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Although student loan debt has been rigorously studied over the past several decades, scant research has investigated how institutions of higher education communicate debt to current and former student borrowers. As COVID-19 forced the United States Department of Education to cancel the Annual Student Loan Acknowledgement as part of a student's signing of the master promissory note (MPN), there are no other mechanisms for students to be aware of their student loan debt beyond a debt letter from their institution or reviewing their National Student Loan Debt System (NSLDS) portal. This applied linguistics study surveyed 2,030 current student loan borrowers attending U.S. institutions of higher education to explore their preferences for receiving a student loan debt letter. Results suggest students of Color and first-generation in college students strongly prefer shorter, simpler letters, while there were no statistically significant preferences by gender. Implications for research and practice will be addressed.

Decades of research suggests that institutional communication can dictate student success, but the COVID-19 pandemic exposed challenges to new demands. Institutions may not have been prepared to adjust communications during the COVID-19 pandemic, and given the ongoing nature of the pandemic, literature has yet to examine how higher education institutions communicated with students during COVID-19. The current study fills this gap by exploring how college students viewed institutional communication from multiple stakeholders, including staff, faculty, and peers, and whether institutional communication supported student persistence. Data suggests a majority of students were critical of institutional communication but rarely engaged with that communication or acted. Moreover, students strongly preferred communication that they perceived to be authentic and personal, while students also felt that high-quality communication from their institution would help them persist and connect with their support networks. We address implications for research, policy, and institutional communication and practice.

Institutions of higher education have mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for students wishing to return to an on-campus, in-person learning experience. However, some groups have expressed a hesitancy to be vaccinated, while others are unsure about the vaccine's side effects and/or efficacy. Yet, an under-researched aspect of COVID-19 vaccinations and related communication is whether individuals--in this study, college students--understand that the COVID-19 vaccine is free and whether that understanding varies among groups of people. As a result, this study surveyed 1,183 college students to explore these students' knowledge of vaccine costs and whether differences exist between groups. Data suggests many college students do not know that COVID-19 vaccinations are free: Asian American/Pacific Islander students were most aware of COVID-19 vaccines being free (55.7%), while Black/African American students were least aware (41.4%). Moreover, women were more aware of free COVID-19 vaccines (50.2%) than men (40.1%), first generation college students were more aware (50.9%) than non-first generation college students (42.7%), and students without disabilities (50.7%) were more aware than students with disabilities (26.6%). Implications for health communication, vaccine awareness, and higher education policy are addressed.

Students who leave higher education before earning a credential ("stop outs") often do so for failing to maintain satisfactory academic progress, or SAP. This article details why enrollment managers must work with their financial aid counterparts to smooth students' re-entry to higher education, focusing on SAP alleviation strategies.

Teaching ecosystem services provides an ideal opportunity to use inquiry-based learning to help students make connections between ecological, geological, and social systems. The idea of ecosystem services, or the benefits nature provides to society, has emerged as a key concept in a host of environmental fields and is just beginning to gain attention within the geosciences. Although the concept has the potential to positively affect policy decisions by quantifying the economic value of ecosystem services, it has been criticized for commodifying nature and having limited engagement with geoscience perspectives. To teach ecosystem services to the next generation of geoscientists, we developed two variations of an inquiry-based learning exercise in which students used the ecosystem services approach to assign a monetary value to eight different ecosystem services generated by four ecosystems. One version of the exercise had students make these valuations in the field, whereas one was completed solely in the classroom. In both cases, the students scored significantly better on a postexercise assessment, demonstrated a deeper understanding of the ecosystem services approach, and reported that the exercise was preferable to a traditional lecture. Our data and observations also suggest that this exercise offers a great deal of flexibility and can be used in many learning environments. Geoscientists should be especially interested in integrating the concept of ecosystem services into their courses so that the next generation of geoscientists is well positioned to contribute to the interdisciplinary field of ecosystem services.

A large body of research has indicated international students in the United States (U.S.) and abroad experience difficulties understanding what academic integrity is and how to avoid academic misconduct (Bista "To Improve The Academy," 30(1), 159-172 2011; Brown & Howell, 2001; Gullifer and Tyson "Studies in Higher Education," 39(7), 1202-1218 2014). While most studies focus on academic misconduct and academic corruption in research ethics (Macfarlane et al. "Studies in Higher Education," 39(2), 339-358 2014), this study analyzes the length, English-language readability, and translation of academic integrity policies of 453 four-year U.S. institutions of higher education. Findings indicate average academic integrity policies are over 2000 words long, are written above the 16th-grade reading level, and are very rarely translated into a language other than English (0.06% of the sample). In addition, no institutions published their academic integrity policies in full on their institutional international student website, possibly rendering the policy difficult to locate on the institution's website for international students. Implications for research, policy, and practice are addressed.

Longitudinal research has suggested that sexual assault on college campuses is widespread and grossly underreported. To date, scholars have not examined a seemingly commonsense aspect of sexual assault reporting: the readability of the reporting instructions themselves; therefore, in this study the author examined the readability--using four commonly used measures--of sexual assault reporting instructions of 100 four-year institutions in the United States to answer this research question: Can college students of average reading comprehension ability read and comprehend sexual assault reporting instructions? The population of interest for this study is all 4-year public and private nonprofit colleges and universities, representing a sampling frame of 2,386 institutions in the United States. All textual data were extracted directly from each institution's web domain using Readability Studio text analysis software. Sexual assault reporting instructions were located using each institution's embedded search tool on its website, using the search phrases "report sexual assault" or "report sexual violence." Results concluded that college students of average reading comprehension ability likely cannot read instructions for reporting a sexual assault provided by 4-year, public and nonprofit private institutions. The average sexual assault reporting instructions are written at a grade level of 15.4 (roughly a third-year college reading level), and 81% of all institutions provided sexual assault reporting instructions written at or above a first-year college reading level.

Students with ADHD are less likely to graduate from college than their peers; this study examines the currency and readability of ADHD documentation guidelines of 335 randomly selected, four-year, public and non-profit private institutions in the United States. Findings reveal that ADHD documentation is current, yet composed at nearly a 17th-grade level, rendering it difficult for students to apply for the learning accommodations they need. Implications for practitioners and future research are addressed.

Although researchers support the notion that college- and university-sponsored mentoring programs effectively academically transition and retain postsecondary students from a variety of sociocultural backgrounds, researchers have not examined how mentoring programs address the 'mentorability' or the 'ability to be mentored' of their mentees. Employing a quantitative content analysis, we examined postsecondary mentoring program websites (n= 187) at public, four-year institutions in Texas (n = 44). Findings suggest only 19% of all mentoring programs address 'mentorability' by defining mentee characteristics and expectations, compared to 37% of all mentoring programs which define mentor characteristics and expectations. Furthermore, only 4% of mentoring program websites included mentee applications, and mentoring programs were four times more likely to address their mentors (1,023 occurrences) than 'mentees/protégés' (237 occurrences), speaking to the lack of focus on mentee 'mentorability.' Implications for practitioners and future research is addressed.

As admissions counselors expanded their footprint in online spaces to connect with prospective students and families during COVID-19, the same has been done by many institutions--for years and long before the pandemic--with digital swag. This study will provide a baseline from which enrollment managers can understand how "digital swag" is being used and whether such an approach would be beneficial for their institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although emergency aid programs have existed on community college campuses for years, no extant research has articulated which emergency resources students apply for and how students prioritize these resources against others (e.g., food needs compared to housing needs). To better understand student emergency aid needs shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, this study reports on 333 community college students' self-assessed emergency needs from March 26, 2020, until October 2, 2020. Results suggest that community college students self-reported the highest need for utility payment assistance, with food being the lowest need. However, correlations were highest among housing and utility assistance, suggesting many community college students simultaneously struggled with housing and utility payments, amplifying their financial burden and stress. Strengthening the body of literature on postsecondary emergency aid, this study concludes with implications for college student emergency services, higher education case management, and emergency aid policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of research has suggested that completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) can be a complex, difficult process for postsecondary students and their support networks. However, no extant research has informed federal student aid practitioners and researchers as to what federal student aid jargon terms institutions of higher education actually use in their application instructions to complete the FAFSA. To fill this gap in the research, this study adopts a distributional linguistic approach to analyze a random sample of federal student aid application instructions published on institutional websites (.edu) over three years (2017, 2018, and 2019) to learn how prevalent Federal Student Aid (FSA) Glossary terms are and what terms are used most frequently. Results suggest few of the 152 FSA Glossary terms have been regularly used by institutions of higher education from 2017 to 2019, with the most frequent terms being FAFSA, loan, federal student aid, FSA ID, and scholarship. In addition, many institutions only used one or two FSA Glossary terms over three years, bringing into question the accuracy and relevance of the FSA Glossary. Implications for research, financial aid administration, and financial aid policy are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, President Obama called for a simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), resulting in the average family completing the FAFSA in 20 minutes. Yet, during the 2013-2014 college application season, nearly 900,000 Pell Grant-eligible high school graduates did not complete the FAFSA, leaving $2.9 billion in Pell Grant funds unclaimed (Sen-Gupta, 2015). Subsequently, researchers have investigated the hurdles of FAFSA completion, however, no extant research has examined whether institutional financial aid application instructions are readable, an element of the application process which seems logical to scrutinize. This study examines financial aid application instructions of 300 randomly-selected U.S. institutions to answer the primary research question, "At what reading comprehension level do institutions compose financial aid application instructions?" Findings indicate 75% of financial aid application instructions are unreadable by high school graduates of average reading comprehension ability, with 41% of instructions written at or above a 14th-grade reading comprehension level. Implications for practitioners and future research are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]