Researchers have demonstrated that personal financial disadvantage and economic stress impede the academic attainment of students in higher education (Walpole, 2007). Specifically, financial hardships such as low family income, material deprivation, or serious debt may hinder persistence to degree attainment. While scholars have demonstrated that economically disadvantaged (ED) students struggle more than their peers in persisting to a degree, they have not determined the nature of this socio-economic condition and the ways in which this condition may affect persistence and students’ collegiate experiences.

This qualitative investigation employs an uncommon approach in explaining a frequently researched topic. It relies on a narrative structure that examines, phenomenologically, how the financial stories of students in higher education interact with their stories of collegiate persistence and experiences at a regional comprehensive university and community college in southern California. Data in this investigation comprise multiple semistructured and email interviews of 18 degree-seeking undergraduate students. Creation of three composite narratives serve as the primary analysis, with additional analysis including coding and categorization guided by capabilities and stress theories.

ED students experience personal and family financial struggle before and during college. These students are challenged with both broad and specific affordability issues in a negative environment involving unexpected financial burdens and structural impediments. ED students value the financial security of higher education and are motivated by both struggles and successes. The students demonstrate the capabilities to meet financial needs and believe in individual ability as the determinant to persistence in college yet describe how external factors such as financial aid and employment create barriers to college completion and experiences. ED student financial situations also create stress which affects student experience. Implications for scholars, policy makers, and practitioners are discussed.

Much of the scholarly literature understands international student educational experiences largely as a process of adjustment to host country norms and institutions and portrays international students as deficit in relations to these norms. In contrast, international students live reflexively, shape their own identities, and are successful academically. International students are self-formed, and international students’ education is a process of self-formation in which students manage their lives reflexively, shaping their own identities (Marginson, 2014).

The purpose of this investigation was to capture the social and academic experiences of undergraduate international students enrolled in a state comprehensive university (SCU). Guided by P-E fit theory (Dawis & Lofquist, 1984; Edwards, Caplan, & Van Harrison, 1998; Edwards & Rothbard, 1999) and the concept of self-formation (Marginson, 2014), this investigation explored the experiences of thirteen undergraduate students from five different countries matriculated at an SCU in Southern California.

Findings suggest that SCU provided an academic environment that was positive, welcoming, and inclusive. Although the literature signals a potential incompatibility between international students and their host institutions, the narratives compiled in this investigation depict undergraduate international students as compatible with SCU and satisfied with their experiences, albeit with different levels of engagement and of interest in interaction with faculty and with their domestic counter peers. The findings were separated into sections that include groups of students who share similar experiences at this SCU: The Transformed and Engaged Student Group, the Utilitarian Student Group, and the Disengaged Student Group. To some extent then there was both PE-fit and PE- misfit. Fit because the SCU environment facilitated student satisfaction; misfit because some students (i.e., Utilitarian students, and Disengaged Students) did not integrate in all ways with the campus. All students preserved their cultural identity during their studies at SCU.

The social and academic experiences articulated by international undergraduate students can help practitioners reflect upon the design and implementation of services for international undergraduate students. Campus administrators and international education practitioners should design and implement initiatives that enable, confirm, and support interactions that foster the academic and interpersonal development of international students enrolled in SCUs.

Understanding the professional identity of senior-level undergraduate business students may shed light on the rampant unethical acts of business managers in industry. Business education is the largest segment of undergraduate majors, constituting more than 20% of students in four-year institutions, year after year. To explain the professional identity of business students, this study uses prior theoretical frameworks to model the precursors of professionalism--"autonomy of judgment," "desire for expertise," "self-concept," and "social agency." The study draws on data from the College Senior Survey (CSS) collected by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA for two academic years 2006-2008. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis indicate that the four factors--autonomy of judgment, desire for expertise, self-concept, and social agency--indeed fit a cohesive model for the latent construct "precursors of professionalism." The results suggest that there are statistically significant differences between business and non-business majors for three of the four factors tested in the study: "desire for expertise," "self-concept," and "social agency." This indicates that business students differ from their peers in college in most of the dimensions of the precursors of professionalism.

Over the first four years of college, students’ self-ratings on writing ability and motivation to perform well increase, while self-reports of physical and emotional health decrease during that same period (Astin, 1997). This qualitative investigation identifies and explains the environmental and cultural forces that shape and are shaped by health and wellness perspectives of students. Research questions for this investigation addressed students’ understandings of health and wellness and their influences. Two components of social reproduction theory, cultural capital and social capital, as well as culture theory, were utilized to understand the cultural and social origins of students’ perspectives on their ability to lead healthful lifestyles at their university. This investigation was undertaken at two large public universities in southern California where a combined total of 55 students and one staff member participated.

Findings suggest that both social and environmental factors play a significant role in students’ health behaviors. First, while educational practitioners and faculty can be a source of social capital for students (Winkle-Wagner, 2010), students at both campuses reported that campus resources associated with health and wellness, inclusive of administrative units, communications from administrative units, and campus-sponsored programs were of limited influence on students, if not completely ineffective. Second, in the absence of guidance from their universities, peer norms, which were perpetuated by social media, were influenced by and influenced student behavior. Third, the university environment (both physical and social), peer culture, and academic demands at both CRU and CCU pose significant challenges to student attempts to “get fit,” thereby resulting in a lack of agency in students’ ability to lead healthy lifestyles. Fourth, the word “health,” as conceived by students in this investigation, can more accurately be described as the ability to obtain a “fit” appearance or achieve an ideal body figure. The discourse of the body as a perpetual project was present in student conceptions of health in the university context.

In recent decades, due to both contextual (e.g., resource scarcity) and internal organizational conditions (e.g., increased enrollment), universities have increased the number of nontenure-track faculty positions. As part of the nontenure-track faculty population, part-time (PT) faculty are treated as second-class faculty and conceptualized more as employees than as professionals. This view (common in both universities and in the scholarly literature) shows a partial and skewed perception of PT faculty’s work and participation in universities that does not account for this population’s own understandings of their organizational and professional roles.

This qualitative investigation uses a novel approach to a well-examined topic. Based on a non-deficit perspective, and the study of a particular PT faculty subgroup, this investigation explains the ways in which long-term PT faculty understand their work in, contributions to, and relationship with comprehensive Master’s universities and the academic profession. A phenomenological approach and fieldwork methods were employed. Data in this investigation comprise semi-structured in-depth interviews of 29 PT faculty, in three comprehensive Master’s university California, with five or more years employment. Content analysis, coding and categorizing, and document analysis processes were employed to systematize the findings of this investigation.

PT faculty conceptualize themselves as members of multiple on-campus and off-campus groups. Their membership in these groups guides their understanding and construction of their roles in their universities. Long-term PT faculty express attitudes of work engagement (job involvement, organizational commitment, and psychological empowerment) and enact work engagement behaviors (extra-role behaviors) that benefit their university and students. PT faculty’s job involvement plays a central role both in the development of a long-term work relationship with their campus and in PT faculty’s expressions of work engagement. Findings from this investigation suggest that PT faculty self-author their work and develop professional identities that help them cope with reductive and partial views of their role at universities. Findings are used to discuss implications for practice as well as to propose future venues for research.