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College Students: The Evolving Nature of Research
Frances K. Stage, Guadalupe L. Anaya, John P. Bean, Don Hossler, and George D. Kuh (Editors)
Needham Heights, MA: ASHE Reader Series, Simon & Schuster, 1996, 292 pages, $41.00 (softcover)
In the ASHE reader, College Students: The Evolving Nature of Research, editors Stage, Anaya, Bean, Hossler, and Kuh have gathered together a diverse group of research. Their aim, according to the introductory essay by Stage and Anaya, is
to highlight the latest in college student research in an effort to inspire both future researchers and future administrators. For the researchers, we hope these exemplars will generate new questions and suggest new ways to address old questions. For administrators, we hope to inspire new ways of conceptualizing solutions to campus problems and to empower them to ask even more difficult questions of the research community. We can envision a future where researchers and practitioners draw closely together and inform one another as they go about their respective businesses. (p. xi)
This envisioned future is in contrast to the current state of practice and research in which "our knowledge about college students is incomplete and the applications of this knowledge apparently have little effect on practice" (p. xi).
The editors have included several types of articles: summaries of what they refer to as "traditional" research on college students, pieces they call "transformational" that focus on underrepresented populations in the college student research literature, and articles that "critique the status quo in college student research and challenge us to reexamine our ways of viewing the research enterprise" (p. xi). Those who scan the journals that publish research about college students regularly will undoubtedly find some familiar selections and some pieces that are new to them.
The reader is divided into four major sections "laid out in the sequence of the college-going experience" (p. xxiii): "Getting to College," "The College Environment," "The Developmental Experience," and "Summary and Reflections."
Part 1, "Getting to College," contains four articles: "Population Trends, Socioeconomic...