Efforts to strengthen the pipeline to college degree completion have focused on improving college access and providing academic, social, and financial supports to students post-enrollment. This paper explores one facet of postsecondary education that has served as a barrier to both college access and success--developmental education--which has…

Adult education services, including education for those lacking basic literacy and numeracy, preparation for the high school equivalency diploma, and English-as-a-second-language courses, play a crucial role in bridging the basic skills gap for Latinos and other workers with limited formal education and training. With recent policy and program…

Presents three categories of approaches to assess the impact of college supplemental instruction (SI) programs on an institution: anecdotal information; descriptive statistics; and inferential statistics. For SI programs required to justify their existence, these methods include a range of assessment devices from simple testimony to rigorous…

Describes a study of the effectiveness of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), high school graduation class percentile, and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), as predictors of short- and long-term academic achievement among a sample of 58 high-risk college freshmen who participated in 1-year special studies program. (PAA)

A study investigated study habits of 154 educationally disadvantaged engineering students enrolled in developmental studies programs in 3 South African universities. Aspects examined include entry skills, study patterns throughout the first year, and characteristics of students whose study habits changed over time. Implications for admission and…

This paper presents the results of a search for an appropriate test of critical thinking to screen college freshmen. The search for an appropriate test of critical thinking was initiated in the Fall 1995 semester at an open-admissions comprehensive university, which normally assigns entering freshmen with ACT composite scores of 17 or less to…

This report summarizes the success of 115 remedial programs in each sector of New Jersey higher education, and uses outcome standards to categorize the patterns of strength and weakness observed in the data from individual college programs. Among the topics discussed are the following: the design of the assessment process; statewide and sector…