Review Symposium of Alexander W. Astin, Four Critical Years, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977)

REVIEW SYMPOSIUM of Alexander W. Astin, Four Critical Years (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977) Our keynote speaker for the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education last March, 1977, was Alexander W. Astin. Those who were at the meeting may recall that Dr. Astin gave a very interesting, cer­ tainly provocative, and even startling, address entitled, "Longitudinal Stu­ dies of 200,000 Students: What Do They Tell Us About Higher Education?" During the social hour which followed it was apparent that Astin had done what a good keynoter should do: he had set the membership to "buzzing" about the substance of research in higher education and the policy implications of that research. Later in the year, Four Critical Years (Jossey-Bass Publishers, Inc., 293PP) was published. This book constitutes a more complete and very read­ able account of the massive longitudinal study involving over 300 institu­ tions of higher education and several hundred thousand students in data col­ lected over the last 12 years. The author, Alexander W. Astin, is Professor of higher education at the University of California, Los Angeles; President of the Higher Education Research Institute; and Director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program under whose sponsorship this research was con­ ducted . In this issue of the Higher Education Review, we present a "Review Sym­ posium" of Astin's book, Four Critical Years. The purpose is to critically assess the findings, the methodology, and the policy implications presented in this book. Essentially the book attempts to assess the effects of college on the beliefs, attitudes, and knowledge of students who attend the colleges. Our reviewers are introduced as the authors of each of the four state­ ments which follow. They include Dr. Bruce Francis, Dr. Gerald Gurin, Dr. Arthur Chickering, and Dr. Lester Anderson. The reviews are arranged in an order parallelling the book--from methodology to policy implications with the substantive findings in between. The opinions and analyses presented in the reviews represent the individual work of each reviewer, without collabora­ tion, and, of course, are in no way to be construed as the views of the ASHE organization itself. Time was not available to send the reviews to Dr. Astin for his comments and remarks to be available for this issue. However, by the time you read this, we will have asked Dr. Astin to read and comment upon the issues raised in the reviews in the interest of a constructive dialog on matters of concern to us all. Others who wish to add to the dialog may direct letters and com­ ments to the Editor. ...