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The New California System Of Remediation Of College Students, Linda Serra Hagedorn

Linda Serra Hagedorn

The higher education news is full of stories about New York's latest decision to phase-out remedial education at 9 of the 11 City University of New York (CUNY System) campuses. Remedial education will be the responsibility of the already overworked New York State community college system.

Although this decision is being heralded as drastic it apparently has escaped many that California has already adopted a similar plan. California has a somewhat unique system of postsecondary institutions. Basically there are three layers of institutions each with a different mission and culture. At the top of the hierarchy of prestige is the …

Institutional Context And The Development Of Critical Thinking: A Research Note, Linda Serra Hagedorn, Ernest T. Pascarella, Marcia Edison, John Braxton, Amaury Nora, Patrick T. Terenzini

Linda Serra Hagedorn

It has long been a central aim of American postsecondary education to foster students' critical thinking skills. There are various definitions of critical thinking, but there seems to be a consensus that a constituent set of cognitive skills involves some or all of the following: making correct inferences from data, identifying central issues or assumptions in an argument, deducing conclusions from information or data provided, interpreting whether [End Page 265] conclusions are warranted on the basis of data given, and evaluating the validity of an argument (Brabeck & Wood, 1990; Furedy & Furedy, 1985; McMillan, 1987; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). …