Exploring the impact of high schools, socioeconomic factors, and degree programs on higher education success in Italy

Scholars of academic success in higher education in South Africa struggle to find an integrated framework that can explain the interplay between heterogeneous elements that combine in dynamic ways to influence the academic success of students. Language of teaching and learning is indicated as an important element in academic success in higher education. In South Africa, students are multilingual and this is often ignored or perceived as a hindrance to academic success. Conversely, there are studies that have found a positive relationship between bi- and multilingualism and cognitive development during the past 40 years. The aim of this article is to view multilingualism and academic success in higher education in South Africa from a complex systems approach. It is argued that a complex systems approach provides an integrated framework for studies of multilingualism and academic success in higher education in South Africa.

This article offers a systematic review of what the literature tells us about how First Nations students perceive the factors that contribute to or hinder their success in Australian higher education. It builds on the ‘Aboriginal Voices’ project that investigated the many and varied issues that have contributed to the underachievement of First Nations students in Australian schools. Focusing on research published between 2010 and 2020, we examine the key enablers of and barriers to Indigenous student success at university, concentrating on the views of Indigenous students themselves. This review highlights that this topic is crucially divided between the motivation and mobilisation of First Nations students and the fixed institutional and cultural structures through which they move. The review concludes that the primary barriers to Indigenous success in higher education are racism and whiteness in universities, and socioeconomic disadvantage in Indigenous communities; the primary enablers of Indigenous success are family and community support, Indigenous-specific support services, peer support and mentoring, and trusting and supportive relationships with university staff.

Over time, many students that enroll in programmes at the university end up dropping out without completing their studies. This trend is worrisome as it points to a defeat of the objectives of entering and graduating from the university. Therefore, this study explored the perspectives of contributory factors to student success in higher education at a South African University. The study addressed one objective namely, participants’ understanding of factors that contribute to student success in higher education. To address this objective, a qualitative case study design located in the interpretive paradigm was employed to generate data through a semi-structured interview from twelve participants purposively selected from undergraduate and postgraduate students. Of these twelve participants, four represented First Time Entering (FTEN) students, four (4) second year and third year respectively and four (4) postgraduate students across two faculties, namely the Faculty of Education and School Development and Faculty of Economics and Information Technology Systems , Komani campus,Walter Sisulu University, South Africa. The data was analysed thematically. The results revealed the following themes, namely, no student left behind, the need for an enabling environment, students as partners, data-informed practices, assessment for sustainability, and a multi-dimensional approach for success. With these findings, the study concludes that addressing the needs of all students collectively, creating an enabling environment, involving students as partners, the use of data-informed practices, and assessment for sustainability among others all impact students’ success in higher education. Thus, as part of the contribution to the body of knowledge, these findings highlight factors that contribute to the debate on students’ success in higher education. Key Words: First Time Entering Students (FTENs), Higher Education, Enablers of Student Success

Introduction: Student success in institutions of higher education is of mounting importance as the link between education, health, and well-being grows. This study investigates adverse childhood experiences (ACE) that may confer resilience or may negatively impact a student’s educational success independent of other known factors for educational achievement. Methods: A cross-sectional survey-based study was conducted using the 2012 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data to investigate a large representative US Population of 25-35-year-olds (n=2,543) that were surveyed on ACE measures. Univariate and weighted multivariable logistic regression models focused on educational success in those with and without ACE factors are presented. All data management and analyses were conducted using SAS® 9.4. Results: Each single level increase of ACE reporting indicated an unadjusted 5% decrease in odds for obtaining some college or a college degree. Adjusting for other ACEs, demographic, socioeconomic, behavioral, and health factors, parental depression and mental illness in childhood was associated with college success, while those who experienced parental drug use, prison time, divorce, and being physically hurt at home as a child had statistically significantly lower odds of college success. Other significant predictors of academic success included being female, normal weight, never smoking, never being married, reporting good/excellent health, and exercising with a c-statistic of .88 indicating a strong prediction model. Conclusions: Higher education success and the myriad of associated public health benefit requires significant student and institutional interaction to be flexible enough to engage traditional as well as adult, non-traditional, and underserved student populations. Understanding the modifiable and non-modifiable constellation of health and well-being factors will better allow a more population-based student-centered approach to higher education. Keywords: education; public health; learning; Resilience

The current trend of refugees from Central America entering the United States through the U.S. and Mexico border since the fiscal year 2014 have continually challenged the United States Immigration Laws and the American educational system.as these young refugees have been continually entering the country seeking for a better life and American education. To care and educate these young immigrants necessitate the implementation of appropriate pedagogical and educational leadership strategies, methods, and approaches to pre-service teachers' and educational administrative training programs to make a positive impact in the lives of these least privileged and culturally different young children and their families. In this light, this paper seeks to highlight the positive effects of transformational leadership, intercultural competence, and multicultural education theories to students' success in higher education. In doing so, I define Transformational Leadership (TL), Intercultural Competence (IC); Multicultural Education (ME) theory in teacher education; and explain TL, IC, and ME as effective appropriate teaching tools in higher education via review of literature pertinent to the effects of TL, IC, and ME to students' success in higher education.

Study success includes the successful completion of a first degree in higher education to the largest extent, and the successful completion of individual learning tasks to the smallest extent. Factors affecting study success range from individual dispositions (e.g., motivation, prior academic performance) to characteristics of the educational environment (e.g., attendance, active learning, social embeddedness). Recent developments in learning analytics, which are a socio-technical data mining and analytic practice in educational contexts, show promise in enhancing study success in higher education, through the collection and analysis of data from learners, learning processes, and learning environments in order to provide meaningful feedback and scaffolds when needed. This research reports a systematic review focusing on empirical evidence, demonstrating how learning analytics have been successful in facilitating study success in continuation and completion of students’ university courses. Using standardised steps of conducting a systematic review, an initial set of 6220 articles was identified. The final sample includes 46 key publications. The findings obtained in this systematic review suggest that there are a considerable number of learning analytics approaches which utilise effective techniques in supporting study success and students at risk of dropping out. However, rigorous, large-scale evidence of the effectiveness of learning analytics in supporting study success is still lacking. The tested variables, algorithms, and methods collected in this systematic review can be used as a guide in helping researchers and educators to further improve the design and implementation of learning analytics systems.

Critical thinking competencies are not only seen as crucial for success in higher education, but also for future personal and workplace success. These competencies are commonly cited as a graduate attribute or goal of higher education, and resulting research has tended to focus on exploring and measuring the development of critical thinking competencies in students within higher education. However, few researchers have explored the curriculum and practice of academic staff within higher education in relation to their influence on developing critical thinking competencies in students, or how they theorise about the development of these competencies as part of their professional practice. Within the South African context, there is a perception of a decline in the development of critical thinking competencies within the secondary school system. This has informed policy imperatives to improve access and success in South African higher education through additional support for students, as well as through research into the first-year experience. Within a constructivist paradigm, and adopting a qualitative approach, this study takes the first year of higher education as its context in order to explore the curriculum, assessment, pedagogical and andragogical practices of academic staff designed to develop critical thinking competencies in first-year students. The aim is to explore how academic staff construct their theory and practice in order to contribute to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in South African Higher Education. Phenomenological case study research methods, which draw on data collection through semi-structured interviews and document analysis, enabled a better understanding of the lived experience of academic staff within private higher education. Academic staff, as research participants, were able to describe deliberate actions taken in their teaching practices to facilitate the development and assessment of critical thinking competencies. The findings revealed that academic staff – while having no coherent, well-articulated construction of critical thinking competencies – feel that such competencies are essential for academic and future life success. This not only affirmed previous research reviewed, but aligned to the inclusion of explicit and implicit references to critical thinking competencies found in the curriculum and assessment documents. Recommendations for professional development responded specifically to these findings.

Recent theoretical and empirical contributions suggest that patterns of employment discrimination in the public sector can be interpreted as a consequence of political and structural factors in viewing the government as a vote-maximizing entity. According to the analysis presented in this paper, extensions of the discrimating vote-maximizing hypothesis to the higher education industry are also useful in explaining interstate differences in the relative ability of blacks to capture a more equitable share of publicly produced education. The basic empirical finding is that blacks' relative access to and success in public higher education, as measured by relative black enrollments and conferred degrees, is significantly improved by increased black political participation and representation in elected offices. Furthermore, the analysis implies that the organizational structure of higher education also matters. Governing boards enjoying longer terms of office appear to have a negative effect on black equality in public higher education. Although the evidence on this point was weak, further tests would be required before it could be completely dismissed. Finally, the empirical results indicate that the recent structural trend toward fewer governing boards and greater concentration of board power have the likely effect of decreasing blacks' access to and success in higher education. Overall, these findings lend additional support to the present extensions of the vote-maximizing hypothesis in explaining patterns of discrimination in the public sector.

Historic trends affect the social construction of the Hispanic self that have negatively affected achievement. This is reflected in the models of training and career counseling. Achievement depends on many factors among college students. Hispanic college students have certain obstacles that need to be addressed related to self-concept to meet these challenges and improve their rates of success in higher education. Analyzing history and psychological theory increase a researcher’s knowledge of what drives self-efficacious behaviors. In the end, refined knowledge of what motivates Hispanic students in academic tasks improves a person’s ability to counsel Hispanic individuals toward routes to success in career choices higher education.

Despite the feminisation of universities in terms of their student intake [1,2], formal positions of academic leadership in higher education remain concentrated in male hands[…]

Higher education plays a critically important role in society. It contributes to physical and mental well-being for individuals. Higher education has a powerful role to play in improving economic prosperity; it promotes better use of resources and supports sustainable development. However, around the globe, higher education faces many challenges and problems. Higher education is in a state of transition brought on by global competition, massification and advances in technology. The demand for higher education has exploded creating opportunities for wider participation but causing a crisis of resourcing at the same time. New models of learning and teaching are required to support the global demand. Many of the chapters in this book address the challenges and opportunities in higher education around the world. In this first chapter, we examine definitions of success from different perspectives. We propose a transition model of success in higher education: transition to becoming an effective student; transition to higher levels of knowledge and skills and transition to becoming a professional. We propose eight perspectives of success from an individual viewpoint, we propose eight institutional practices that will promote success and (bravely) we propose eight key trends for the future of success in higher education.

The issue of equity in higher education has gained prominence as it has become increasingly clear that opportunities for higher education are not equitably distributed among different student groups. This paper provides a thorough understanding of the key components of equitable access and success in higher education, primarily in the context of the United States. It also seeks to explore the effectiveness of affirmative action, financial aid and scholarship systems, successful initiatives, cultural and sociological attitudes, and institutional structures and services in promoting equitable access and success in higher education. The paper uses a systematic review methodology to analyze academic and policy documents, program evaluations, and case studies. The analysis includes a synthesis of key findings and themes from the literature review, an examination of successful initiatives and programs in higher education institutions in the United States. The findings suggest that while affirmative action and financial aid programs have been successful in promoting equitable access and success in higher education, further efforts are needed to address cultural and societal attitudes that perpetuate inequities in higher education. Recommendations for future research include the long-term effects of financial aid and cultural barriers to building a more equitable education.

BackgroundThe weight of social inequalities during education is a reality. Students of lower socioeconomic status may have less chance of success in higher education, particularly in medical studies. However, the role of students’ socioeconomic factors, such as their parents’ profession, in their success in the national ranking exam (NRE) has not been studied.Our aim was to investigate the association between socioeconomic factors and success in the national ranking exam among sixth year medical students at the Paris-Sud Faculty of Medicine.MethodsThis was a prospective survey of all sixth-year medical students at the Paris-Sud Faculty of Medicine, using a questionnaire on socioeconomic factors, which were compared according to NRE rank.ResultsOf 172 sixth year medical students, 110 completed the questionnaire. Their ranking ranged from 20 to 7695, with a median of 2815 (interquartile range: 1029–4581). The factors associated with the NRE rank were a high school diploma (baccalauréat) A or B grade, success at the first attempt in the first-year medical examination, and enrollment in the NRE preparatory lectures during the sixth year of medical training (linear regression, p < 0.001). The educational status and socio-professional category of the parents were not associated with the NRE rank (linear regression, p = 0.92).ConclusionAt the Paris-Sud Faculty of Medicine, there was no association between parental socioeconomic status and sixth year students’ success in the NRE.

This research study utilized the qualitative method of narrative inquiry to create and analyze the oral narrative of one African American female's struggle for success in higher education. This method allowed investigation of life experiences meaningful to the participant-narrator's success in higher education to be accomplished in collaboration ith the participant-narrator: a student voice was heard and preser\'ed. The oral narrative was then analyzed by the researcher in order to identify and examine elements (family and individual characteristics, life events, interactions, personal meanings) relevant to factors that have been identified by existing research findings as related to student development, especially African-American persistence in higher education. Traditional research in higher education is highly quantitative and Eurocentric. The contribution of this extremely focused research is found in an analysis of the personal insights and meanings that will assist practitioners and researchers whose counseling styles, teaching methods, policies, practices and theories are designed to deal with large, diverse groups, but which dramatically affect individual lives

Late adolescents and emerging adults often report lower sleep quality. Recent studies have shown that many of these individuals are also characterized by ongoing development of executive functions, such as self-control and self-monitoring. These functions are not fully mature until later in the twenties. As both suboptimal sleep and improper executive functions can impact academic performance, there could be a relationship between these processes. However, few studies have examined these relationships simultaneously to more fully understand the effects of sleep on academic performance in higher education. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the extent to which sleep quality influences study success in higher education, and to what extent self-perceived executive function influences this possible relationship. A large survey was conducted among 1760 first-year students at a University of Applied Sciences to evaluate this aim. Results showed that sleep quality and study success are related: lower self-reported sleep quality is related to less study success. A high level of self-control and self-monitoring appears to compensate for the negative effect which sleeping problems have on obtaining study credits. The results of this large-scale study emphasize the need to include sleep and skills in self-control when planning educational innovations aimed at fostering study success in higher education.