Search

To date, no quantitative studies have explored what types of institutions of higher education enroll college students who document a disability (SWDs) over extended periods of time. This study leverages five years of institutionally reported (IPEDS) data related to the enrollment patterns of SWDs. This data suggests urban, public, and bachelor's-level institutions have enrolled more students with documented disabilities than other institution types over time. Additionally, we find that enrollment of SWDs in U.S. higher education has steadily increased since 2013. Implications for research and practice are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As campus carry policies are implemented at colleges and universities across the country, the concern for the safety of students, faculty members, and campus community members has heightened. In the state of Texas, broad sweeping campus carry policies were recently enacted by Texas State Legislature that allows individuals to conceal carry firearms within educational spaces on campus. Within these educational spaces, faculty members are often relied upon to deliver educational content without having their Second Amendment speech rights chilled by the prospect of loaded firearms within a classroom. Given this tension, this study fills an important gap in the research and explains how faculty members view campus carry as it relates to their personal safety and professional work. This study employed a mixed methods design (survey and qualitative) to expound upon the attitudes toward campus carry of 226 faculty and staff members working in a large research-intensive university within the state of Texas. Results suggest strong gender differences between how faculty members view campus carry policies and their safety on campus, with women often reporting feeling less safe and less able to perform their job duties under the pressure and anxiety of campus carry policies. Ultimately, this study's results imply that women faculty members may more less safe, more marginalized, and further victimized by campus carry laws than men faculty members, transgressing gender equity progress in the professoriate, as women have been traditionally underrepresented on college faculties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that all Title IV-participating institutions of higher education publish web accessible websites for students with disabilities. This study sought to evaluate the web accessibility of Hispanic-Serving Institutional (HSI) websites (n = 217). Results suggest that the average HSI website landing page included 447 errors, violating ADA. Most errors were related to font size, color contrast, and hyperlinks and pictures. Implications for research, practice, and support for Hispanic students with disabilities are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the number of international students attending U.S. higher education institutions has declined 2 consecutive years (Saul, 2018), several institutions are exploring ways to increase international student interest. In Texas, the sociopolitical climate has become increasingly anti-immigrant (Watkins, 2017), leading many international students to question whether study in the US is feasible and safe. As institutional websites have been found to be important sources of international student information (Huang & Bilal, 2017; Taylor & Bicak, 2018), this study examines international student information on all public, 4-year institution websites in Texas. Findings suggest international student materials are difficult to read, are rarely translated, and lack basic information such as cost and housing information. Implications for future research and practice are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: On September 5, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered an end to former President Barack Obama's 2012 immigration policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), placing some 800,000 undocumented immigrants--including thousands of postsecondary students--in danger of deportation. Mere hours after President Trump's announcement, postsecondary leaders across the United States began releasing official statements in support of DACA. Aside from a postsecondary institution's extolling of core values, it is important to investigate how these official institutional statements addressed the most critical, at-risk constituency on their college campus: DACA students themselves. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze post-DACA rescission statements made by executive leaders of U.S. institutions of higher education to learn whether these statements addressed the most important audience of these statements--DACA students--and whether institutions of higher education provided these students the resources they needed in their time of crisis. Research Design: The data were collected from each institution of higher education's website from September 5 to September 7, 2017. The sample included 218 official institutional (twoand four-year, public and private) statements made by executive leaders at these institutions. Data analysis included deductive attribute coding and quantitative content analysis techniques such as average word count and grade-level readability measures. Findings: The post-DACA rescission statements greatly varied in length (longest = 1,118 words; shortest = 50 words) and were unreadable by postsecondary students of average reading ability, as the average statement was written above the 15th-grade reading level. Only 54% of all statements addressed DACA students, with negligible variance (0.5%) between public and private institutions. Only 51.9% of all statements provided resources for DACA students. Of those statements, 99.1% of resources were institution-provided, whereas 20.4% were community-provided, with private institutions (12.9%) offering more community-provided resources than public institutions (7.5%). Conclusions: Institutions of higher education may want to consider best practices when composing crisis communication, primarily that crisis communication should focus on addressing the populations most affected by the crisis. Once the crisis communication is composed, that communication could be audited for its readability by the intended audience. Moreover, institutions of higher education may learn from the Virginia Tech massacre and apply it to their crisis management and communication strategies, namely by providing both institutionbased and community-based resources to those most affected by the crisis. Finally, institutions of higher education may consider differentiating their crisis communication across multiple platforms such as social media, email, text message, and their institutional website to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the potential solutions and resolutions to the crisis, in order to avoid miscommunication and a lack of organizational transparency while maintaining organizational integrity and honesty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]