Although research findings to date have documented that computer-mediated communication (CMC) gets students involved, a substantial gap remained in determining the impact of CMC on academic and social integration of community college students. Because computer technology, specifically CMC, has proliferated within teaching and learning in higher education and because of the importance of academic and social integration, this study was significant in documenting through quantitative data analysis the impact that CMC had on the academic and social integration of community college students. The following research question was addressed: Does computer-mediated communication have an impact on the academic and social integration of community college students as measured by the CCSEQ? The study hypothesized that data analysis will show that there will be no difference in the integrations reported by the control and experimental groups. The overall approach was to conduct a pretest-posttest control-group experimental study using CMC as the experimental treatment. The Community College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CCSEQ) was given to collect data that were used to measure the academic and social integration of the control and experimental groups. After an in-depth analysis of data using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and ANCOVA, the finding of this study was that there is …

This study explores the relationship between diversity within executive decision-making teams at institutions of higher education and their propensity for strategic change. Previous research in the areas of strategic change, group decision making, and higher education was drawn from in this study. Statistically significant relationships were discovered the demographic background of executive decision-making teams at public colleges and universities, as measured by both the pursuit of new degree and certificate program offerings and multiple measures of student retention. The results also indicated the presence of an insufficiently diverse pool of potential executives for colleges and universities to draw from.

The purpose of this study was to examine the financial nexus between college choice and persistence for full-time, first-time, first-year freshman college students. The theoretical framework of this study was the financial nexus construct developed by St. John, Paulsen, and Starkey (1996) and Paulsen and St. John (1997). This is the first study to apply the financial nexus construct to full-time, first-time, first-year freshman population; the first to examine baccalaureate/comprehensive and doctoral/research institutions in both public and private sectors separately. The results of this study found that (1) overall, it is slightly evident that there is a financial nexus between college choice and persistence among full-time, first-time, first-year freshman students; (2) the nexus between college choice and persistence may be different by the Carnegie Classification, and (3) the pattern of the direct effects of financial variables (i.e., tuition and financial aid) on persistence was different from the previous results. Unlike in the previous studies, tuition increases appeared to have a positive effect on the enrollment of full-time, first-time, first-year freshman students attending institutions of all Carnegie Classifications. The result suggests that price may reveal a "quality effect" and that higher tuition institution may signal higher quality. In both public and …