Graduate Students Face Research Articles

Balancing socio-Economic and Academic Needs: A case of Higher Education Graduate Students.

The need to pursue higher degrees to meet job demands, while at the same time working for social obligations, can be quite challenging. This is especially so when such students have to pay their tuition privately. This paper is based on the findings of a study done among students on masters programs in higher education at Makerere University in 2008. It reports some of the challenges graduate students face as they struggle to attain higher degree qualifications needed in order to secure better jobs, gain promotion, or to retain their jobs at their current places of work. Specifically, it reports some of the risks students take while looking for additional funds to pay university fees; while at the same time sustaining families and other social economic obligations. A lot of study time is lost in various activities students engage in to realize the needed funds, a fact that could have adverse effects on the quality of their study performance.

The Literature on Academic Integrity and Graduate Students: Issues, Solutions, and the Case for a Librarian Role

SUMMARY Graduate and professional school students face a variety of academic integrity issues and are sometimes academically dishonest. The author surveys the literature of the last decade on graduate student academic integrity, including plagiarism, cheating, falsification, and authorship conflicts, focusing on empirical studies in multiple disciplines, studies that portray issues arising in individual disciplines, and solutions suggested. The author proposes that librarians who serve, teach, and consult with graduate students should develop their instructional role in this area. By becoming aware of the chief academic integrity problems and the subject-discipline related concerns, they can better assist graduate students in the context of information literacy and collaborate with faculty on training and other solutions.

Promising Practices and Challenges: E-advising Special Education Rural Graduate Students

Rural graduate students face numerous barriers and obstacles in attending higher education. One such obstacle is academic advising from a distance. The intent of the authors was to examine the advising experiences of master's degree level special education students who had received e-advising from their academic advisor. A short email survey was designed to collect data relating to e-advising received by rural, part-time students. Results of the survey indicated that in-person advising at a university site (traditional advising model) would not have been suitable and e-advising was meeting their needs at this point in their graduate education. The participants also explained that the necessity of being advised in person is no longer valid.

Teaching Graduate Students to Write: A seminar for thesis and dissertation writers

Many graduate students face thesis or dissertation writing under-prepared. To help some of them with the task, the author developed a seminar called Social-Science Writing. This article describes that seminar: its organisation, themes, in-class and take-home writing assignments, readings, and student writing workshop. The author also reviews some of the books available to help even novice writers both with their own writing, and to develop the confidence to teach (or request) such a course themselves.