Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"Study Skills for Foundation Degrees offers a step-by-step guide to the skills needed to successfully complete a Foundation Degree. Filled with activities and useful tips, it will help students to move from nervous novice to confident expert and provide them with the necessary tools to accomplish this. By reading this book, students will be able to learn new skills and enhance existing ones\"-- Provided by publisher.

About one-third of college students drop out before finishing their degree. The majority of those remaining will take longer than 4 years to complete their degree at “4-year” institutions. This problem emphasizes the need to identify students who may benefit from support to encourage timely graduation. Here we empirically develop machine learning algorithms, specifically Random Forest, to accurately predict if and when first-time-in-college undergraduates will graduate based on admissions, academic, and financial aid records two to six semesters after matriculation. Credit hours earned, college and high school grade point averages, estimated family (financial) contribution, and enrollment and grades in required gateway courses within a student’s major were all important predictors of graduation outcome. We predicted students’ graduation outcomes with an overall accuracy of 79%. Applying the machine learning algorithms to currently enrolled students allowed identification of those who could benefit from added support. Identified students included many who may be missed by established university protocols, such as students with high financial need who are making adequate but not strong degree progress.

Using national freshman survey data, the authors examined confidence and background variables (e.g., gender, minority status, parental occupation) as predictors of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major choice. Logistic regression analyses revealed that students were more likely to choose STEM majors if they had strong confidence in mathematics and academic areas and had parents with STEM occupations. Although female students were unlikely to choose a STEM major, African American and Latina/o students were equally as likely to choose a STEM major as were White or Asian American students. Findings suggest that students' confidence level in their academic and mathematics abilities makes a significant difference in their initial STEM major choice. Study findings could assist educators, counselors, and policy makers in their efforts to promote student choice of STEM‐related majors and careers.

The credentials environment grows more complicated by the day, but key questions help us understand why we need this book to help us grapple with those complexities: * Given the expansion in the variety of higher education credentials and in approaches to earning them, why are so many students disappointed with their post-secondary credentials?* Despite the proliferation of credentials tailored to specific careers, why do so many employers complain that the preparation of their new hires is inadequate? * Despite their investment in new programs meant to attract new enrollees, why are so many colleges and universities facing issues with student persistence, timely credential completion, and career success?The plan of the book reflects the authors' practical aim. In the first of three parts, they offer a broad view of the credentials environment-how credentials work, how a proliferation in credentials has created an unprecedented array of educational choices, and why this abundance is a mixed blessing. In the second part, they focus on categories of credentials, from the associate degree to doctoral degrees to non-degree credentials. The book concludes with two chapters that consider the implications of the information the authors provide for leadership in volatile times: one discusses the importance of maintaining a priority on equity; the other offers 12 propositions for action. To help make the book useful, each chapter begins with a paragraph that summarizes the emphases to follow, and ends with a list of initiatives, i.e., \"takeaways,\" that leaders (and those attentive to what leaders are doing) should consider.

Textbooks are traditional and useful learning resources for college students, but commercial texts books have been widely criticized for their high costs, restricted access, limited flexibility, and uninspiring learning experiences. Open Education Resources (OER) are an alternative to commercial textbooks that have the potential to increase college affordability, access, and instructional quality. The current study examined how an OER degree—or pathway of OER courses that meet the requirements for a degree program—impacted students’ progress to degree at 11 US community colleges. We conducted quasi-experimental impact studies and meta-analysis examining whether OER course enrollment was associated with differences in credit accumulation and cumulative GPA over multiple terms. Overall, we found a positive effect of OER degrees on credit accumulation and no significant difference on cumulative GPA. Taken together, these results suggest students are maintaining their GPAs despite taking more courses, on average. This suggests that students taking OER courses were making faster progress towards degrees than their peers who took no OER courses.

Individuals with autism increasingly enroll in universities, but researchers know little about how their study progresses over time towards degree completion. This exploratory population study uses structural equation modeling to examine patterns in study progression and degree completion of bachelor’s students with autism spectrum disorder (n = 101) in comparison to students with other recorded conditions (n = 2,465) and students with no recorded conditions (n = 25,077) at a major Dutch university. Propensity score weighting is applied to balance outcomes. The research shows that most outcomes (grade point average, dropout rates, resits, credits, and degree completion) were similar across the three groups. Students with autism had more no-shows in the second year than their peers, which affected degree completion after 3 years. The overall performance of autistic students appeared to be adequate and comparable to their peers. However, addressing participation and inclusivity is vital to improve academic support for students with autism. These insights can enable universities to develop appropriate and timely support for all talented students to progress in their studies and complete their degrees.

An important explanation for immigrants’ wage disadvantage is that human capital acquired in the country of origin is not fully transferable to the country of destination. Credentialing theories, on the other hand, argue that being educated abroad results in lower wages because foreign degrees are weaker signals to employers and might impede formal access to occupations. In this study, we use the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies 2012 (PIAAC) data and include—besides educational degrees—measures of cognitive, non-cognitive, and job-specific skills to explain wages. In our analysis of 11 European countries, we find robust evidence that having a non-Western foreign degree is associated with lower wages. After accounting for different types of skills, the wage penalty associated with having a foreign degree remains substantial, as skills explain only a third of the place of education effect. This finding is in line with the argument that being educated abroad results in lower wages because of not only the limited transferability of skills, but also the limited transferability of degrees.

The Lisbon Recognition Convention, developed by the Council of Europe and UNESCO, is the main international legal text on the international recognition of qualifications and has been ratified by more than 50 countries. Few Council of Europe conventions have achieved a greater number of ratifications, and the political importance of the Lisbon Recognition Convention is very considerable. The recognition of qualifications is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for both student and labour mobility. To mark the 15th anniversary of the convention, this book examines some of the challenges to the international recognition of qualifications. The convention is an essential legal text, but it needs to be put into better practice. How can learners use their degrees and qualifications in a new country, without losing the real value of those qualifications? The authors, who come from a variety of backgrounds, review the policies and practice of recognition, link recognition to the broader higher education policy debate and consider the role of recognition in enabling individuals to move freely across borders. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Previous studies on online smoking cessation communities (OSCCs) have shown how such networks contribute to members' health outcomes from behavior influence and social support perspectives. However, these studies rarely considered the incentive function of OSCCs. One of the ways OSCCs motivate smoking cessation behaviors is through digital incentives. This study aims to explore the incentive function of a novel digital incentive in a Chinese OSCC-the awarding of academic degrees-to promote smoking cessation. It specifically focuses on \"Smoking Cessation Bar,\" an OSCC in the popular web-based Chinese forum Baidu Tieba. We collected discussions about the virtual academic degrees (N= 1193) from 540 members of the \"Smoking Cessation Bar.\" The time frame of the data set was from November 15, 2012, to November 3, 2021. Drawing upon motivational affordances theory, 2 coders qualitatively coded the data. We identified five key topics of discussion, including members' (1) intention to get virtual academic degrees (n=38, 2.47%), (2) action to apply for the degrees (n=312, 20.27%), (3) feedback on the accomplishment of goals (n=203, 13.19%), (4) interpersonal interaction (n=794, 51.59%), and (5) expression of personal feelings (n=192, 12.48%). Most notably, the results identified underlying social and psychological motivations behind using the forum to discuss obtaining academic degrees for smoking cessation. Specifically, members were found to engage in sharing behavior (n=423, 27.49%) over other forms of interaction such as providing recommendations or encouragement. Moreover, expressions of personal feelings about achieving degrees were generally positive. It was possible that members hid their negative feelings (such as doubt, carelessness, and dislike) in the discussion. The virtual academic degrees in the OSCC created opportunities for self-presentation for participants. They also improved their self-efficacy to persist in smoking cessation by providing progressive challenges. They served as social bonds connecting different community members, triggering interpersonal interactions, and inducing positive feelings. They also helped realize members' desire to influence or to be influenced by others. Similar nonfinancial rewards could be adopted in various smoking cessation projects to enhance participation and sustainability.

Although there have been concerted efforts to integrate Tibetan Buddhist monastic education into the Indian university system since the 1960s, the attainment of academic accreditation has tended to require significant curricular trade-offs. The majority of Tibetan Buddhist monastic colleges have therefore eschewed the potential advantages of academic accreditation—including greater opportunities for monastic graduates in universities and other secular contexts—in order to preserve the rigour of traditional scholastic programmes. However, through its affiliation to the University of Mysore in 2022, the Geluk monastery of Sera Je is now able to award accredited Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees even without making significant changes in practice to its traditional curriculum and pedagogy. This article examines the structure and content of Sera Je’s new programmes and contextualises what may prove to be a landmark development against the backdrop of previous attempts to negotiate the boundary between Tibetan Buddhist monastic education and university education in India. It suggests that the accreditation of research programmes raises further challenges in addition to those associated with the accreditation of taught programmes. Nonetheless, the urgency of solving these longstanding issues appears to have been heightened by a developing crisis in Tibetan Buddhist monastic recruitment. In investigating the topic of academic accreditation, this article throws light on an issue that has driven notable evolutions in Tibetan Buddhist monastic education in India but has previously received little scholarly attention.