate outcomes that are necessary to ultimately succeed in college. Unfortunately, a negative response to any one of these questions can lead to college attrition, as students may not continue to enroll if they feel that they are unable to succeed academically, have no compelling reason to obtain a degree, do not feel that they belong at the institution or within college in general, or cannot pay for their education. Some important features of these questions are worth highlighting. First, students’ answers to these questions may vary over time, as sense of belonging can fluctuate considerably during students’ first semester (Bowman et al., 2019). Social psychology research also suggests that these perceptions are more malleable at the beginning of college, so early experiences and construals may be especially important for promoting success (e.g., Cohen & Sherman, 2014). A single substantial event, such as the loss of financial aid or a highly negative interpersonal interaction, can also dramatically affect these perceptions at any point. Second, although these perceptions are framed as questions, some students may never consciously consider these issues, whereas others may do so frequently (Walton & Brady, 2017). For example, a student who is supported by a wealthy family might never question whether they can pay for college, and a student who consistently performs well in college coursework may never wonder whether they can succeed academically. Third, these questions are intentionally framed somewhat broadly, because they may apply to college in general, or they may be specific to certain aspects of college. For the question “Can do I it?”, “it” may refer to succeeding in college at all, at this institution, within one’s current major, or within a particular course. Fourth, students may consider these questions in combination with one another. A student who is unsure about the usefulness of college for achieving their career goals may decide to drop out if they are also concerned about the long-term commitment of taking on substantial

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loan debt, whereas a student who feels that college is integral to their career may decide that the same amount of debt will ultimately be worth it. Notably, three of the general constructs within these four questions have already received a great deal of attention in college attrition theories as well as psychological theories of well-being. Table 10.2 provides an overview of how concepts from several relevant theories map onto three of the constructs. A detailed discussion of each of these theories is beyond the scope of this chapter, but we seek to highlight the key areas of overlap. By design, three of the present theory’s proposed constructs are very similar to the Williams and Murphy (chapter 6, this volume) questions. Moreover, Museus (2014) framed sense of belonging and academic performance as two of the three key individual factors that drive college success outcomes; the third consists of academic dispositions, including academic self-efficacy and academic motivation. Although academic performance is not a direct measure of self-efficacy, college grades constitute perhaps the strongest predictor of retention, persistence, and graduation (Mayhew et al., 2016; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005), and some research suggests that academic achievement primarily affects college attrition through its influence on academic self-perceptions (e.g., Stinebrickner & Stinebrickner, 2012). TABLE 10.2

Overview of Key Constructs in Theories of College Student Success and Psychological Flourishing Theory/Framework

Sense of Belonging in College

Academic SelfEfficacy/Perceived Competence

Purpose and Motivation

Present framework

Do I belong here?

Can I do it?

Why should I do it?

Construal-based questions (chapter 6, this volume)

Is my identity valued here?

Can I do it?

Why should I do it?

Culturally engaging campus environments model (Museus, 2014)

Sense of belonging

Academic selfefficacy and performance

Academic motivation

Validation theory (Rendón, 1994)

Interpersonal and academic validation

Academic validation

Academic motivation

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Theory of student departure (Tinto, 1975)

Social and academic integration

Academic integration and GPA (to some extent)

Goal and institutional commitment

Selfdetermination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000)

Relatedness needs

Competence needs

Desire to fulfill needs drives human behavior

Psychological well-being (Ryff, 1989)

Positive relations with others

Self-acceptance (to some extent)

Purpose in life and personal growth

Rendón (1994, 2002) described validation behaviors from instructors, staff, other students, and people external to the university; validation occurs when people demonstrate an interest in promoting students’ academic success and personal well-being. Interpersonal validation demonstrates care for students as individuals, so it is strongly linked with sense of belonging in college, especially when it comes from someone affiliated with the institution. Academic validation directly serves to bolster academic self-efficacy (as it often involves explicit attempts to help students succeed), and it may also improve students’ college sense of belonging. Furthermore, Rendón highlights how validation behaviors lead students to become more motivated to engage in academic and interpersonal experiences related to their institution. Tinto (1975) framed social and academic integration as the extent to which students believe they fit within the social or academic environment of the institution; a later version of the theory posited that students may feel at home within or integrated into a subculture of the institution (Tinto, 1993). These social and academic integration concepts are both closely tied to a sense of belonging, and academic integration may also involve a student’s belief that they can succeed academically, because a perceived inability to succeed would almost certainly be reflected via low academic integration. Moreover, goal commitment and institutional commitment consist of the extent to which students are committed to the goal of receiving a college degree or to their institution, respectively. These forms of commitment serve as motivation for students to engage or continue to engage in postsecondary education. In addition to these college student success theories, two well-known theories of psychological flourishing also overlap substantially with the questions in the present theory. Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory

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posits that human behavior is substantially motivated by three fundamental needs, two of which are relatedness (which is intrinsically tied to belonging) and competence (which is intrinsically tied to academic self-efficacy in college contexts). People’s drive to achieve relatedness and competence serves as motivation for engaging meaningfully in college; alternatively, this drive can contribute toward attrition if those needs are not fulfilled by students’ college experiences. Moreover, Ryff (1989) proposed domains of psychological well-being that overlap with each of the three constructs. Specifically, Ryff ’s positive relations with others is directly related to a sense of belonging. Ryff ’s purpose in life and personal growth can serve as motivation to attend college and engage meaningfully, and Ryff ’s self-acceptance may be related to perceptions of academic competence and self-efficacy (although self-acceptance certainly extends more broadly than these academic issues). In terms of overall well-being, mental health concerns among college students are becoming increasingly pervasive (American College Health Association, 2019). Although well-being is not positioned as its own question in this theory, mental health challenges can certainly affect the answers to students’ questions related to motivation, academic self-efficacy, and belonging. Finally, although the theories described here generally did not focus on financial issues, this topic has certainly received attention in prior work. Consistent with prior theory and research (see chapter 4, this volume; Goldrick-Rab et al., 2009; St. John et al., 2000), the present theory asserts the importance of finance perceptions as well as an objective ability to pay. Students’ perceptions of “can I afford it” may be substantially influenced by unmet need, accruing loan debt, and/or a lack of awareness of available financial assistance. In addition, the institution may unilaterally decide that a student cannot register for classes if their tuition and fees are not paid, regardless of that student’s perception of their ability to pay.

Conclusion This chapter offered an interdisciplinary theory of college student success that was informed by insights from different research perspectives and traditions. In some ways, the resulting theory builds upon prior conceptualizations and frameworks, such as the consideration of relevant contexts that occur at several levels (sociohistorical, policy, and institutional) as well as the role of some precollege influences on college dynamics. That said, it also diverges from many previous frameworks in important ways. Most importantly, it proposes the proximal context as a dynamic environment in which student experiences and construals operate in an iterative feedback

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loop, through which construals become solidified over time after engaging in numerous experiences of varying types. Student experiences and the proximal context itself are shaped by a combination of (a) student agency or choice, (b) college entry considerations and precollege influences that make certain experiences more or less likely, and (c) institutional contexts and factors that either facilitate or prescribe particular experiences (or lack thereof ). Student experiences and construals continuously shape their answers to four implicit self-questions that serve as intermediate outcomes leading to retention, persistence, or attrition: “Can I do it?” “Do I belong here?” “Why should I do it?” and “Can I afford it?” All of these processes are substantially informed by students’ identities and the broader sociohistorical context in which they occur. Implications for practice, policy, research, and assessment are described within the next chapter.

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11 USING THE I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A RY T H E O RY O F S T U D E N T SUCCESS Implications for Policy, Practice, Research, and Assessment Lindsay Jarratt, Milad Mohebali, and Nicholas A. Bowman

I

n the preceding chapter, we offered an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding the influences on student success, the complex ways they intersect and interact, and how the process of student retention unfolds and coalesces over time. To briefly review, this theory explores how the type, time, and tenor of a student’s interconnected experiences are jointly influenced by students’ interpretation or construal and their encompassing contexts. Where, when, and how students enroll—and the knowledge and experiences they bring with them when entering higher education—are the products of myriad influences, including their socialization and identities, psychological attributes, educational intentions, academic preparation, and material resources. These influences, as well as their subsequent college experiences, are simultaneously shaped by the broader sociohistorical, political, and institutional contexts. In other words, application of this theory should include exploration of the maintenance (or disruption) of inequality as colleges and universities interact with the encompassing sociohistorical, political, and institutional contexts that shape students’ precollege influences, college entry considerations, and college success outcomes. The dynamic and evolving interplay of student meaning-making within these structuring forces facilitates the development of a student’s unique 273

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proximal context, or the intersection of physical spaces, social networks, agents, policies, and structures with which a student interacts. Each new experience is interpreted through the filter of prior experience, while it simultaneously influences the continued shaping of the proximal context in an iterative and compounding process. Therefore, this theory is a temporal one, in three ways: It sees each experience as existing at a point of overlap between a student’s past and future understandings; it additionally acknowledges that each experience is nested within histories and legacies that constrain and enable possibilities; and it understands that a single experience or snapshot, decontextualized from these larger narratives, loses explanatory power by obscuring the process that unfolds over time as a product of the complex interplay of these forces. As students navigate these dynamics, they continue to answer (sometimes unconsciously) four questions: Can I do it? Do I belong here? Why should I do it? Can I afford it? However, a theory is only useful to the extent that it can be applied in a meaningful way. Therefore, in this chapter, we attempt to describe theoretical concepts through examples and to extend discussion into the implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. We begin by offering two student vignettes, using their stories to illustrate our theoretical lens. The remainder of the chapter broadens to begin a discussion of how this lens might inform ongoing efforts toward retention through policy, programmatic intervention, and scholarship.

Bringing Theory to Life: Two Stories of Student Retention In the two narratives that follow, we introduce Melvin and Chloe, two fictional students who represent a blend of research on college student success, our experiences working with students as faculty and staff, and our own personal journeys through higher education. Although their stories are invented, we hope they will have the familiar recognition of possibility for readers. At the same time, these are by no means encompassing; we found it impossible to include every detail, context, and experience that is likely to matter in a student’s journey through higher education. Relatedly, we wished to resist assumptions that may be commonly held about some groups of students or types of college contexts, and we therefore also hope that readers will engage the following vignettes with careful scrutiny of the reactions and interpretations that emerge. Certainly, we do not intend to trap these characters or institutions in a deterministic plot. Primarily, we hope these vignettes will shed light into the concepts and interactions we propose through our theory of student success.

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We have noted several of these connections in italics within the vignettes. Additionally, it may be useful to read the vignettes keeping the following questions in mind: • What insights do each of the included disciplinary lenses in this book offer as you read each vignette? What happens when these insights are brought into conversation with one another? • What do you think are the salient experiences for each student? How would you describe the type, time, and tenor of these experiences? How do Chloe and Melvin construe or interpret them? • How are their construals informed by previous experiences? How are their experiences shaped by broader sociocultural, political, and institutional contexts? Does the meaning of an experience change if detached from these larger narratives and contexts? • How are each student’s experiences interconnected over time? What are the effects on the development of each student’s unique proximal context? • From an institutional perspective, what constrains or enables these students’ success? How could things have played out differently, for better or worse? • What are the big questions that each student poses or answers along the way? If they change, what prompts the shift?

Melvin It had taken Melvin a few years to get to college, but he was finally here. His mother was so proud of him, and he was happy to have found a way to pay for college without burdening her. Everything had been so difficult after his father had passed away. Now, his mom was working two jobs to make ends meet and to support her children’s education. His brother had started college a year before Melvin graduated high school, and Melvin had planned on attending the same school so they could room together. But when everything changed, he knew his mom could not support them both, even with the scholarships he was hoping to earn. So he started looking for other options— until an Air Force recruiter came to his school. By serving he could earn free college tuition; he signed up the day after graduation. Note how Melvin has strong intentions for attending and completing college, although a family tragedy and change in material resources affects his entry considerations about how, when, and where to enroll. It is also clear that other factors—family relationships, and perhaps aspects of socialization about hard work, or psychological attributes encouraging a flexible mindset—are all contributing to Melvin’s construal and decision-making at this transition point.

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Now, 4 years later, he was a college student. It might not be the beginning he had once imagined, with orientation and welcome week, residence hall move-in, parties, or Frisbee on the college green, but all that would come next year. For now, he was taking online courses at the local community college; in combination with the AP credits he had earned in high school, he planned to transfer to his brother’s school next year with his general education requirements already completed. Most of his classes looked easy, and he had always been a good student, but he also signed up for an intermediate class on Java to challenge himself. He was planning on majoring in computer science, and this seemed like a good way to prepare. In his spare time, he had also taken on a job as a security guard. He believed that the night shift might be quiet enough to get some studying done, and he could help his mom out a little with the extra income. How are Melvin’s prior academic preparation and future educational intentions shaping Melvin’s course-taking decisions and initial proximal context? How would he answer the question, “Can I do it?” Classes started well enough. He liked that the Java course was asynchronous, so he could work at his own pace through the material. His other classes met online for lecture and discussion each week, and it was good to have some routine, although it was becoming a challenge to stay awake for his early morning class after a long night shift. He contemplated dropping the course, but attendance was only a small part of the grade, and the material was easy for him. However, as the weeks wore on, he found himself slowly falling behind in all his classes, especially in Java. He told himself he could pull it back with some focused attention, so he asked for a few days off from work and set to studying. He had always been told he was smart, and he was confident. But it turned out to be a more difficult challenge than expected, and he started to realize that the course needed more ongoing practice to really learn the cumulative material. But even with this awareness, his first test was a shock. He had never received a B in high school, let alone the D he was now facing. What are the contours of Melvin’s developing proximal context? What types of experiences (what, where, and with whom) are readily available, and what might not be present for Melvin within that context? Note how the proximal context shapes both the cues available to Melvin and Melvin’s construals as the learning process unfolds. Consider what other influences (e.g., socialization and identity, academic preparation) are in dynamic relationship with Melvin’s experiences and construal. One of his coworkers added fuel to the fire. During a break, Melvin mentioned the challenge he was having in his Java course, wondering aloud if

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it was worth continuing. “Nah,” his colleague maintained. “Those computer jobs are all going to foreign kids. Asians are just better at that stuff, and their families make them work so hard. No way you can compete.” Melvin shifted uncomfortably. He was familiar with the stereotype, though the frank bluntness of his colleague was jarring. More so, he wondered if his coworker was unable to tell that Melvin was part Taiwanese. The weight of the stereotype, perceptions, and expectations felt heavy in that moment, and he changed the topic as soon as he could. This exchange offers a small glimpse into the ways experiences and construal exist always within broader sociohistorical contexts (and the complexities of identity within those legacies). What less visible, contextual influences at the sociohistorical, policy, and institutional levels are also likely at work? The problem of classes remained, however, and he realized that his other course grades might be salvageable for transfer, but not if he kept a full load and tried to redeem the Java course as well. He decided to drop the course, though he was unsure how to go about doing so. Registration had been online, and he had never met with an advisor or staff member at the college. He searched the website for a form but only found paperwork specific to the nursing program. So he called the college’s main information line to ask someone for help. The first person he spoke to told him he needed to contact the computer programming department to drop the course. He hung up and called them next; after getting a voicemail recording several times, he finally got someone to answer. However, the administrator said that because Melvin was not actually in the program, he needed to contact the registrar’s office for paperwork. She tried to forward his call there but hung up accidentally, so he looked up the number and called directly. They said they could send him the appropriate paperwork, but Melvin would need to meet with his advisor to get a signature. “And,” the staff member mentioned, “it’s past the drop deadline, so you will only be able to receive a partial refund for the course.” In this example, communication of information (and its accessibility online), bureaucracy, policy, and interactions with institutional agents are all working in tandem to compound an already negative experience for Melvin. Melvin was frustrated. By the time he figured out who his advisor was and contacted him, his tone was curt. He caught himself and apologized, but the advisor was abrupt. As he filled out the paperwork with Melvin, he also mentioned in an offhand manner, “I see you are planning to transfer at the end of this year. Are you aware the World Literature course you are taking is not eligible for transfer with the school you are applying to?” Melvin was crushed, and in that moment began to question whether this was all worth it—and whether he had what it would take to finish college.

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As the situation worsens, Melvin begins to question whether college is worth it, perhaps asking both “Why should I do it?” and “Can I afford it?” These prompt deeper questions about his abilities: “Can I do it?”

Chloe Chloe had a mix of feelings about her afternoon chemistry seminar. It was a necessary step toward her dream of pursuing a career in forensics, but that did not make it any more enjoyable to calculate the molarity of sulfuric acid needed to neutralize hydrogen peroxide. As if the course was not difficult enough, the acid in her stomach further interfered with her focus; all she had to eat was a bag of potato chips saved from dinner the previous night. She tried to ignore her rumbling stomach and looked again at the solution on the blackboard; this time, she realized she did know how to solve it. Even though she had looked at the answer, she was feeling more confident. She knew the formula, and she was sure she would be able to solve these kinds of problems from now on. Smiling, she imagined herself in a lab like on her favorite TV show, where forensic investigators solve the murder mystery through sample chemical clues found in a broken fingernail at the crime scene. Chloe looked back at the board and realized she had drifted off again while the professor was explaining the process of balancing chemical equations. The chemistry classroom is an important space in Chloe’s proximal context, as well as featuring prominently in her educational intentions and the career path she imagines for herself. She is experiencing increases in growth mindset while also working on developing learning strategies for college coursework. However, other influences—in this case, hunger—affect how she interacts in the space. She had noticed herself drifting off in other classes too; it happened too frequently for her to blame it on the timing or the content of the course. And it had gotten worse as the semester progressed and her bank account dwindled. She had worked all summer to save for a carefully budgeted semester, which had blown up in the first week when she saw how expensive books were and had been further stretched by all the social outings she had not anticipated but did not want to be excluded from. But now, between her preoccupation with calculating the amount she needed to make in tips at the restaurant where she worked and the gnawing hunger from skipping a meal or two most days, Chloe was not able to fully focus on her studies. Chloe’s material resources are stretched by hidden or unanticipated costs of college. The ongoing question of “Can I afford it?” (along with the physical challenges of long work hours and not having enough to eat) are affecting Chloe’s learning and focus.

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Still, Chloe passed chemistry with a B−, and her academic advisor told her in their midyear meeting that she was maintaining satisfactory academic progress. Chloe was proud of that, given how hard it had been to work, study, and focus (especially in afternoon classes), and she told her advisor as much. It was a little surprising then that her advisor started asking questions about her schedule, her work, and even her eating habits. Chloe’s answers became a little vague and evasive, but her advisor must have guessed that she was not eating enough. In addition to other academic resources available, she told Chloe that the university had just started a food pantry on campus where students could get something light to eat while on campus. Note how Chloe’s construal might differ from her advisor’s. However, this experience offers an example of how institutional agents (advisor), practices (midyear check-in), and programs (food pantry) can open new pathways in a student’s proximal context, potentially offering new supports for success. The food pantry was located down the hallway from the main cafeteria. Relieved, Chloe went to find it. Unfamiliar with the building, she wandered a little until she heard someone around the corner: “And our student fees are paying for this! We’re just helping them find their way to welfare. It’s not fixing anything—you can’t fix lazy.” Chloe felt her face flush as she froze. She left quickly, unable to work up the courage to go in. However, a few days later, the ache in her stomach guided her back. Feeling ambivalent, she stepped in and surveyed the environment. A young Latinx woman who looked like a student was working at the counter and handing a can of chili and some breakfast bars to a student. Two other students were getting coffee in the corner, and several were browsing the aisles. It felt normal. Chloe had to leave quickly to catch her bus, but she started visiting the food pantry once a week or so when she was so low on cash that she could not buy enough to eat for the whole day—a criterion she had set for herself after overhearing the conversation on her first attempt to find the food pantry. Nonetheless, she sometimes felt guilty about her visits. Was she embodying the stereotypes? Worse, was she using a resource that others needed more? As Chloe navigates a new space on campus, she gets a painful reminder about the sociocultural and political context in which this experience is embedded. How does Chloe construe the event, and how does it affect her construal of and future engagement with the resources of the food pantry? The next semester was a low for Chloe as her courses increased in difficulty and she struggled to keep up with her heavy schedule, working 30 hours a week. Twice, she had to visit the food pantry more than once in a week, feeling ashamed each time. But she also started to become acquaintances— and then friends—with Rosa, the woman she had seen working the cash registers on her first visit. Rosa often volunteered there, and they exchanged

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friendly greetings, but it was the sticker on her water bottle that brought Chloe out of her shell: “That’s my favorite show!” They were soon friends, taking classes together when possible and meeting often in the library to study. Rosa was double majoring in sociology and environmental science, and Chloe was inspired by her dreams for making the world a better place. She had never met someone with such focus and confidence. Note how the development of a close peer relationship helps Chloe to expand and define her proximal context. It was Rosa who helped Chloe to think differently about using the food pantry: “So you need some help sometimes? That’s not a sin. The sin is how we let some people take so much while other people have to work twice as hard to get by. You should be proud that you are so brave, resourceful, smart, and hard-working.” Hearing Rosa, Chloe did feel proud. More than that, she felt relief that she could be totally herself with someone for the first time on campus. She had not realized how much weight she was carrying, and although it was still there, having a real friend who did not judge her made it easier to keep moving. Rosa plays a pivotal role in helping Chloe to shift her construal by validating Chloe’s background and identity. Because of this, Chloe likely has a more positive response to the question “Do I belong here?” Over the next 3 years, Rosa and Chloe were inseparable, eventually moving into a shared apartment together. Chloe also started volunteering at the food pantry, wanting to give back and help others in the same way Rosa had helped her when she needed it. Working hard, Chloe’s grades continued to improve, and more importantly to Chloe, she understood what she was learning because she could focus. Then came the day she excitedly told Rosa that she been recognized on the Dean’s List—and one of her professors had asked Chloe to consider applying to graduate school! Looking back over her time in college, Chloe realized she had never imagined she would be here now, but she was starting to feel like she really could succeed. As Chloe’s pressing material needs are better met, she develops close relationships, finds meaningful contexts and engagement, and can thrive academically. Note how Chloe construes “success” academically and how, on reflection, she is finding new answers to the question “Can I do it?”—which are also leading to new educational intentions.

Implications In the remainder of the chapter, we discuss implications for policy, practice, research, and assessment based on the interdisciplinary theory of college

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student success. While doing so, we also reflect on the lessons imparted by Chloe and Melvin’s stories, which we sometimes use to provide concrete examples of these implications.

Practice and Policy Implications Theoretical frameworks offer insights into how practitioners and policymakers should tailor their actions to promote desired outcomes. The present theory is not strongly prescriptive in delineating specific ideal experiences, but it sheds light into the processes that might contribute to the overall tenor of a student’s cumulative experiences and, as a result, their likelihood to persist. Moreover, the type of experiences a student has matters; practitioners need to ensure that positive environments occur via interactions across a variety of different institutional agents (with whom) and physical or virtual locations (where). Students who have few people or locations in which they perceive their environment favorably may be much less likely to succeed than students who have positive experiences consistently. Consider, for example, the type and tenor of Melvin’s interactions with institutional agents. Outside of his virtual classroom, Melvin has few touchpoints on campus, offering little help navigating the bureaucratic maze he encounters when trying to adjust his course load. Each interaction compounds an already negative situation, and he has to overcome several hurdles to navigate a proximal context toward the answers he needs. Our theory encourages an examination of the interconnected (or in Melvin’s case, disconnected) web of contexts and experiences that develops for each student, and how they develop. Institutions should thoroughly examine where, with whom, and for whom the institutional environment is experienced positively or negatively, and then make systemic changes accordingly (see chapter 7, this volume). In terms of understanding and improving student experiences, practitioners should acknowledge realistic constraints on students’ time as well as the fact that some experiences may have diminishing returns at greater levels of engagement for promoting positive outcomes (e.g., Bowman & Trolian, 2017). In the academic realm, this may mean that instructors should carefully consider the amount of time assigned reading and homework will take, as well as how that work supports intended learning outcomes. Although the literature in higher education is scant, research from K–12 clearly demonstrates the benefits of homework—to the extent it is well designed—but also suggests diminishing returns if the total work requires more than a couple hours per night (for a review, see Marzano & Pickering, 2007). Additionally, as both Chloe and Melvin’s vignettes exemplify, students are increasingly employed during their college years. It is important to consider how that time commitment interacts with academic achievement and campus involvement.

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Research suggests that there can be positive benefits for working students, but that it matters where students work and how much time they spend there (McClellan et al., 2018; Perna, 2010); long hours at off-campus jobs—while often financially necessary—may produce adverse effects on student success and retention. Similarly, student engagement in campus activities can certainly enhance the college experience and a student’s sense of belonging, but it may also hinder academic performance at high levels of participation (e.g., Zacherman & Foubert, 2014). One lesson may be for institutional departments and offices that are seeking to promote access to a variety of activities and opportunities (e.g., student organizations, service-learning, employment) to encourage a breadth of meaningful opportunities for many students rather than having the same students engage in repeated experiences. An exception to this strategy may occur if some experiences are designed to be more advanced in nature, so students would need prior engagement and/ or knowledge to participate effectively. However, another overarching lesson is that these initiatives should be considered, implemented, and promoted within a framework that acknowledges the many interconnected demands on student time. Institutions also need to find ways to facilitate students’ engagement in positive and helpful experiences, including those that involve using specific resources to bolster success. Many colleges and universities have a variety of services that students could potentially use, but these often require that students know about the resources, feel comfortable accessing them, and believe that they will be helpful. For example, students who experience the institution as a largely virtual experience may have additional challenges to developing campus knowledge and navigating the terrain, as was the case in Melvin’s story. However, even in “traditional” campus settings, the experience of navigating complex policies and disconnected resources is common. This issue is perhaps amplified for first-generation college students or international students who are simultaneously developing an understanding of the cultural context of the institution, or undocumented students who have to simultaneously navigate fraught federal policy. As an approach for reducing these barriers, Kramer et al. (chapter 2, this volume) observe that various institutions have created multifaceted programs that combine multiple courses and/or services into a coherent package, so students would not need to discern and seek out all of these resources on their own. In their review of behavioral economics research, Page and Nurshatayeva (chapter 5, this volume) conclude that multifaceted interventions that combine institutional programs with psychological approaches to “nudge” students toward adaptive behaviors (delivered through appropriate communication) are particularly effective at bolstering college enrollment and success. Simultaneously,

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developing institutional agents’ capacity to act as institutional translators and to facilitate connection across resources seems critical. Chloe’s advisor offers an example of what this could look like, as she worked to understand Chloe’s situation and connect her to resources that would support her success. Rendón’s (1994, 2002) work on validation provides specificity for defining positive experiences; validation occurs when instructors, staff, fellow students, or people external to the institution display a supportive interest in and caring about a student and their academic and personal success. Rendón argued that validation will often result in greater student involvement in college academics and activities, along with providing insight into where and how validation may happen. In coursework settings, validation can occur through instructors’ perceptions of students (e.g., as being capable and bringing rich experiences), course syllabi and readings (e.g., that offer and value diverse perspectives), classroom pedagogy (e.g., via active and collaborative learning), instructor comments (e.g., that are supportive and highlight students’ potential for success), interpersonal interactions (e.g., that demonstrate caring about students as people), and assignments (e.g., that provide opportunities for learning and revision instead of only summative evaluation). Chloe, for example, had several validating experiences—from a peer, an advisor, and later from faculty and administrators—that shifted her construals and perhaps helped counteract her negative experience in front of the food pantry that first day. What does it mean for faculty members to take the time to learn how to pronounce students’ names correctly? Or to transgender and gender fluid students when their resident advisor uses their pronouns correctly? But these cues have reduced power if they are not pervasive throughout a student’s proximal context. Institutions should seek not only to facilitate positive experiences, but also to reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of many experiences that are likely to be construed as negative (while recognizing that some meaningful and transformative learning experiences will inherently involve discomfort). Some of these undesirable forms of engagement are essentially the opposite of positive experiences, such as interactions with institutional agents that are invalidating in nature: disparaging comments on a student paper, slow removal of racist or xenophobic graffiti, or policing the entry of gendered spaces like bathrooms. Invalidating cues can also be embedded in the structure of a student’s physical environment. For example, when spaces like the diversity office or affinity group spaces are located on the fringes of the campus map, what subtle message does that convey about institutional support? When a student using a wheelchair cannot access their advisor’s office in an old building without an elevator, it is clear the campus was not designed for their participation.

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As Melvin’s vignette illuminates, reducing bureaucratic hurdles constitutes another important way in which negative experiences can be minimized or avoided. As one salient example, many institutions place students on academic probation for low grades, which is often a negative and invalidating experience itself (e.g., Waltenbury et al., 2018). Probationary placement at some institutions may lead to a series of bureaucratic actions that further complicate students’ lives: needing to appeal to be reclassified as making satisfactory academic progress to receive federal financial aid, filing separate appeals to retain each type of institutional financial aid, meeting with an academic advisor or counselor to learn about returning to good standing, potentially being prevented from engaging in certain campus activities, and so on. Instead, a student-centered approach would involve taking that student’s perspective (rather than a siloed institutional perspective) and redesigning the probation process to reduce barriers and focus on ways to improve success. This approach for students who are placed on academic probation might involve working with a single well-trained counselor who assists the student with any logistics and coconstructs a plan with the student to promote their academic success. Of course, this approach is applicable for helping all students struggling to navigate the often complicated and siloed processes that have developed in institutions of higher education. In a potentially difficult but fruitful approach, institutions could actively seek to reframe students’ construals to maximize their success. Some psychologists have created interventions to do so, with the ultimate goals of promoting overall success and equity in academic achievement, retention, and graduation. The results of these interventions for college students are sometimes positive, but not always; the findings tend to be more favorable for students from minoritized identities, which suggests that these initiatives frequently succeed at bolstering equity (see Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016; Sisk et al., 2018). Recent evidence has shown that such interventions can be implemented effectively at a large scale to entire cohorts of incoming college students (e.g., LaCosse et al., 2020; Yeager et al., 2016), so institutions should consider administering and requiring them for their students. Instructors’ construals of the malleability of intelligence and achievement may also affect their students; according to one study, overall student achievement was higher and equity gaps were notably smaller for courses taught by STEM instructors holding a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset (Canning et al., 2019). Thus, trainings that help instructors convey a growth mindset may further improve student success. However, it is also important to contextualize this work. Understanding Chloe’s and Melvin’s encounters with racism and classism as a matter of interpretation may result in a misapplication of growth mindset and similar interventions that presume a

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person’s perception is not also based in reality. However, our theory insists on a contextual and structural understanding of these moments. The way students make meaning of their experiences is inseparable from the culture and legacies that produced those moments. The critical role of construal also illustrates the importance of considering how practices and policies are perceived by students generally or groups of students specifically. Developmental education coursework and academic probation may have adverse effects on student success, because these can send a strong message about students’ ability to succeed academically and/or the institution’s perceptions of their ability to succeed (which may also affect students’ sense of belonging). The movement toward the language of “developmental education” instead of “remedial” reflects a consciousness of the role of construal, but renaming the practice is likely insufficient to remove the substantial stigma for students. A careful consideration of construal should occur in many areas, including various direct communications, institutional structures and policies, representation and identities of faculty and staff, and much more. Perhaps what is needed is a fundamental evaluation of construal at the institutional level: What assumptions, explicitly or implicitly, about student identity, ability, learning, success, and value are embedded in campus culture and practices? How can institutional practices and policies shift those understandings? Again, a contextual theory suggests that, in addition to helping students find and use adaptive strategies, institutions must do the hard work to examine why those adaptive strategies are required. If the guiding pull is toward maintaining hegemonic norms, perhaps it is at the institutional level that change is needed. Although we have emphasized the importance of the tenor of experiences for students’ success, it is also important to acknowledge that some experiences are fundamentally a result of injustice and inequity. Racist building names and colonists’ statues on campuses, holiday and break schedules that center Christian observance practices, and museums housing Indigenous artifacts and remains while sitting on stolen land are just a few of the potential encounters that exemplify the sociohistorical and political contexts that continue to shape colleges and universities. Honest conversations about the ways in which students differentially experience and construe these features of the institution will likely facilitate transformative learning for all. However, we maintain that systemic introspection and change at the institutional level is also required. Relatedly, policy is a structuring force that can enable or hinder a student’s experiences and success. Policymakers at least implicitly rely on classical economic theories to improve college enrollment and success through behavioral change (chapter 4, this volume), but even well-funded policies

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may be ineffective if they do not deeply consider how students or other relevant stakeholders might perceive, respond to, and be affected by them (Goldrick-Rab & Kolbe, 2016; see also chapter 5 and chapter 6, this volume). Policymakers should think carefully about real-world constraints on their design and implementation; for instance, how will current or future students be aware of a potentially helpful policy that they should use? How difficult will it be for students to access relevant resources? And does the policy actually yield the intended outcomes that it was designed to create? In the language of the present theory, changes in the policy context are only helpful if they positively influence students’ proximal context and experiences; being eligible to receive benefits is simply not enough. For example, Melvin may have had access to additional supports for military and veteran students; if so, he was either unaware or did not choose to use them for some reason. Chloe’s journey offers another illuminating example. In many ways, hers seems like a success story: She needed resources, an effective program had been implemented, and a knowledgeable informant helped Chloe learn about and access the help she needed. However, how long had Chloe been functioning without knowledge or access? What other students did not have an interaction with an advisor to make this connection to resources? And at a broader level, what other resources might Chloe be eligible for that neither she nor her advisor are aware of? Given Chloe’s perseverance and academic strength, how much more could she have excelled if grants and scholarships covered not only tuition, but costs for books, housing, and food, as well? Additionally, it is important to consider what interests are being served by policy at a broader level. For example, a policy of overfilling residence hall occupancy at the beginning of the year might be an effective strategy for maintaining strong budgets in the face of anticipated attrition, but it could also produce more roommate issues in crowded conditions, as well as create roadblocks for resolving serious roommate conflicts when there is no possibility for students to move. Ironically, such policies may cause some of the anticipated attrition they are designed to address. Working across functional areas or silos may lead to more productive work that enhances students’ success based on a stronger understanding of student experiences and construals. Policymakers, institutional researchers, student affairs professionals, and academic administrators often have different perspectives and training, so a collaboration among some of these groups that utilized their respective strengths could be quite beneficial. These employees could discuss their knowledge about the policies and practices that seem to be effective or ineffective; they could then discuss how to make changes in a manner that facilitates more positive student

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experiences and construals, which could involve altering or removing an ineffective practice or policy, scaling up an effective program (or its key elements), or other approaches. Drawing upon an earlier example, academic administrators may be aware that students who are placed into developmental education have lower retention and graduation rates than other students at their institution. They could then work with institutional researchers to explore whether developmental education seems to have a positive, negative, or no effect, and they could also collaborate with student affairs professionals and psychological counselors to understand how students might think about and respond to taking this coursework. To the extent that developmental education is not productive or even counterproductive, these constituents could collectively consider how to better support students who did not receive strong precollege academic preparation. Potential changes could include a substantial revamping and/ or reframing of this coursework, using additional indicators and/or different thresholds to determine placement, considering whether placement constitutes a recommendation or a requirement for taking developmental education, and more. Just as student retention and success are the result of an interconnected web of experiences, policy and practice should prioritize approaches that build a web of interconnected support.

Research and Assessment Implications Theoretical frameworks serve the important function of helping researchers identify research questions, hypotheses, and constructs for inquiry. The interdisciplinary theoretical framework presented here contains at least five important propositions or emphases that may be useful in shaping higher education research and assessment. First, this framework places construals at the center of understanding how student experiences and institutional factors may promote or detract from college success. Other work has considered the use of a meaning-making filter from a developmental perspective (Abes et al., 2007), but we believe that this is the first theory to discuss construal, interpretation, or meaning-making in the context of college student grades, retention, and graduation. Future studies could make construals a more central part of their work. How do students make sense of certain situations, and how do they respond as a result? Do their construals change over time? Importantly for researchers, how might their construals affect their engagement with a survey question, for example? It is possible to imagine two students “strongly disagreeing” that they feel safe on campus but meaning very different things: one student feeling like there are not enough police officers on campus and another referring to the constant surveillance of their body

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through police enforcement at the same campus. Similarly, what do Melvin and Chloe’s stories illustrate about the complexities of reflecting identity in scholarship? Researchers might categorize both of them as low income (or “at risk”), but do Melvin and Chloe see themselves in that way? In every situation? And even if the answer is yes to both of these questions, do Melvin and Chloe both construe “low income” in the same ways? This perspective is arguably reflected to a fair extent in qualitative research already, and it could be added directly to quantitative research via attuned survey items and careful analyses and interpretation of results by explicitly reflecting on such questions as researchers. Second, the framework provides a related classification of student experiences that may be helpful for measuring and studying these experiences. Time constituted one dimension of student experiences that may be useful to explore more systematically in future research. For instance, are certain student experiences more strongly related to outcomes if they occur earlier during the college years? Might Melvin’s experiences and construals have been different if he encountered a challenging course or bureaucratic hassles later in his college career? If Chloe had not received early support for her food insecurity, how might her story have played out differently? Similarly, student investments of time should be explored: At what point (if any) might higher levels of student engagement in certain activities lead to diminishing returns or even declines in student success when compared with moderate engagement? Moreover, the three dimensions of type—what is happening, where, and with whom—can be studied individually and in combination. How much (if at all) does the location of an experience matter, including whether it is face-to-face or online? To what extent might the impact of location vary as a function of what is happening and with whom? These issues have taken on increased importance as many institutions began moving some courses and resources online, a process that was substantially accelerated by the profound effects of COVID-19. Third, some types of college entry considerations have received a great deal of inquiry (e.g., institutional selectivity), but others have received far less attention. As a practical concern, to what extent (if at all) does the timing of students’ summer orientation and the availability of courses when registering for the first semester affect short-term and long-term success? Some key differences across groups would also benefit from inquiry. Is the link between full-time attendance (or number of credits taken) and success outcomes consistent regardless of students’ employment status or age? What impact (if any) does enrollment in coursework that is fully face-to-face, fully online, or a combination thereof have on academic achievement, retention, and graduation? And given that about 44% of the undergraduate student population

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attends community colleges (Community College Research Center, n.d.; see also Fink & Jenkins, 2020), why does the research emphasis still skew so heavily toward 4-year settings? Fourth, this framework calls attention to institutional dynamics as well as the interplay between institutions and students, which also leads to important questions. What types of interpersonal actions or behaviors from institutional agents may be most (in)effective at fostering student success? To what extent (if at all) do the effects of certain programs or practices vary by institutional characteristics? What institutional structures and policies are most productive for improving equity and facilitating success among students who hold minoritized identities? How can communications and bureaucracy be tailored or reduced in ways that benefit all students, especially those who are least familiar with and/or who have been marginalized within the college environment? When engaging these questions in scholarship, it is important to find approaches that begin to bring together both student experiences and insights with rich contextual and institutional understanding. Finally, the evolving nature of student experiences, proximal context, and answers to success-related questions (e.g., “Can I do it?”) suggests that data collection from multiple timepoints is critical to provide a strong understanding of student success. Think about how Melvin’s and Chloe’s trajectories—their likelihoods to graduate—might be represented over time. First, the shape of their trajectories might look very different—Melvin’s starting fairly high and slowly declining, with perhaps a sharp dip toward the end, whereas Chloe’s, however, starting at a middle level and fluctuating up and down as her experiences grew, but with an overall upward direction. However, one can imagine that on a given day, if given a survey, Melvin and Chloe might have had very similar responses. From an assessment perspective, many colleges and universities already collect data from various timepoints, but this information is often not structured or linked in a way that would support an examination of changes over time. Collecting repeated short surveys and/or analyzing data that institutions already collect from a temporal perspective (regarding academic advising, counseling, tutoring, Supplemental Instruction, residence hall card swipes, use of online learning management systems, etc.) would be ideal, especially if multiple data sources can be linked. When exactly do students exhibit notable changes in belonging, self-efficacy, motivation, or financial security? Are those changes temporary, or do they lead to lasting trajectories and perhaps attrition? Which experiences predict improvements or declines over time, and what institutional programs, practices, or policies might be helpful here? The research questions described in this section have the potential to yield answers that may benefit the continued quest to bolster college student success and equity.

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References Abes, E. S., Jones, S. R., & McEwen, M. K. (2007). Reconceptualizing the model of multiple dimensions of identity: The role of meaning-making capacity in the construction of multiple identities. Journal of College Student Development, 48(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2007.0000 Bowman, N. A., & Trolian, T. L. (2017). Is more always better? The curvilinear relationships between college student experiences and outcomes. Innovative Higher Education, 42(4), 477–489. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-017-9403-1 Canning, E. A., Muenks, K., Green, D. J., & Murphy, M. C. (2019). STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes. Science Advances, 5(2), Article eaau4734. https:// doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau4734 Community College Research Center. (n.d.). Community college FAQs. https://ccrc .tc.columbia.edu/Community-College-FAQs.html Fink, J., & Jenkins, D. (2020, April 30). Shifting sectors: How a commonly used federal data point undercounts over a million community college students. https://ccrc .tc.columbia.edu/easyblog/shifting-sectors-community-colleges-undercounting .html Goldrick-Rab, S., & Kolbe, T. (2016). A matter of trust: Applying insights from social psychology to make college affordable. Policy Insights From the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(2), 237–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/2372732216656457 LaCosse, J., Canning, E. A., Bowman, N. A., Murphy, M. C., & Logel, C. (2020). A social-belonging intervention improves STEM outcomes for students who speak English as a second language. Science Advances, 6(40), Article eabb6543. https:// doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb6543 Lazowski, R. A., & Hulleman, C. S. (2016). Motivation interventions in education: A meta-analytic review. Review of Educational Research, 86(2), 602–640. https:// doi.org/10.3102/0034654315617832 Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (2007). Special topic: The case for and against homework. Educational Leadership, 64, 74–79. McClellan, G. S., Creager, K., & Savoca, M. (2018). A good job: Campus employment as a high-impact practice. Stylus. Perna, L. W. (2010). Conclusions and recommendations for policy, practice, and future research. In L. W. Perna (Ed.), Understanding the working college student: New research and its implications for policy and practice (pp. 283–308). Stylus. Rendón, L. I. (1994). Validating culturally diverse students: Toward a new model of learning and student development. Innovative Higher Education, 19(1), 33–50. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01191156 Rendón, L. I. (2002). Community college Puente: A validating model of education. Educational Policy, 16(4), 642–667. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904802016004010 Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549–571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617739704

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Waltenbury, M., Brady, S., Gallo, M., Redmond, N., Draper, S., & Fricker, T. (2018). Academic probation: Evaluating the impact of academic standing notification letters on students. Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario. Yeager, D. S., Walton, G. M., Brady, S. T., Akcinar, E. N., Paunesku, D., Keane, L., Kamentz, D., Ritter, G., Duckworth, A. L., Urstein, R., Gomez, E. M., Markus, H. R., Cohen, G. L., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(24), E3341–E3348. https://www.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524360113 Zacherman, A., & Foubert, J. (2014). The relationship between engagement in cocurricular activities and academic performance: Exploring gender differences. Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, 51(2), 157–169. https://doi .org/10.1515/jsarp-2014-0016

EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES Editor 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. Bowman’s research has also received popular attention through articles on National Public Radio and in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Atlantic, 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.

Contributors Aizat Nurshatayeva is an educational economist studying education both in the United States and internationally. Her research examines how educational policies may help students access and thrive in higher education through the theoretically informed application of rigorous methodologies to large-scale and institutional data. Nurshatayeva holds a PhD in administrative and policy studies from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently an assistant professor of research methods at Suleyman Demirel University. Alex C. Lange (they/them) works to make higher education a more loving, equitable place for all students, staff, and faculty. Lange is an assistant professor of higher education at Colorado State University. Their research interests 292

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include LGBTQ+ student success, integrative approaches to student development, and college student activism. You can find some of Lange’s work in the Journal of College Student Development, The Review of Higher Education, and the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. Before starting their PhD, Lange worked in LGBTQ student services, student affairs operations, strategic planning, and leadership development. They earned their PhD in higher education and student affairs at the University of Iowa. Becky Wai-Ling Packard is professor of psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College. Packard studies mentoring and STEM persistence with a focus on minoritized students, to include students of color, first-generation college students, community college transfer students, and women in technical fields. Her research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and Google. In 2005, she was recognized by the White House with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the nation’s highest honor for early career scientists and engineers. Packard is the author of Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives for Underrepresented Students: A Research-Based Guide for Faculty and Administrators (Stylus, 2015). A translator of research into practice, Packard has worked with dozens of campuses on STEM equity and navigating difficult conversations in mentoring. At Mount Holyoke, she has served as associate dean of faculty, founding director of teaching and learning, director of leadership, and senior advisor for STEM initiatives. In 2018, Packard served as a chancellor’s leadership fellow-in-residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst working on campus equity initiatives, and during 2018–2019, she served as a faculty fellow at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor working on climate within STEM departments. Blake R. Silver is assistant professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, where he also serves as director of data analytics and assessment in the Honors College. His research examines higher education, culture, and social stratification. He is the author of The Cost of Inclusion: How Student Conformity Leads to Inequality on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2020), which explores racial and gender inequality in higher education. Silver spent a year studying student life at a large public university, where he interviewed 80 1st-year students and observed a club sports team, a living learning community, and a volunteer organization. Through this process, Silver documented the struggles students encountered as they worked to build communities. His findings show how inequality is reproduced on campus and how universities can combat it. His other recent publications appear in Sociological Forum, The Review of Higher Education, Sociological Focus, Journal of Contemporary

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Ethnography, Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice, and Journal of College Student Development. Silver’s research has been supported by the American Sociological Association, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition, NASPA Region III, and the NASPA Foundation. Heidi E. Williams is a PhD candidate in social psychology at Indiana University. Her research investigates the role of identity in context—how the different identities people hold interact with their contexts to influence their thoughts, feelings, behavior, and performance in those contexts. Specifically, she is interested in the features of academic and professional environments that signal to people whether their social identities are accepted and valued there, and the consequences of these features for motivation, engagement, and achievement. She conducts and evaluates large-scale social psychological interventions aimed at reducing social identity threat and unlocking the full potential of all people. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation. She holds a BS in psychology and a BA in Germanic studies from Indiana University. Jason C. Garvey (he/him/his) is the Friedman-Hipps Green and Gold Professor of Education and program coordinator for the higher education and student affairs administration program at the University of Vermont. He also serves as faculty-in-residence for the Leadership and Social Change Undergraduate Learning Community. Garvey’s scholarship, teaching, and service are closely tied to his educational journey as a queer person. His research examines queer and trans collegians across educational contexts primarily using quantitative methods. Prior to his faculty appointment, Garvey worked in student services across a variety of functional areas, including academic advising, LGBTQ student involvement and advocacy, undergraduate research, and student affairs assessment. He received his PhD in college student personnel administration from the University of Maryland, with a certificate in measurement, statistics, and evaluation. Jenna W. Kramer is an associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation with expertise in postsecondary access, training, and success. Her research leverages experimental, quasi-experimental, and qualitative methods to examine education and training decisions and transitions and the effects of institutional practices and governmental policies on student postsecondary preparation, college access and success, and workforce transition. Her recent work has examined stacking of credentials in STEM fields in Ohio, used an RCT and implementation study to examine a basic needs intervention for

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community college students, studied the scale-up of a workforce development program for young adults in six states, and explored the enrollment decisions and experiences of students in tuition-free college environments. Jodi L. Linley (she/her) is a tenured associate professor of higher education and student affairs at the University of Iowa. She earned a PhD in higher, adult, and lifelong education from Michigan State University. Linley uses critical, poststructural, and constructivist frameworks to study college student meaning-making about campus culture and campus diversity messaging, minoritized (namely, LGBTQ+) college student success, and higher education socialization. In her long-standing career in student affairs, Jodi coordinated first-year experience programs, as well as student success programs aimed to empower BIPOC, low-income, and first-generation students at predominantly White institutions. John M. Braxton is professor emeritus of higher education leadership and policy programs, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, a resident scholar of the Tennessee Independent College and University Association, and an affiliate scholar with the Center for Enrollment Research and Policy at the University of Southern California. One of Professor Braxton’s programs of research focuses on college student persistence; this work entails the assessment of theory on college student persistence, the revision and construction of new theory, the empirical testing of newly formulated theories, and making this work accessible to practitioners. His publications focused on college student persistence include two full-length books: Rethinking College Student Retention (Jossey-Bass, 2014) and Understanding and Reducing College Student Departure (Jossey-Bass, 2004). Braxton’s most recent works on college student persistence include two journal articles, “Expanding the Student Persistence Puzzle to Minority Serving Institutions: The Residential Historically Black and University Context” (Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, and Practice, 2021) and “Understanding Student Persistence in Commuter Historically Black College and Universities” (Journal of College Student Development, 2020). Braxton is a recipient of the Research Achievement Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the Contribution to Knowledge Award from ACPA-College Student Educators International. Both awards are for outstanding contributions to knowledge that advance the understanding of higher education. Josipa Roksa is professor of sociology and education at the University of Virginia. She also serves as senior advisor to the provost and director of strategic academic programs in the Office of the Executive Vice President and

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editor and contributor biographies

Provost. Professor Roksa’s research has centered on examining the extent to which education amplifies, preserves, or reduces social inequality. She is currently engaged in two lines of inquiry: The first considers experiences and outcomes of first-generation and low-income students, and more broadly the role of socioeconomic status in shaping students’ trajectories through both undergraduate and graduate education, and the second examines how students’ experiences and outcomes vary at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender in STEM fields. In addition to publishing extensively in sociology and education journals, Roksa is coauthor of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates (University of Chicago Press, 2014). Lindsay C. Page is the Annenberg Associate Professor of Education Policy at Brown University and is a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her work focuses on quantitative methods and their application to questions regarding the effectiveness of educational policies and programs across the preschool to postsecondary spectrum. Much of her recent work has involved the implementation of large-scale randomized trials to investigate innovative strategies for improving students’ transition to and through college. She holds a doctorate in quantitative policy analysis and master’s degrees in statistics and in education policy from Harvard University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College. Lindsay Jarratt is a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa. She earned her bachelor’s in elementary education and her master’s in college student personnel; she then worked for many years in several student affairs roles, both in residence life and diversity and equity, before returning to school. Her interdisciplinary PhD brings together both sociological and historical lenses to examine institutions of P–20 schooling and the embedded processes which maintain or disrupt inequity. Her current research is focused on patterns of representation in curricula and educational discourse. Mary C. Murphy is the Herman B. Wells Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. Her research illuminates the situational cues that influence students’ academic motivation and achievement with an emphasis on understanding when those processes are similar and different for socially advantaged and disadvantaged students. She develops, implements, and evaluates social psychological interventions that reduce identity threat and support motivation, persistence, and performance. Murphy is cofounder of the College Transition Collaborative, a research-practice partnership aimed

editor and contributor biographies  

297

to increase student success. Mary holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a PhD from Stanford University. She has received numerous awards and recognitions including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed on early career scientists by the United States government. She is the recipient of over $8 million in federal and foundation grants, including a prestigious NSF CAREER award for her research on strategies to improve diversity in STEM. Her research has been published in the most selective journals in psychology and education and has been featured in Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, Scientific American, and NPR, among other outlets. Milad Mohebali is a PhD candidate in higher education and student affairs, and a graduate researcher at the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education (CRUE), at the University of Iowa. He is from Iran and approaches research from a liminal geographic space. His research imagines a decolonial future for higher education that is answerable to those harshly affected by global, neocolonial, White supremacist forces, whether it is community college students with basic needs insecurity or low-wage workers in Iran. He has previously served as a research associate with the Nano Science and Engineering Research Group at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. He has earned an MS in higher education administration at Oklahoma State University, an MSc and a BSc in materials science and engineering from K.N. Toosi University of Technology and Amirkabir University of Technology, respectively, in Iran. Nicholas R. Stroup (he/him) is a PhD candidate in higher education and student affairs and a graduate researcher with the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education (CRUE) at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on theories of socialization, global contexts of higher education, and graduate studies. Prior to his doctoral pursuits, Stroup worked to promote undergraduate and graduate student success in the student affairs functional areas of academic advising, orientation, and residential education. In his teaching, Stroup asks students to interrogate what constitutes success along their personal higher education journeys. Nicholas W. Hillman is a professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hillman’s research examines how finance, policy, and geography shape educational opportunities in the United States. His research has been published in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy,

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editor and contributor biographies

The Journal of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and the Review of Higher Education. Hillman coedited the books Accountability and Opportunity in Higher Education: The Civil Rights Dimension (Harvard Education Press, 2018) and Civil Rights and Federal Higher Education (Harvard Education Press, 2022), and he is a faculty affiliate with the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Hillman also directs the Student Success Through Applied Research Lab, a research-practice partnership with the university’s Division of Enrollment Management and Office of Student Financial Aid. He earned his doctorate at Indiana University-Bloomington. Rachel A. Hirst is an associate professor of biology at Stonehill College. Hirst has taught at both 2-year and 4-year institutions and has used this experience to help build better transfer pathways. To this end, she has served as a coprincipal investigator on two NSF S-STEM and two Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation grants that focused on providing high-impact opportunities including undergraduate research to community college (CC) science transfers and led the initiative to increase recruitment and retention of CC science transfer students, resulting in the creation of the Stonehill College CC Science Transfer Initiative. Following participation in the PKAL STEM Leadership Institute in 2017, Hirst proposed, developed, and cofacilitated a science faculty learning community (FLC) on inclusive teaching and mentoring. The interdisciplinary FLC is in its 4th year and Professor Hirst along with the FLC participants were recognized with the Stonehill College Jean Hamler Diversity and Social Justice Award. Scott K. Rausch serves as the senior director of residence, sorority, and fraternity life on the Atlanta campus of Emory University. In this role he oversees all of the programmatic and educative efforts for Emory’s over 4,400 residential students, as well as the 32 Greek letter organizations. In addition to serving residential students Rausch also has passions in retention/persistence work, organizational development, and change theory. Prior to Emory, Rausch worked in similar roles at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN), Acadia University (Wolfville, Nova Scotia), and the University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA). He is a proud alum of Indiana University, Sacred Heart University, and Vanderbilt University. Rausch received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University (Bloomington, IN), his masters from Sacred Heart University (Fairfield, CT), and his doctorate from Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN).

editor and contributor biographies  

299

Yapeng Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology, University of Virginia. He earned an MA in sociology from UVA and an MS in global China studies from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is interested in how education plays a role in reproducing social inequality or promoting mobility, with the focus on the experiences of Asian students, both in the United States and China. His dissertation provides new insights into understanding class and gender inequality in higher education in the United States through comparing Asian Americans with other racial/ ethnic groups. In addition, he is exploring questions related to inequality in higher education in China and graduate education in the United States. His recent research has been published in Social Science Research, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

INDEX

Abilene Christian University (ACU), cluster advising within, 13, 14 ability, malleability of, 119–123 academic coaching, 13, 39, 103, 105 academic integration, 263 academic interventions, 11, 24 academic mindsets, 248–249 academic perseverance, 249 academic preparation, 250 academic probation, 124–125, 260, 284 academic validation, 263 achievement, behavioral economics and, 102–105 active learning, formative feedback within, 154–156 Adams Scholarship (Massachusetts), 62 adaptation, socioeconomic inequality and, 184 administrative burdens, of financial aid, 65 administrators, influence of, 259 admissions, college, 57, 251–252 adoption stage, public policy cycle, 54 ADVANCE grants, 164–165 advising, 12–15, 21, 23, 39, 94 affirmative action, 191 affordability, of STEM, 165–167 African American students adverse life events of, 191–192 belonging uncertainty and, 130–131 construals of, 246 cultural capital of, 192–193 degree completion rates of, 117 enrollment process for, 252 faculty-student relationships with, 156

institutional selectivity of, 191 major selections by, 192 marginalization of, 194 net worth and, 253 statistics of, 1 stereotype threats to, 104 tracking of, 250 agenda setting stage, public policy cycle, 53, 64–65 agents, 259, 283 “Aid Like a Paycheck” program, 101–102 alert notifications, regarding student performance, 124–125 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 165 American Dream, myth of, 209–210 American Indian/Alaska Native students, 117, 130–131 applications, college - DP, 83–90, 251–252 apprenticeship model (AM) program, 159 Arapahoe Community College (Colorado), 13 Arizona State University, 14 artificial intelligence (AI), conversational, 94–95 Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI), 12 Asian students, 117, 250 assessment, 287–289 Astin, A. W., 31 Athena Swan initiative, 165 “at-risk” students, academic coaching program for, 13. See also 300

index  

first-generation students; lowincome students Austin Community College, 14, 90 Australia, SAGE initiative within, 165 automatic system thinking, 79 bachelor’s degree, supports and benefits of, 36, 116 Bandura, A., 151 behavioral economics achievement and, 102–105 applications of, in higher education, 75, 82–106 college access increase through, 83–95 college application decisions and, 83–90 college enrollment and, 93–95 College Scorecard, 83, 89–90 for college success support, 95–106 decision-making understanding through, 82 deviations from assumed self-interest and self-control, 80 financial aid decisions and, 91–92, 95, 101–102 framing, 80 human capital theory and, 75–77 importance of, 74 limitations to, 107 literature regarding, 77–78 loss aversion, 79 nudges, 80–81, 94–95, 101, 104–106 overview of, 77–82 prospect theory, 79 retention and, 105–106 status quo bias, 79–80 summer melt interventions using, 94 belonging, 16, 17, 33, 129–131 Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), 33, 209, 221–222, 250, 253. See also African American students

301

Blackfeet Community College (Montana), 16 Black institution (PBI), advising programs within, 13 boarding schools, 188 Board of Regent Schools (Georgia), 13 borrowing, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) regarding, 61 Bottom Line, 94 brain, growth within, 121 Bright Futures scholarship (Florida), 62 bureaucracy, influence of, 257–258 Butler, Judith, 217 bystander parenting, 187 Cal Grant (California), 62 California Community College System, 13 Canada, Dimensions initiative within, 165 Carnegie Foundation, public policy and, 64 Carolina Covenant, 107 chatbot, AI, 94–95 Cherryholmes, Cleo, 229 Chloe, fictional story of, 278–280, 283, 286, 288, 289 City College of San Francisco, Metro College Success Program, 19 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 59 Civitas, 14 classifications, race, 218 classroom, seating arrangements within, 246 cluster advising, 14 coaching, 13, 39, 103, 105 cognitive development, theory of, 150–151 cohort programs, 19 collaboration, 11, 43–44 collaborative learning model (CLM), 159 College Access and Success (Bottom Line), 94

302  

index

college applications, 83–90, 251–252 college concierge parents, 187 college entry, 251–253, 288 college environments, 37–38 College Scorecard, 83, 89–90 college success. See student success college transition, process of, 252–253 colonization, within higher education history, 208–209 common goods, 57, 58 common pool goods, 57, 58 communication, 259–260 community, social supports regarding, 17 Community College of Baltimore County (Maryland), 13 community colleges cultural capital within, 190 demographics of, 147–148, 189–190, 209 financial aid within, 92 retention within, 158 socioeconomic background and, 182 statistics of, 165–166, 288–289 STEM within, 158 structural location of, 182 tuition-free policies within, 63 Community College Undergraduate Research Initiative (CCURI), 160 community cultural wealth, 222, 230 commuter institutions, 8, 14, 17, 18. See also specific institutions Complete College Georgia, 166 construal-based questions, 262 construals belonging uncertainty and, 129–131 as a chain, 260 constructs/questions regarding, 261 contexts that shape, 253–255 of diversity, 132 of first-generation students, 132 importance of, 137 institutional messaging and, 136

personal relevance and, 125–128 practices and policy influence on, 285 proximal context of, 255–260 purpose for learning within, 127–128 reframing, 284 resource availability and, 136–137 role of, 242, 285 seating arrangement and, 246 social psychology interventions for, 136 of student experiences, 242, 245–246 understanding, 118–119 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 93 continuing-generation students, 116, 132, 134 cooling out, 182 counterfactual conditions, within policymaking, 60 courses, 149, 153–154, 155–156, 283 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 209 critical race theory (CRT), 215, 221 critical theory, 210, 213–215, 221–229 cultural capital, 157–158, 185, 188– 189, 190, 192–193, 221–222 culturally engaging campus environments model, 33, 262 cultural mobility, 188 cultural norms, 133–135 cultural resources, 193 culture, influence of, 23–24 CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP), 158 CUREs, 159–160 custodians, influence of, 259 data collection, 289 decision-making thinking, 79 default behaviors mode, 79–80 degree completion, 1, 36, 116–117, 165–166, 182, 191–192 Dell Scholars Program, 105, 107

index  

demand-side factors, 55 departures/drop-outs, statistics of, 6, 77 Derrida, Jacques, 216 Designing the Future(s) of the University (Georgetown University), 11 developmental education, 285, 287 difference-education approach, 131–133 difference-in-differences designs, 63 diffractions, of critical and poststructural theories, 224–228 Dillard University, 18 direct-to-student mindset programs, 121 disadvantaged students, belonging uncertainty and, 130–131. See also specific types discrimination, policies regarding, 41, 59 diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), within STEM, 164–165 drop-outs, statistics of, 6, 77 Earned Income Tax Credit, 61 earnings, with college degree, 116 Eastern Michigan University, 18 economics, 54–59, 116 education, as investment, 75 educational attainment, socioeconomic inequality and, 181 educational intentions, as precollege influence, 249–250 Effectively Maintained Inequality, 182 efficacy construal, 119 emergency “retention” grants, 15 employment, 183, 281–282 Endicott College, Keys to Degrees, 18 engagement, professor, academic achievement and, 104–105 engineering, identity work within, 157 enrollment, college advising for, 94 behavioral economics and, 93–95

303

considerations regarding, 252 financial aid information for, 95 implications of, 288 nudges regarding, 94–95 statistics of, 116 summer melt interventions for, 94 entry, college, 251–253, 288 environments, college, 37–38 evaluation stage, public policy cycle, 54, 64, 66 exam blueprints outlining, 153 exclusion, within higher education history, 208–209 Expanding College Opportunities project, 90 expectancy-value theory, 125–126 expectations, 184, 194, 226–227 experiences. See student experiences externalities, as market failure concept, 58 faculty active learning role of, 154 communication by, 197 construals of, 284 development of, 163–164, 284 engagement by, 104–105 exam blueprints outlining by, 153 inclusive teaching by, 155–156 influence of, 259 learning communities for, 163–164 malleability of ability beliefs of, 122–123 mentoring by, 156, 160–162 research mentoring role of, 159 within STEM, 152 familism, 193 fear of failure, growth mindset beliefs and, 121 federal government, as public policy actor, 52 feedback, within active learning, 154–156

304  

index

financial aid “Aid Like a Paycheck” program, 101–102 behavioral economics and, 91–92 with college enrollment information, 95 disbursing of, 101 gaps within, 76 income driven repayment (IDR) plan, 102 merit-based, 64 nudges regarding, 101 performance-based, 106 as precollege influence, 250–251 public policy design within, 65 quasiexperimental studies regarding, 61–62 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) regarding, 60–61 shopping sheet for, 93 statistics of, 166 Student Loan Exit Counseling, 102 while in college, 95, 101–102 financialization, of student success, 226–227 financial supports, 15–16, 20, 21, 36, 39. See also financial aid Finger Lakes Community College, 160 first-generation students active learning benefits for, 155 barriers to, 185 belonging uncertainty of, 130–131, 258 burden of, 225 construals of, 132 cultural mismatch of, 134 Dell Scholars Program and, 105 difference-education approach and, 132–133 direct-to-student mindset programs and, 121 familism of, 193 financial aid and, 76 navigation challenges of, 282

statistics of, 116, 117 within STEM, 164 summer melt and, 94–95 First Nation, 223 first-wave student success theories, 30, 31–32 fixed mindset beliefs, 120–121, 122–123, 137–138n2 Florida, Bright Futures scholarship of, 62 Florida State University, academic coaching program within, 13 food scholarships, 15 formulation stage, public policy cycle, 53–54, 64–65 for-profit institutions, 20–21, 182– 183, 190, 254. See also specific institutions Foucault, Michel, 216 4-year institutions admissions requirements of, 251 advising programs within, 12 bachelor’s degree attainment and, 36 college completion statistics of, 165–166 financial supports within, 15 multifaceted initiatives within, 18 social supports within, 16 socioeconomic background and, 182 See also specific institutions framing, 80 Frankfurt School, 213–214 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), 60–61, 91–92, 101 Freire, Paulo, 214 Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) (University of Texas Austin), 159–160 friendship networks, intersectionality within, 195 gainful employment, rules regarding, 66 gateway courses, within STEM, 149 gaybashing, 220

index  

genderbashing, 220 gender inequality, 190–196, 197–198 geographic segregation, 193 Georgetown University, Designing the Future(s) of the University, 11 Georgia, programs within, 62, 106, 166 Georgia State University (GSU), 13–14, 15, 94–95, 159 goals/goal-setting, 102–103, 249–250, 263 government, as public policy actor, 52 grades, 117–118, 124–125 grants, 15, 21 growth mindset beliefs, 120–121, 122, 136–137, 137–138n2, 248 guided pathways program, 13 Habermas, Jürgen, 214 habitus, 189, 193 helicopter parenting, 187 HHMI Inclusive Excellence grants, 164–165 High-Achieving Involved Leader (HAIL) scholarship, 95 higher education behavioral economics application in, 75 benefits of, 76 central purpose of, 57 exclusion within, 128–129 externalities within, 58 gaps within, 76–77 history of, 208–209 inequality within, 210 information asymmetries within, 58–59 public policy research in, 59–66 public policy within, 54–59 return on investment within, 55 Higher Education Act, 66 high-impact educational practices delineation, 31–32 high-impact practices (HIPs), 38–39, 43–44, 223

305

Hispanic-serving institutions (HSI), advising programs within, 12–13 Hispanic students, 1, 117, 130–131 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), 17, 33, 34 homeless students, financial supports for, 15 HOPE scholarship (Georgia), 62, 106 horizontal stratification, 181–182, 183 Horkheimer, Max, 213–214 House Living and Learning Community for Black Men (University of Connecticut), 19 housing, student supports regarding, 18 Houston Food Bank, 15 H&R Block study, 60–61 human capital theory, 54–55, 75–77 Humboldt State University (California), 18–19 Hurtado, Sylvia, 220 identity analysis of, 222–223 categories of, 248 within friendship networks, 195–196 intersectionality of, 219 looking through, 217–219 as precollege influence, 247–248 sexual, 196 social construction of, 222 within STEM, 157–158 student experience and, 131 theories regarding, 216–217 identity-based strengths, 131 identity-threat, 129 immigration, policies regarding, 254 implementation stage, public policy cycle, 54, 65–66 inclusive teaching, 155–156 income, inequality and, 180, 253 income driven repayment (IDR) plan, 102 independent cultural norms, 133

306  

index

Indiana University-Bloomington, academic coaching program within, 13 Indigenous students, tracking of, 250 individual thinking, 79 inequality, 183–184, 187–188, 190– 196, 210. See also socioeconomic inequality information asymmetries, as market failure concept, 58–59 inputs-environments-outcomes (I-E-O) model, 31 in-state tuition, for undocumented students, 63 institutional context, 255 institutional messaging, 124–125, 136 institutional policies, 40–41, 257, 281–287. See also public policies institutions characteristics for student success, 36 commitment to, 263 policies and practices within, 40–41, 257 public, 11, 15, 16, 18 residential, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18 structural examination of, 219–221 student experience factors by, 241–242 student support statistics of, 2 See also specific institutions instructional intervention, academic supports within, 11 integration, factors regarding, 32, 263 intelligence, malleability of, 121 intentionality, 197–198 interdependent cultural norms, 133, 134 interdisciplinary theory of college student success assessment implications within, 287–289 considerations for, 239–241 construals of student experiences, 245–246

contexts that shape student experiences within, 253–255 data collection within, 289 implications for, 280–289 overview of, 241–243, 273 practice and policy implications within, 281–287 precollege influences to student experiences, 246–251 process regarding, 242–243 proximal context within, 255–260 research implications within, 287–289 student experience classification and, 243–245 student retention stories regarding, 274–280 international students, 33, 282 interpersonal relationships, 256 interpersonal validation, 263 intersectionality, 194–196, 219, 222 intrusive advising, 13 invalidation, 283 Italians, racial classification of, 218 Jagose, Annamarie, 217 Jews, racial classification of, 218 “Just What Is Critical Race Theory and What’s It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?” (LadsonBillings), 214–215 Keys to Degrees (Endicott College), 18 knowledge development, 57 Kuh, G. D., 31–32 lab team, within STEM, 157 Ladson-Billings, Gloria, 214–215 Lange, background of, 212 large class size, SCALE UP (“StudentCentered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies”) for, 11 Lather, Patti, 217

index  

Latinx students, 191–193, 250, 253 learning communities, for faculty, 163–164 learning management software (LMS), 11 learning strategies, 249 lecture-based courses, 155 libertarian paternalism, 80 Linley, background of, 212 living expenses, student supports regarding, 18 Lone Star College (Texas), financial supports within, 15 loss aversion, 79 low-income students active learning benefits for, 155 belonging uncertainty and, 130–131 college application process and, 83, 90 within community colleges, 189–190 cultural capital of, 188–189 Dell Scholars Program and, 105 difference-education approach and, 132–133 faculty communication to, 197 familism of, 193 financial aid process and, 62, 76, 91, 166 for-profit institutions and, 254 programs for, 258 within STEM, 147–148 summer melt and, 94–95 tracking of, 250 major area-specific advising, 14 majors, inequality within, 192 malleability of ability, 119–123 marginalization, 219 market failure concepts, 56–59 Massachusetts, 62, 166 material resources, as precollege influence, 250–251 Maximally Maintained Inequality, 181 meaning-making, 117, 216, 273–274

307

Melvin, fictional story of, 275–278, 281, 282, 284, 286, 288, 289 mental algorithms, overcoming, 151 mental health, 16–17, 264 mentoring, 39, 160–162 merit-based financial aid, 64 metacognition, 151 Metro College Success Program (City College of San Francisco), 19 microgrants, financial supports through, 15 middle-class students, social reproduction and, 185 millennium falcon persistence model, 34 mindset beliefs, 119–122, 137–138n2 minoritization, 218 minority students, 33, 121, 130–131. See also first-generation students; specific minorities mismatch hypothesis, 191 missions, institutional, 36 mobility pathway, 187, 197 motivation, 120, 122, 127–128 Mudd, Harvey, 163 multicontextual model for diverse learning environments, 34 multifaceted initiatives, 18–19, 20, 21, 39, 40, 282 Museus, Sam, 33, 220 Natow, Rebecca, 66 near-peers, influence of, 259 need-based aid, 62 net worth, statistics of, 253 New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), “Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies” (SCALE UP), 11 nonconsumers, externalities on, 58 nonresidential institutions, multifaceted initiatives within, 18. See also specific institutions

308  

index

norming campaigns, 259 Northwestern University, True Northwestern Dialogues, 16–17 NSF INCLUDES, 164–165 nudges, 80–81, 94–95, 101, 104–106, 258 occupation, family, educational attainment and, 181 “Oh Snap” (Humboldt State University (California)), 18–19 oppression, 219, 254 Oreopoulos, Philip, 107 outcomes, student, 260–264 outputs, meaning-making within, 117 Pacific Islander students, degree completion rates of, 117 Panther Retention Grant Program (GSU), 15 paramedic parenting, 187 parenting, 187, 188 Parenting to a Degree (Hamilton), 187 party pathway, 186, 197 pathways, college, 183, 186, 187, 197 Paying for the Party, 186 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire), 214 peer instruction, 154 peer mentors, 154, 156 Pell Grant, 61, 166 performance-based funding policy, 60, 62–63, 106 perseverance, academic, 249 persistence, 6, 8, 10–12, 224 personal relevance, student construals regarding, 125–128 personal response devices, within active learning, 154 person-centric approach, 118 perspectivelessness, 209, 210 philanthropy, within higher education policy, 64–65 Piaget, J., 150–151

Poles, racial classification of, 218 policies, institutional, 40–41, 257, 281–287. See also public policies policy context, 254, 285–286 Portland State University, 18 positionality, 211–213 postcolonialism, 223 postpositivism, 210 poststructuralism, 210, 216, 217 poststructural theories, 215–217, 221–228, 229 precollege experiences, 246–251 preparation, within STEM, 153–154 preparatory schools, 188 present framework, 262 price, demand-side factors regarding, 55–56 prism, metaphor of, 213 private goods, 57, 58 private institutions, 16, 18 privilege, advantages of, 218 proactive advising, 13 professional pathway, 186, 197 professor engagement, academic achievement and, 104–105 programs, institutional, influence of, 258–259 PROMISE scholarship (West Virginia), 62 prospect theory, 79 proximal context, 255–260, 265, 273–274 psychological attributes, as precollege influence, 248–249 psychological well-being, 263 public goods, as market failure concept, 56–58 public policies adoption stage within, 54 agenda setting within, 53, 64–65 College Scorecard, 83, 89–90 counterfactual conditions within, 60 defined, 52

index  

309

design of, 65–66 difference-in-differences designs within, 63 economics and, 54–59 evaluation stage of, 54, 64, 66 externalities within, 58 formulation stage within, 53–54, 64–65 higher education research of, 59–66 human capital theory within, 54–55 implementation of, 65–66 implications for practice of, 66–67 information asymmetries within, 58–59 instrument mix within, 53–54 intermediary organizational role within, 64 market failure concepts within, 56–59 nudging within, 80 overview of, 51–52 performance-based funding, 60 quasiexperimental research designs within, 60, 61–64 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) use within, 60–61 regarding financial aid, 101 theories of process of, 52–54 purpose for learning, 127–128, 248–249 PWIs (White institutions), 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 254. See also specific institutions

racism, 253, 285 randomized controlled trials (RCTs), 60–61 reflexivity, 214 Rendón, L. I., 34 research collaborative learning model (CLM) within, 159 CUREs within, 159–160 Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), 159–160 implications regarding, 287–289 importance of, 23 short-term research experiences (SREs), 160 within STEM, 156–162 undergraduate research experiences (UREs) within, 158–159 residential institutions, 8, 12, 14, 15, 18. See also specific institutions retention behavioral economics and, 105–106 coaching and, 105 in community colleges, 158 Dell Scholars Program, 105 factors regarding, 76 historical progression of, 28 as institutional measure, 6 nudges and, 105–106 stories regarding, 274–280 student characteristics and, 32 return on investment, within higher education, 55

quasiexperimental research designs, 60, 61–64 queer and trans* student engagement and retention practice model, 34 queer theory, 221, 222, 224

SalesForce, 14 San Diego Biodiversity Project, 160 San Francisco State University, cohort program within, 19 San Jacinto College (Texas), financial supports within, 15 San Marcos High School (Texas), college application requirements of, 90

racial/ethnic identity, 218 racial/ethnic inequality, 190–196, 197–198

310  

index

scaffolding, 152, 153–154 SCALE UP (“Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies”) (New Jersey Institute of Technology), 11 scholarships, 15, 62, 95, 106 Scholastic House of Leaders in Support of African American Researchers & Scholars (ScHOLA2RS) (University of Connecticut) science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) active learning and feedback within, 154–156 advances within, 152–156 affordability changes to, 165–167 classroom climate of, 156 collaborative learning model (CLM) within, 159 college completion within, 165–167 within community colleges, 158 course structure within, 149 cultural capital within, 157–158 CUREs within, 159–160 faculty development within, 163–164 fixed mindset beliefs within, 123 gaps within, 76 identity development within, 157–158 institutional self-assessment within, 165 lab team within, 157 mentoring role within, 160–162 metacognition within, 151 preparation within, 153–154 research and student success within, 156–162 scaffolding within, 152, 153–154 self-efficacy within, 151–152 self-regulated learning within, 151 sexual harassment within, 165 social capital within, 157–158 social-cognitive theories of learning within, 151

stereotypes within, 157 strategic learning within, 149–156 student success systemic change within, 162–167 student supports within, 21 theories and concepts regarding, 150–152 theory of cognitive development within, 150–151 undergraduate research experiences (UREs) within, 158–159 utility value within, 126–127 The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM, 161 Sea Change, 165 second-wave student success theories, 30, 32–35 Seita Scholars Program (Western Michigan University), 15 self-acceptance, 264 self-assessment, 165 self-control, 80 self-determination theory, 263–264 self-efficacy, 151–152, 248, 264 self-interest, 80 self-regulated learning, 151 self-transcendent purpose for learning, 127–128 sexual double standard, 194 sexual harassment, within STEM, 165 sexual identity, research regarding, 196 shopping sheet, 93 short-term research experiences (SREs), 160 situation-centric approach, 118 slut discourse, 195 social access, 210 social advantage, 210 social capital, 157–158, 186 social-cognitive theories of learning, 151 social construction, 217, 225–226, 230 social exclusion, 184 social groups, 217, 222 social integration, 17, 263

index  

socialization, 188, 247–248 social power, 218 social psychology belonging uncertainty and, 129–131 construal understanding within, 118–119 cultural mismatch and, 133–135 difference-education approach within, 131–133 efficacy construal within, 119 identity-threat within, 128–135 institutional messaging and, 124–125 limitations of, 136 malleability of ability within, 119–123 overview of, 117–119, 135–137 personal relevance and, 125–128 purpose for learning within, 127–128 utility value within, 125–127 social reproduction tradition, 180, 185–190, 192–194, 195, 196–197 social science research, 60 social segregation, 193 social skills, 249 social supports, 16–17 sociodemographic identities, 195 socioeconomic background, 180, 181–182, 183, 184, 185–187 socioeconomic inequality cultural capital and, 188–189 educational attainment and, 181 habitus within, 189 intentionality regarding, 197–198 intersectionality and, 194–196 mechanisms within, 183–184 overview of, 180–190 policy and practice implications regarding, 196–198 racial/ethnic/gender, 190–196 social reproduction within, 185–190 sociohistorical context, 253–254

311

sociological approach to student success, 179 Southern Utah University, proactive advising within, 13 spatial visualization course modules, 153–154 staff, influence of, 259 state government, as public policy actor, 52 status attainment, 180–184, 191–192, 194–195, 196 status quo bias, 79–80 St. Catherine Universities, Keys to Degrees, 18 STEM. See science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) stereotypes, within STEM, 157 stereotype threats, 104, 121–122 strategic learning, 149–156 Strayer University, learning management software (LMS) monitoring within, 11 Stroup, background of, 213 structures, looking through, 219–221 student-centered approach, to academic probation, 284 student characteristics, 32, 119–122 student departure, theory of, 31 student experiences academic preparation and, 250 agents and, 259 bureaucracy and, 257–258 classification of, 243–245 communication and, 259–260 construals of, 245–246 contexts that shape, 253–255 educational intentions and, 249–250 employment constraints regarding, 281–282 evolving nature of, 289 filters within, 274 identity and, 247–248 injustice and inequity regarding, 285

312  

index

institutional context and, 255 institutional factors regarding, 241–242 institutional policies and, 257 interpersonal relationships and, 256 material resources and, 250–251 over time, 260–264 policy context and, 254 precollege influences of, 246–251 programs and, 258–259 proximal context of, 255–260, 265 psychological attributes and, 248–249 shaping of, 265 socialization and, 247–248 sociohistorical context and, 253–254 time constraints regarding, 281–282, 288 student-faculty ratio, 36 Student Loan Exit Counseling, 102 student loans, 2, 92, 101, 102 student success behavioral economics for support of, 95–106 collaboration regarding, 43–44 efficacy construal within, 119 expectations within, 226–227 factors regarding, 2, 32 financialization of, 226–227 implications for practice and policy for, 43–44 institutional messages regarding, 124–125 limitations of research within, 41–43 malleability of ability regarding, 119–123 person-centric approach to, 118 research and findings of, 35–41 self-transcendent purpose for learning and, 127–128 situation-centric approach to, 118 social construction of, 225–226

social psychology for, 117–119 theories regarding, 30–35 universal versus local, 227–228 viewpoints regarding, 229 whiteness of, 208–209 student supports, 39–40, 250–251 Sullivan, Nikki, 217 summer melt, 94–95 summer research program, 159 supplemental instruction, 39 System 1/2 thinking, 79 systemic change, within STEM, 162–167 systemic racism, 253 targeted grants, 15 task-based goals, 103 Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (University System of Maryland), 11–12 technology, within academic interventions, 11 Tennessee, state of, performance-based funding policy within, 60 Tennessee Promise, 166 tenor, of student experiences, 245 text-messaging, 101, 105–106, 258. See also nudges Thaler, Richard H., 74 theory, importance of, 23 theory of cognitive development, 150–151 theory of involvement, 31 theory of student departure, 31, 263 third-wave student success theories, 30 threat reduction approach, 103–104 time, 244–245, 281, 288 Tinto, V., 31 toll goods, 57, 58 tracking, 250 transformational tapestry model, 34–35

index  

transition, college, 252–253 tribal government, as public policy actor, 52 True Northwestern Dialogues (Northwestern University), 16–17 tuition, 55–56, 63 tutoring, 39 2-year institutions, 10–11, 12, 36. See also specific institutions undergraduate research experiences (UREs), 158–159 undergraduate socialization model, 31 underrepresented racial minority (URM), active learning benefits for, 155 undocumented students, 63 University at Texas-Austin, 16, 159–160 University of Connecticut, Scholastic House of Leaders in Support of African American Researchers & Scholars (ScHOLA2RS), 19 University of Maryland, IDR study within, 102 University of Michigan, college enrollment information from, 95 University of North Carolina, academic coaching program within, 13 University of Oklahoma, academic coaching program within, 13 University of Toronto-Mississauga, study within, 103 University System of Maryland, Teaching and Learning Transformation Center within, 11–12

313

U.S. Department of Education, 66, 83, 89–90, 93 utility value, 125–127, 248–249 validation theory, 34, 262, 263, 283 vertical stratification, 181 Virginia Tech, proactive advising within, 13 vision, within STEM, 162–163 wealth, statistics of, 253 Weedon, Chris, 216–217 Weidman, J., 31 welfare, student, institutional commitment to, 24 Western Michigan University, Seita Scholars Program, 15 West Virginia, PROMISE scholarship, 62, 106 white habitus, 193 whiteness, 208–209, 210, 223 White students, 117, 128–129, 192, 193, 209, 246, 250, 253 Wisconsin model of status attainment, 184 women, 194, 195–196 working-class students, social reproduction and, 185–186 Xavier University, faculty strategies within, 153 “yeah, whatever” mode, 79–80 Yosso, Tara, 221–222, 223, 230

Advancing Assessment for Student Success Supporting Learning by Creating ­Connections Across Assessment, ­Teaching, Curriculum, and Cocurriculum in Collaboration With Our Colleagues and Our Students Amy Driscoll, Nelson Graff, Dan Shapiro, and Swarup Wood Foreword by Peggy L. Maki “Whether a faculty member, academic administrator, staff, or student; whether new to assessment or someone who has been involved in assessment for years—whatever role you might play within an institution of higher education, this book is a breath of fresh air that provides a revitalized pathway to ensure that assessment processes and practices are learner-centered and collaboratively driven conversations on educational design. What a true delight to read this book! There is something in this book for everyone thanks to the authors providing examples, strategies, processes, practices, and reflections on how to take the work of fostering student success through learning to the next level. Through rich conversations with the reader, the book mirrors and models the collaborative potential of bringing faculty, assessment, student affairs, and staff together to truly deliver on the promise of education by laying out the types of conversations that should be unfolding within our institutions. This book is a must-read, showcasing the power collaboration and conversations can have on everyday lived experiences in teaching and learning, which in turn can transform institutions into learning systems.” —Natasha A. Jankowski, Former Executive Director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment