How College Affects Students. Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research (review)

This volume is the third in a series of comprehensive reviews of the literature concerning the impact of college on students to appear in the past three and a half decades. The first, a review of some 1,500 studies conducted by Kenneth Feldman and Theodore Newcomb (The Impact of College on Students), was published by Jossey-Bass in 1969. The second effort, Pascarella and Terenzini's now-classic review of more than 2,600 studies (How College Affects Students: Findings and Insights from Twenty Years of Research) appeared in 1991. Their current volume reviews nearly 2,500 studies that appeared in the 1990s and the first two or three years of the current decade.

This latest review closely follows the design of the authors' 1991 volume. Their detailed review of the new studies (chaps. 3–9) is thus organized around student outcomes, with each chapter focused on a specific outcome category: verbal, quantitative, and subject matter competency; cognitive skills and intellectual growth; psychosocial change; attitudes and values; moral development; educational attainment and persistence; career and economic impacts; and quality of life after college. Within each of these eight chapters, the evidence is organized around the same six "questions" posed in their 1991 review:

1. 1. Change During College: How does the outcome in question change during college?

2. 2. Net Effects of College: To what extent can these changes be attributed to the college experience?

3. 3. Between-College Effects: Does the degree of change vary among different types of colleges?

4. 4. Within-College Effects: Does the change vary according to the students' specific experiences in college?

5. 5. Conditional Effects: Do the effects of college vary among different types of students?

6. 6. Long-term Effects: How long-lasting are the effects examined in the previous questions?

In addressing each of these questions, the authors first summarize the conclusions from their 1991 volume, then review "evidence from the 1990s." Finally, each of the eight chapters concludes with a detailed summary, once again organized around the six questions.

The first and second chapters, respectively, present an overview of the book and a summary of "Theories and Models of Student Change in College." Chapter 11 comprises an overall summary of the studies reviewed in Chapters 3–10, and the final chapter discusses "Implications for Research, Practice, and Policy."

There's obviously no way that a relatively short book review like this can do justice to the many important findings and conclusions presented by the authors. Even so, I think it is fair to say that, for the most part, the findings reported in their 1991 review are confirmed by this more recent research, although the variety of both student outcomes and educational interventions studied has increased substantially in recent years. Perhaps the most significant change is that researchers are now paying much more attention to how students learn and to possible differences in outcomes by student race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status and by type of college attended (especially community colleges).

In reading through this immense volume, one cannot help feeling a sense of awe and admiration for the magnitude of the task that the authors have taken on and for the extraordinary degree of care that they have taken to review and synthesize the evidence in a coherent fashion. One might expect that the all-consuming experience of having done this once would have been enough to discourage them from trying it again, but done it again they have, and with an exceptionally high level of objectivity and clarity. They both deserve a salute and a tip of our collective hats for a job twice well done!

My personal view of this and their earlier review is that they are most usefully seen as reference works where the reader can delve into topics of his or her choosing by virtue of the highly systematic way in which the evidence is organized...