Barriers to Educating Post-Secondary Students with Acquired Brain Injury

As medical technology advances more children, adolescents, and young adults are surviving traumatic brain injury (TBI).  As the TBI numbers rise in America, however, postsecondary education professionals know little concerning how to best educate this growing population.  This paper seeks to: 1) inform postsecondary professionals about the possible effects of TBI and its residual effects on the student’s physical, cognitive, behavioral and emotional conditions and 2) to discuss the postsecondary education barriers for students with TBI.  

Through learning about TBI and the possible barriers in postsecondary education, educators will be better prepared to help students learn more effectively, ultimately improving the quality of their postsecondary experience by heightening these students’ overall success rate.  It is important that the special needs of this growing population of postsecondary students are addressed.  With your professional help, the future endeavors of postsecondary students with TBI can be limitless. 

Introduction:

Our brain is undoubtedly the most important organ in our body.  Our brain allows us to think, solve problems, communicate, have emotions and experience the world.  It allows us to actively participate in our external environment.  It performs both conscious and unconscious functions.  Our brain makes us who we are.  It gives us personality.  Our brain gives us life.  Technically, the brain is soft tissue floating in and supported by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), with the skull being its only line of protection.  Our brain is therefore our most vulnerable organ.  

Imagine if your brain were injured.  What would happen to you?  The premise of traumatic brain injury (TBI) is overwhelming.  You ask: would your life play out as it does on the movie screen with a full, immediate and miraculous recovery?  No.  

However desirable that scenario may be, it is not realistic.  TBI can and will change your life, permanently.  You ask…what would happen to you?  The thought is unimaginable.  Unless, that is, you are one of the 4,000 Americans who sustain a TBI daily or the 1.5 million Americans who sustain a TBI annually (BIAA, 2002).   

In the 1970s, 90% of all brain-injured patients ultimately died as a result of TBI (Savage & Wolcott, 1995).  Since 1970 the mortality rate of TBI has decreased, while the occurrence of TBI has dramatically increased.  A TBI occurs every 21 seconds (BIAA, 2002).  This rise in incident rate is because contemporary Americans seem to have an increasing appetite for risk taking—those behaviors epidemic to our fast-paced culture: bungee jumping, driving fast or while intoxicated, failing to wear seatbelts or bicycle helmets, carelessness or just plain recklessness.  This American tendency for risk taking results in approximately 50,000 TBI deaths annually (Center for Disease Control, 1999).  

Despite this increase in TBI incident rates, the continual advances of modern medicine have allowed more and more people to survive injuries to their brains.  Each year 80,000 Americans will experience the onset of a life-altering, long-term disability as a result of TBI, an average of more than 2% of the United States’ population (CDC, 1999).  

However, the lack of media publicity surrounding TBI makes the uninformed incorrectly assume that the incidence rate is not a big problem, at least not in comparison to other more publicized disorders.  However, it is a little known fact that the incidence rate for TBI is higher than that for epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease (Wehman, 1996).  It is inconceivable to imagine that TBI also outnumbers mental retardation, spinal cord injuries, HIV/AIDS and breast cancer, but it does (BIAA, 2002).  

Despite the frequency of occurrence of TBI, hardly anyone in the media acknowledges its prevalence.  TBI has been labeled the “silent epidemic” (BIAA, 2002).  Adolescents and young adults are among the highest population at risk (BIAA, 2002).  In fact, teenagers from 14 to 19 years of age are most vulnerable to “sports” and “auto occupant accidents” (Savage & Wolcott, 1995, 2).  This is also the age group typically entering postsecondary institutions.  

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that educators understand the growing needs of this neglected population especially as teenagers, who are living with the residual effects of TBI, enter postsecondary institutions.  The American Council on Education has reported that students who have survived TBI represent the fastest growing student population requiring special support services on college campuses today (1989).  

TBI is a life-altering experience and recovery can take years (if ever).  Students with TBI have special needs, which can ultimately effect their successful integration into postsecondary education.  However, postsecondary institutions can be an ideal place for continued cognitive and social recovery for these students.  It is only by necessity that educators become knowledgeable and responsive to these students’ growing needs (Savage, 1987).  

 Despite the frequent occurrence of TBI in America’s youth, as previously mentioned, postsecondary professionals often know little if anything concerning how to educate this important population.  By learning basic facts about TBI, educators will be better prepared to realize the overwhelming barriers that these students can experience in the postsecondary environment.  

Microanatomy: Basic Brain Geography:

The brain is comprised of various functioning parts.  If one part is damaged, only one step of a neurological activity may be affected; however, this one disruption of brain sequencing may result in numerous problems.  The interconnectedness of the brain makes it difficult to assign a specific function to a specific location because as the brain matures, it rewires and establishes new neurological pathways.  Therefore, the brain’s ability to generate new neurological pathways (e.g. neuroplasticity) is a vital component in students’ ability to achieve recovery of function after a TBI.  

There are four areas of the brain: 1) the cerebrum,  2) the cerebellum, and  3) the brain stem (diencephalon), which includes the fourth area, the limbic system.

The first area of the brain is the Cerebrum.  The Cerebrum makes up the cerebral cortex; it has a left and right hemisphere.   The left hemisphere is generally responsible for language abilities and the right hemisphere generally controls visual memories and responds to information holistically and spatially.  The left and right hemispheres have four lobes each: the Frontal, Occipital, Parietal, and the Temporal.  Three fissures bind the lobes in each hemisphere and each lobe controls different neurological functions.

The Frontal lobe is the most anterior lobe of the brain.  It is located right under the forehead.  The frontal lobe includes everything in front of the central fissure.

The frontal lobe is the command center of the brain.  It is the student’s consciousness.  It is responsible for executive functions—such as planning, organizing, decision-making and goal setting.  Rather than controlling how students externally or physically appear to the world, the frontal lobe controls the ways in which students conduct their lives, their thinking and themselves.

The Occipital lobe is the most posterior lobe.  It is located at the back of the skull.  

The occipital lobe is our primary visual center and is responsible for visual interpretation, convergence and accommodation, depth perception, and eye focus.  

The Parietal lobe is near the back and top of the head.  It is located just behind and below the Frontal lobe.  The Parietal lobe caps the top of the brain and sits above the ears.  Located near the back of the brain, it merges into the occipital lobe.

The next lobe, the parietal lobe, should be called the “sensitive” lobe because it controls the sense of touch—it responds to temperature, pain and body awareness.  The Parietal lobe plays a major role in students’ academic abilities, including reading comprehension and deciphering spatial relationships.  All information is integrated in the parietal lobe for the understanding of a concept (Lehr, 1991).  It is the center of our goal directed movements and it is also the source of our body orientation in space.  Parietal lobe development accounts for the awkwardness experienced during the teenage years (Campbell, 2001).

The Temporal lobe is located just behind and below the frontal lobe and is located at side of head.  It is nestled above the ears.  The temporal lobe is as susceptible to injury as the frontal lobe.

The temporal lobe is the center for understanding language and the hearing process.  It is where the brain makes sense out of what students perceive in the environment through auditory comprehension and language receptive speech (Ryan & Senelick, 1998).  The temporal lobe is where the bulk of memories are stored—both recent and distant.  It is the center for information retrieval.          

The second area of brain function is the cerebellum.  The cerebellum is situated between the brain stem and the cerebral cortex.  It is located at the base of the skull.

The cerebellum is responsible for directing, monitoring and steadying bodily movements.  It develops and stores motor skills in order to make them habitual.  It coordinates voluntary movement and balance.  It also coordinates muscle tone and posture.  The cerebellum also stores memory reflexes for motor activities.   

The third area of the brain is the brainstem.  The brainstem is located deep within the brain and leads to the spinal cord.  It is a collection of nerve fibers made up of (from lowest to highest) the medulla oblongata, pons, midbrain, and the diencephalon.  The brainstem houses the 12 pairs of cranial nerves.

The brain stem is the earliest part of the fetal brain to be developed.  Its primary function is to control the body’s life sustaining processes and involuntary functions, such as respiration, heartbeat alertness, balance, regulation of appetite and sleeping, swallowing, tongue movement and the autonomic nervous system (e.g. blood pressure, digestion, body temperature, arousal and alertness).  It contains many of the centers for our senses: hearing, touch, taste and balance.  

In addition, the brain stem houses the reticular activating system (RAS), which is like a dimmer switch on a light.  After a TBI, “dimming” of the RAS can cause loss of consciousness, coma or even death.  Injury to the brain stem can lead to many complex problems.

Connected to the brainstem is the fourth area of the brain, the limbic system.  The limbic system is located above and around the brain stem’s dienchephalon.  It borders the cerebral cortex, thalamus and hypothalamus.  It is made up of the amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate gyrus, septum and hypothalamus.  The limbic system is connected to the central nervous system (CNS).  

The limbic system is known as the seat of our emotion(s).  Emotion is the external expression of feelings; it is what the world sees.  Emotion is a complex interaction of behavior, biology and cognition (Campbell, 2001).  

Even though there are four distinct and separate areas of the brain with their own neurological functioning, due to the brain’s complex array of interlocking systems, no single area of the brain can be discussed without connecting it to the whole.  The brain is not neatly divisible into areas exclusively committed to reason or emotion.  The brain has extensive interconnections.   The importance of the brain’s interconnectedness holds especially true in regards to the limbic system’s functioning.  It has an intimate relationship to the cerebral cortex—where emotions are initially evaluated before an emotional response occurs.  The prefrontal cortex is where the brain asks, “What will I do about this emotion?”.

When a Brain is Injured:

Even though 1.5 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury annually, no two traumatic brain injuries will ever manifest identical external or internal impairments.  There are various reasons for these differences including: the location of injury—the area of the brain that has been injured, the severity of injury, and the neuropsychological constructs and processes of the brain—the brain’s complex nature and numerous developmental concepts.

An acquired brain injury (ABI) is an injury to the brain that is not congenital or degenerative in nature nor is it an injury induced by birth trauma.  It results in functional impairment(s).  An ABI can be either a traumatic or nontraumatic brain injury. (Savage & Wolcott, 1995)

A nontraumatic brain injury (NTBI) is an acquired injury to the brain caused by internal occurrences.  The common causes of NTBI include: 1) anoxic injuries—lack of oxygen to the brain; 2) infections—e.g. meningitis; 3) strokes or other vascular diseases; 4) tumors to the brain; 5) metabolic disorders—e.g. insulin shock or liver and kidney diseases and 6) toxic products—e.g. lead, mercury, cocaine or other chemical agents (Savage & Wolcott, 1994).   A traumatic brain injury (TBI) is also an acquired injury to the brain, but an external physical force creates the damage.  It is important to remember that the terms, TBI and NTBI cannot always be used interchangeably: a TBI is always an ABI, while an ABI refers to both traumatic and nontraumatic brain injuries.  

A TBI can be an open brain injuries (OTBI) or closed brain injuries (CTBI).  An OTBI or penetrating injury occurs when a foreign object enters the skull and rips brain tissue.  An OTBI usually impairs brain tissue from localized areas; the impairments that result from this type of injury correspond, as previously described, to the one of the four areas of the brain damaged (Savage & Wolcott, 1995).  The second type of TBI, CTBI, occurs through the acceleration and deceleration of the head.  Rather than being penetrated by a foreign object, a CTBI is caused by the brain violently smashing into, stretching and/or twisting within the skull.  For example, when a student’s head crashes into a car’s dashboard, the brain crashes into the skull itself.  This causes diffused brain damage and results in generalized and inconsistent impairments (Savage & Wolcott, 1995).   

The trauma experienced after both types of brain injuries is not limited to physical pain, change in appearance or motor skills, but can also result in impairments in other areas: cognition, language, memory, attention, reasoning, abstract thinking, judgment, problem solving, sensory and perceptual motor abilities, psychosocial behavior, information processing and speech (Clark, 1996).  The consequences of a TBI are numerous and life altering.  As previously discussed, the resulting impairments depend upon the area of the brain that has been damage.  

The damage that results from an injury to the Cerebrum depends on which hemisphere and particular lobe(s) is damaged.  When the Frontal lobe is damaged, the possible sequelea or secondary impairment can be: personality changes, i.e., doesn’t seem like the same student as s/he was prior to injury, abrupt changes in social behavior, loss of spontaneity or lack of inhibition in interaction skills, difficulty in expressing language, scattered attention, inability to stay focused, emotional lability, inflexible in thought processes, paralysis, lack of initiation skills, difficulty sequencing, problem solving, acquiring new information and with difficulty with executive functions: planning, processing, organizing information. 

If the Occipital Lobe is damaged, possible sequelea or secondary impairments can be:  visual field cuts—both eyes can’t “see” either the left or right halves of their visual field (e.g. is missing either the right or left half of their field of vision, photophobia—increased sensitivity to light, visual over-stimulation—an intolerance to busy environment, which can lead to headaches, visual illusions—hallucinations, word blindness—the inability to recognize words, inability to recognize drawn objects, and difficulty locating objects in the environment and identifying color, and difficulty reading and writing.

When the Parietal Lobe is damaged the possible sequelea or secondary impairments can be: inability to discriminate between sensory stimuli, disorientation with respect to time and place, loss of awareness of body parts and/or surroundings, trouble focusing a student’s visual attention and distinguishing between left and right, difficulty reading and drawing objects, locating words for writing, doing math, naming objects, attending to more than one task or object at a time, and difficulty with hand-eye coordination, and in the case of severe brain injury, inability to recognize one’s self.

If the Temporal Lobe is damaged possible sequelea or secondary damage can be: childish behavior, hearing deficits, i.e. receptive/sensory aphasias, selective visual and auditory attention, problems with short-term memory and long-term memory, difficulty recognizing faces, identifying, categorizing and verbalizing visual object and monitoring behavior, and increased irritability and aggression.  

If the second area of brain function, the cerebellum, is damaged the resulting sequelea or secondary injury can be: the student appears drunk when walking, a loss of hand-eye and lack of muscular coordination, inability to gauge distances, slurred or explosive speech, and tremors and/or quivering of a convulsive nature.

If the third area of brain function, the brainstem, is damaged the resulting sequelea or secondary impairments can be: coma, vertigo, decreased mental stamina and capacity for breathing, severe concentration and attention problems, loss of balance, organization, and decreased movement, altered perception of the environment, increased or decreased sexual functioning and possibly death.  

The fourth and final area, the limbic system, plays an enormous role in determining feelings and emotions.  Because of the limbic system’s deep location within the brain, damage to this area is seldom seen; however, damage to this area can result in a roller coaster ride of emotions because the limbic system is in constant communication with the cerebral and prefrontal cortexes.  Therefore, damage to any one of these two regions can also result in the expression of inappropriate behavior(s).  

The possible sequelea or secondary damage to the limbic system can result in: 

Short-term memory loss, complex problems involving basic emotional responses, isolation, alienation from family and friends, uncontrollable and/or inappropriate behaviors, over or under-reacting to situations, e.g., a student’s emotional reactions are distorted because s/he either over or under reacts to situations, and difficulty transferring short-term memories into long-term, and organizing and retrieving previously stored memories.   

As you can tell, the cognitive problems that result after brain injury can include difficulties with attention, memory, language comprehension, concept formation, integrating, organizing and generalizing information, problem solving and judgment.  The language problems can include receptive language and higher communication problems such as pragmatics, verbal fluency, word finding, concept formation and verbal comprehension.  

The less obvious, but more predominant sequelae of brain injury are related to behavioraland emotional or psychosocial problems.  These psychosocial effects refer to the global scope of the social, emotional, behavioral and psychological effects of TBI.  These sequelae typically occur to some degree with almost all TBI and get worse rather than better over time (Savage & Wolcott, 1995).  The behavioral and emotional impairments are caused by a combination of neuropsychological disturbances from the TBI and can result from: a reaction to the neuropsychological disturbances, prior predisposition to neuropsychological disturbances, psychosocial stresses, cognitive problems and secondary physical disabilities (Clark, 1996).  The psychosocial effects manifest themselves as increased aggression, poor anger control and hyperactivity, social disinhibition and interaction difficulties.

Recovery of Function:

The only way neurological damage can be corrected or improved is through the recovery of brain function.  The brain holds within itself an amazing capacity to heal after trauma, allowing for some degree of recovery of neurological function after TBI.  In order to understand the significance of brain plasticity, i.e., neuroplasticity, it is important to remember that recovery of damaged brain function is usually equated with plasticity (Perna, 2002).  Plasticity is tissue’s ability to be molded and grow or integrate with other tissue after trauma (e.g., TBI) (Venes, 2001).  

Recovery of function involves the growth of surviving brain cells or parts of the brain ‘take over’ for the damaged area.  It is very important to remember that recovery of function is typically enhanced through exposure to educational environments.  Recovery is a re-learning process.  Environmental enrichment encourages plasticity.  As the level of difficulty increases with each therapeutic or instructional task, structural and functional changes occur within the brain (Johnson & Ruston, Shaw, 1996).

Recovery of function has been defined over the years in various different ways, however, educators only need to be familiar with recovery of brain function as it relates to the “control and subsequent growth of nerve cells that survive the injury” (Almili & Finger, 1992, 73).  Damaged brain cells can never be regenerated, although surviving cells still possess the ability to grow.  This miraculous neurological capacity allows the surviving cells to rewire themselves and create new neurological pathways.  Gradually, over time, the new circuitry assumes the functional duties of the damaged neurological pathways.  

 Neuroplasticity is when the brain forms ‘new’ connections when the brain’s ‘old’ pathways are damaged.   Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change over time and to constantly adapt to its environment.  Postsecondary education can provide a great cognitive and interpersonal rehabilitative environment, thereby stimulating neuroplasticity.  Thus the benefits of the postsecondary educational environment are unequivocal.  In this enriching environment, students with TBI have innumerable opportunities for neurological stimulation, allowing damaged brain connections to be retrained and for previously lost cognitive functions to be regained. 

Recovery of function is the driving force behind recovering not only one’s physical abilities, but cognitive as well.  “Many of the mechanisms that drive initial neuronal development reappear during regeneration and recovery” (NIH, 2002).  This rehabilitative process, which includes not only cognitive rehabilitation, but also emotional and psychosocial rehabilitation is ultimately enhanced through exposure to an enriched environment, the qualities found in the postsecondary educational setting.  These are the qualities that reinforce the logic of postsecondary education for students with TBI.

Postsecondary Education Barriers for Students with TBI: 

Even though postsecondary education is an ideal environment to promote neurological recovery, there are multiple barriers.  Successful integration is a complex process.  Students can have problems entering into and adjusting to their new environments.  However, with the appropriate support and assistance, hopefully, these postsecondary educational barriers can be decreased.    

A first barrier is the lack of successful transition planning.  Currently, the transition planning of students with TBI into postsecondary education is very limited due to the lack of understanding of the special needs and support services required to optimize these students’ scholastic achievements.  Not only do these students typically experience academic difficulties as a result limited support services, but they also frequently experience difficulty in their interpersonal, emotional and psychosocial functioning, which can result in further problems (Bergland, & Hoffbauer, 1996).  

Successful integration into postsecondary institutions is a complex process for students with TBI.  Limited or insufficient transition planning, planning that was supposed to be initiated during high school, can inhibit these students’ successful amalgamation to college life.  Many high schools are still learning how to initiate a successful transition program for students with TBI.  There are many reasons for this.  

The first reason for limited or insufficient transition planning is due to the lack of understanding of the importance of and special needs of the student with TBI at the high school level.  The second reason is the lack of understanding of teachers and administrators on the severity, multitude and uniqueness of the impairments that can result from TBI; no two brain injuries will ever be alike and therefore, every student’s educational agenda and transition plan needs to be individualized.  The transition barrier centers on not correctly identifying or understanding the specific needs of the student with TBI.  This lack of knowledge or insufficient knowledge and limited or insufficient transition planning can ultimately affect the student’s successful integration to college life.  Even though federal law requires all postsecondary programs to provide auxiliary support services to students with disabilities, many postsecondary institutions are not experienced in providing this type support, which leads to the second barrier in students achieving successes in postsecondary education (Ruoff, 2001).  It vital to understand the importance of this barrier because a main limitation is due to learning specialists’, educators’ and administrators’ lack of knowledge on how to successfully support these students in order to help them succeed in all their postsecondary endeavors: academic, emotional, personal and social.  When professionals do not know how to best support students with TBI, these students are given aids and services that are inadequate for their students’ specific needs.  As a result, these inappropriate supports compound the challenges and difficulties students with TBI face in their new environments.

As previously mentioned, oftentimes, special support services are non-existent in postsecondary institutions and this can ultimately be a third barrier for these students.  These postsecondary inadequacies are unfortunate because postsecondary institutions can be an ideal springboard for these students’ cognitive, emotional and psychosocial recovery.  Colleges and universities play an important role in the lives of students with TBI because they can provide access to proactive and conducive learning environments that ultimately enhance their recovery.   Therefore, it is extremely important for educators to be aware and have an understanding of the support services available that can best accommodate this ever-growing student population. 

As previously cited, the fourth barrier to successful integration is that no two brain injuries are ever alike, and therefore there is no standard support service that will always work as a cognitive, emotional or psychosocial support strategy.  It is important to remember that just as every brain injury is different, every injury affects every student differently.  Therefore, the effectiveness of each support strategy will produce varying results with each student.  Professionals need to tailor the student’s support services to the student’s specific academic strengths and weaknesses.  It is important that learning specialists (and everyone involved) do not misinterpret the deficits of a student’s TBI as noncompliance.   

For example, extreme fatigue is a typical sensorimotor sequelae after TBI.  It may take a student much more mental effort to perform a cognitive or social activity than it does for his/her nondisabled peer, e.g., to read a chapter in a book or socially interact.  The student with TBI would be greatly disadvantaged if educators misinterpreted the student’s deficit as a lack of motivation to learn (Bergland & Hoffbauer, 1996). 

Many youths who have experienced social problems in high school continue to run into the same interpersonal problems in postsecondary education, which leads to the fifth barrier (Chadsey & Shelden, 1998).  Adjustment to postsecondary life is a double-edged sword.  In addition to students having difficulty with their schoolwork, they can also have difficulty interacting in social situations with their nondisabled peers and making friends.  If these interpersonal problems are not recognized and properly addressed, it can ultimately effect their academic achievements and overall quality of life.  These students need emotional support because many will feel lost, unsure and isolated, which can lead to further depression and loss of self-esteem.  Progress monitoring should not be restricted only to these students’ academic performances, but it should also include psychosocial and behavioral adjustments.  These two areas have the potential to interfere with the successes of students with TBI (Clark, 1996).  

The subjective, internal rating of the quality of life for students with TBI is strongly correlated to psychosocial factors surrounding mental status and social support (Chase & Colantonio, Ratcliff, Steadman-Pare, Vernich, 2001).  This is why it is important to provide not only academic, but emotional support as well.  Comprehensive intervention is vital for these students’ in order for them to achieve academic and personal successes.  

A sixth barrier is that is many postsecondary professionals have limited knowledge about disabilities.  They do not understand why or what accommodations or additional supports need to be made.  This can further contribute to these students’ feelings of isolation.  In order for this barrier to be overcome, professionals need to open up a line of communication between all parties so everyone involved can learn about TBI, the necessary accommodations, and how students might be at risk if not appropriately accommodated.

Behavioral and psychosocial disorders experienced by the student with TBI are the result of the complex interaction between the neurological damage created by the brain injury and its sequelae or secondary effects (Eames, 1988).  This includes the student’s pre-injury history and the environment in which the behavior is most observable (Eames, 1988).  Common behavioral disorders or psychosocial disturbances following TBI include: verbal and physical outbursts, aggressiveness, emotional liability, egocentricity, insensitivity, sexual problems, rigidity and inflexibility, impulsiveness, lack of self-awareness, low tolerance, anxiousness, depression, passivity, inappropriate behaviors, irritability, self-induced isolation, impulsivity, poor judgment, and immature or childish behavior.  

This paper documents that the education of the postsecondary student with TBI is a complex process.  However, hopefully with the appropriate support and assistance from education professionals these postsecondary barriers can decrease.  As it has been highlighted in this text, it is easy to understand why it is vital for educators to understand and attend to the specific needs of each student with TBI.   Even though cognitive support is a big component of a student’s need, it is also important to understand that cognitive deficits are not the only underlying reason for support services.  TBI can also cause many other types of barriers that are not always automatically associated with brain injury.  In order for a student to receive the most appropriate and most beneficial postsecondary education, it is important that educators become familiar with and begin to understand all dimensions of TBI—even those areas that do not seem to relate to a student’s academic performances, but in fact are related to their overall performance.  Therefore, it is necessary to individualize each student’s educational services so that the services received address and accommodate all components and areas of deficits caused by the injury.  This will ultimately improve the student’s chance for successful integration and the overall quality of the postsecondary educational experience. 

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