The past two decades have seen massive changes in the higher education landscape, including the heightened participation of post-traditional students, high reentry and mobility of students within and across sectors, and the increased visibility of open admissions institutions, such as community colleges and for-profit colleges. Despite these radical shifts, the most commonly used college choice frameworks still focus on the decisions of students who fit a stereotypical profile and are entering traditional institutions of higher learning for the first time. In this article, Constance Iloh argues for the necessity of a new conceptual approach and offers a three-component ecological model of college-going decisions and trajectories that incorporates the pressing conditions and shifting contexts of twenty-first-century postsecondary education. In doing so, Iloh also asserts that the concept of “choice” may be a limited and problematic way of understanding present-day college-going. Errata The Editorial Board of the Harvard Educational Review is issuing an errata statement in conjunction with “Toward a New Model of College ‘Choice’ for a Twenty-First-Century Context” (Volume 88, Number 2, pages 227-244, doi:10.17763/1943-5045-88.2.227), by Constance Iloh, due to multiple instances in which the author incompletely attributed previously published material in the introduction and literature review. Given these extensive citation errors, the Editorial Board felt it important to correct the scholarly record. Pages 228-232 of the published article contain the following incompletely attributed materials: Excerpt lacking quotation marks from Heil, S., Reisel, L., & Attewell, P. (2014). College selectivity and degree completion. American Educational Research Journal, 51(5), 913-935. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214544298Excerpt lacking quotation marks from Cabrera, A. F., & La Nasa, S. M. (2002). Understanding the college-choice process. New Directions for Institutional Research, 2000(107), 5-22. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ir.10701Two excerpts lacking quotation marks from Niu, S. X., Tienda, M., & Cortes, K. (2006). College selectivity and the Texas top 10% law. Economics of Education Review, 25(3), 259-272. doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2005.02.006Excerpt lacking quotation marks from Cabrera, A. F., & La Nasa, S. M. (2000). Understanding the college-choice process. In A. F. Cabrera & S. M. La Nasa (Eds.), Understanding the college choice of disadvantaged students: New directions for institutional research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Excerpt lacking quotation marks from Chen, J. C. (2017). Nontraditional adult learners. SAGE Open, 7(1). doi:10.1177/2158244017697161Quote lacking quotation marks and citation from Robert Hansen, CEO of University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) as reported in Inside Track. (2015). National study of non-first-time students shows full-time enrollment may not be appropriate for all. Retrieved from https://www.insidetrack.com/national-study-of-non-first-time-students-shows-full-time-enrollment-may-not-be-appropriate-for-all/Excerpt lacking quotation marks and citation from Bidwell, A. (2014, July 29). 31 million in higher education limbo: Some college, no degree. US News & World Report. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/29/31-million-in-higher-education-limbo-some-college-no-degreeExcerpt lacking quotation marks from Tudge, J. R. H. (2008). The everyday lives of young children: Culture, class, and child rearing in diverse societies. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/ CBO9780511499890

Memes are a prominent feature of global life in the 21st century. The author asserts that memes are significant to current and future qualitative research. In particular, the text establishes memes as: (a) part of everyday communication, expression, and explanation, thus useful in qualitative research; (b) valuable cultural units and symbols; (c) forms of rapport building and cultivating relational research; (d) approaches that bolster and sustain remote data collection; (e) methods that infuse agency, humor, and creativity into the research process. The author then showcases distinctive ways memes can be effectively incorporated in qualitative research pursuits and publications. The article concludes with the necessity of data collection and representation approaches that advance the meaningfulness and cultural-relevance of qualitative inquiry.

Ethnography in the field of postsecondary education has served as a magnifying glass bringing into focus university culture and student life. This paper highlights the ways in which ethnography is especially useful for understanding more recent dynamics and shifts in higher education. The authors utilize existing literature to uphold the relevancy of ethnography, while exploring its opportunities for research on adult students, online education, and for-profit colleges in particular. They conclude with methodological recommendations and directions for both qualitative research and higher education scholarship.

Online coursework is dramatically changing the higher education landscape, particularly for adult learners. And while research notes the way these courses increase college opportunity for post-traditional students, they have poor learning and completion outcomes at many of the institutions to which older students frequently enroll. The author conducted a qualitative exploration involving 34 adult students at a large community college on the west coast to better understand the perceptions, experiences, opportunities, and challenges of online instructional delivery for adult students. Informed by semi-structured interviews with participants, findings from this study highlight: (1) the challenge of being a digital/online course novice, (2) online courses as better in theory than practice, and (3) problematic institutional assumptions that online pedagogy is better for adult learners. Results from this investigation provide new directions for implementation of online courses for adult learners students in higher education.

The for-profit college sector is arguably the most controversial and least understood sector of higher education today. The past decade has ushered in a wealth of public concern and scrutiny as to whether for-profit colleges and universities are providing a quality education to underserved student populations. While their politicization has captured immense attention, there is far less empirical research on student experiences at for-profit institutions to better inform conceptual, institutional, and practical understanding of this sector of postsecondary education. Using ethnographic data from one midsize for-profit college in a suburban city, the author spent seven months exploring educational culture from the perspective of enrolled students. The findings illuminate four themes: (a) student desire for institutional transparency, (b) the perception of high-quality in-person instruction, (c) varied experiences based on student schedule and learning needs, and (d) the role of age in shaping peer interactions.KEYWORDS: for-profit colleges, ethnography, qualitative research, higher education, student experiences, vocational education, adult learners, institutional culture, privatization, social context, proprietary education F or-profit colleges and universities are rapidly changing the look, feel, and outcomes of college attendance, particularly among students most CONSTANCE ILOH is a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at