Press Release

Contact: Debra Humphreys
Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs
202-387-3760 (ext 422)
Humphreys@aacu.org

High-Impact Educational Practices Reaching Too Few College Students, New Research Shows

All Students Benefit from Forms of Learning with Proven Impact, but Those Historically Underserved Benefit Even More

Washington, DC—October 6, 2008—The Association of American Colleges and Universities released today a new report from its initiative Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP).  High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access To Them, and Why They Matter is written by noted education researcher and advisor to the LEAP initiative George D. Kuh, with an introduction by AAC&U’s president Carol Geary Schneider.

This latest report from the LEAP initiative summarizes research on ten educational practices that have a significant impact on college student success.  It also provides new data from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) on six of these practices.  Author George D. Kuh presents data drawn from NSSE—a survey which has been completed by two million students from more than 1,300 different four-year colleges and universities.  He also discusses why decades of research show that participating in certain practices correlates with higher levels of student performance.  These activities include learning communities, internships, undergraduate research programs, service learning programs, and capstone projects, and can be found at almost every college or university.  They are powerful because they increase the frequency of meaningful interactions with faculty and peers, induce students to spend more time and effort on research, writing, and analytic thinking, and involve them in more hands-on and collaborative forms of learning.  While these practices have even greater benefits for traditionally underserved students—students of color and first-generation students—these students are the least likely to actually participate in them.

“This new LEAP report speaks directly to one of the most important national challenges facing American higher education,” said AAC&U President Carol Geary Schneider.  “Our nation’s future depends on helping today’s extraordinarily diverse generation of college students reap the full benefits of their studies in college.  What Kuh’s research plainly reveals is that we know what works, but we just aren’t providing it to all the students who could benefit.  We must make excellence inclusive and expand access to our best educational approaches to all our students, not just to those who are most privileged or most prepared for college learning.”

Selected Findings from High-Impact Educational Practices:

• While participation in high-impact educational practices like first-year seminars and senior capstones generally benefits all students, the effects of these practices are even greater for students who begin college at lower achievement levels as well as students of color as compared with white students.
• Only 17 percent of all students participate in learning communities—a practice proven to increase retention rates and correlated with greater self-reported gains on a range of important learning outcomes.
• Overall, only about one fifth of all students report working with faculty on a research project; those that do so report higher levels of academic challenge and gaining more on a range of desired college outcomes such as a capacity for deep, integrative learning.
• A majority (57 percent) of white students do internships which employers view as highly desirable; only 46 percent of African American and Hispanic college students have such an experience.
• Thirty-six percent of students whose parents went to college report completing a senior capstone project, while only 29 percent of first generation students do so.
• Twenty-two percent of students with parents who went to college report working with a faculty member on a research project compared with only 16 percent of first-generation students.
• Thirty-eight percent of non-transfer students report doing a senior capstone project while only 25 percent of transfer students report the same.

According to Kuh, “These findings strongly suggest that colleges and universities can enrich learning and help more students succeed by making it possible for every student to have one high impact experience in the first year and another one later in their academic program.”

Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) is an initiative that champions the value of a liberal education—for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality. The initiative focuses campus practice on fostering essential learning outcomes for all students, whatever their chosen field of study. Launched in 2005, on the occasion of AAC&U’s 90th anniversary, LEAP seeks to engage the public with core questions about what really matters in college, to give students a compass to guide their learning, to expand the use of high-impact educational practices, and to make a set of essential learning outcomes the preferred framework for educational excellence, assessment of learning, and new alignments between school and college.

To purchase a copy of the full report or read an excerpt, click here.

AAC&U is the leading national association concerned with the quality, vitality, and public standing of undergraduate liberal education. Its members are committed to extending the advantages of a liberal education to all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915, AAC&U now comprises more than 1,150 accredited public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.

AAC&U functions as a catalyst and facilitator, forging links among presidents, administrators, and faculty members who are engaged in institutional and curricular planning. Its mission is to reinforce the collective commitment to liberal education at both the national and local levels and to help individual institutions keep the quality of student learning at the core of their work as they evolve to meet new economic and social challenges.

Information about AAC&U membership, programs, and publications can be found on the AAC&U Web site.