How college affects students /

Although not exactly an "easy read," this 894-page tome is a classic. It is an extraordinarily well documented and comprehensive analysis of how the higher-education experience affects students. The authors analyze more than 3,000 separate studies and provide insights into such aspects of college impact as how the college experience affects the moral and ethical perspectives of students, how the curriculum affects students, the differential impacts of the residential versus a nonresidential collegiate experience, the impact of high-prestige versus low-prestige institutions, attitude and value changes in students, the economic benefits of college, the collegiate impact on career choices, and on and on. This volume is a gold mine of information and analysis. A short review cannot summarize all the findings, but the authors offer a helpful discussion of the overall implications of their research and point out the policy implications of their work in their final two chapters. The book is remarkably free of jargon and is accessible to most readers. Building on the work of Feldman and Newcomb in the 1960s, Pascarella and Terezini have brought together research findings published since then. This book defines a field of research and is a benchmark as well as a guide to research trends; as such it is a primary research tool on virtually any aspect of the student experience. An absolute necessity for any library concerned with education. -P. G. Altbach, SUNY at Buffalo