Secondary Education and Teaching Commons^™

High School Seniors' Knowledge About College And The Acquisition Of College-Readiness Skills, Karen Franklin Mcsherry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of college readiness, which affects persistence in college, is a problem for many students at a high school in New Jersey. Only 1 in 5 students in this school persist from first to second year in New Jersey public colleges and universities, and as many as 50% do not graduate in 4 years. This problem is important to study because low persistence may engender personal failure, familial debt, social stigma, and wasted public funds. Guided by Bandura's social learning theory, this qualitative case study addressed the lack of college readiness by exploring what high school students know about going …