Twenty-Eight Years of the Collegiate Aviation Review: An Exploratory Study of Academic Research in Aviation Education

This article reports on a review of academic journal articles published in the Collegiate Aviation Review (CAR), with the goal of evaluating academic research in aviation education. The study included all 189 articles published in the CAR over the past 28 years (1983-2010). The author identified and categorized aviation faculty and industry professionals who have led the aviation profession, academically, and what important issues and challenges they have identified in their scholarly writings over the past 28 years. Each article was categorized by author’s institution/organization affiliation, classification by subject category, and geographical grouping of contributing authors and institutions/organizations. The author found that the journal covers a broad range of authors and subject matter. The top five subject areas covered were: collegiate flight training curriculum and instructional methods, collegiate aviation degree programs, the collegiate aviation student, the airport system, and the commercial airline industry. The author concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for the role of aviation faculty and industry professionals engaged in aviation education research. The author stresses that this research will help the University Aviation Association (UAA) meet the needs of the continuously changing aviation/aerospace industry.