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College Readiness And Digital Badges: A Middle School Approach, Blake C. Nemelka

Open Access Dissertations

Post-secondary education attainment results in higher salaries (Pew Research Center, 2014) and an increase in positive societal benefits (Baum, Ma, & Payea, 2013). Nevertheless, only 31% of U.S. citizens over the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Census Bureau, 2014). While tradition would dictate the preparation for going to college begins in the later high school years (Gaertner & McClarty, 2015), a recent push has emerged for shifting the beginning of such conversations to middle school (Curry, Belser, & Binns, 2013; Gaertner & McClarty, 2015; Mattern, Allen, & Camara, 2016; Nemelka & Nemelka, 2016). Furthermore, advances in educational …