English university admissions increasingly make use of contextual offers, where applicants with certain socio-demographic characteristics can be offered marginally lower entry conditions. This paper presents novel insights on the impact of contextual offer policy on one institutions' patterns of enrolment in 2022/23 via a mixed methods…

The relationship between decentralization and inequality remains puzzling. The primary objective of this paper is to study the effects of decentralization on regional education inequality in China where national higher education policies systematically prioritize large cities. We apply the Gini coefficient and the econometric model of regional…

Today's school integration policies in the United States are often "race neutral." Scholarship on these race-neutral school integration policies finds they do not change the racial and ethnic composition of schools or do so under very specific conditions. Yet, we know relatively little about the mechanisms explaining these outcomes.…

This document records testimony from a hearing held to examine how SCOTUS's decision on race-based admissions is shaping university policies. Member statements were presented by: (1) Honorable Burgess Owens, Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development; and (2) Honorable Robert C. Scott, Ranking Member, Committee on Education and the…

Many policies in higher education are intended to improve college access and degree completion, yet often those policies fall short of their aims by making it difficult for prospective or current college students to access benefits for which they are eligible. Barriers that inhibit access to policy benefits, such as cumbersome paperwork, can weigh…

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) through strategic policy development has been at the forefront of institutional change, especially within the higher education sector. Canadian colleges have a large equity-seeking student population due to their open admission structure, but despite this, there are implicit biases and actions that impede…

Despite a growing body of research on the outcomes of holistic admissions and eliminating standardized test score requirements throughout education, few have documented how organizations transition to holistic review. Implementation, however, may help explain variation in impacts of holistic admissions. This article draws upon theories of…

District leaders in school choice contexts tend to overlook the many hidden costs of selecting schools in terms of mobility, time, liquidity, and labor. Meanwhile, a body of literature on school choice policies and cultural, social, and political capital shows that middle-class parents use the resources they possess to get the school access they…

While preferable over requiring standardized tests, test-optional policies also have some unintended consequences. The limitations of test-optional policies do not warrant a return to required standardized testing, which is even more counterproductive to equity given that race and class are substantial predictors of performance on such tests.…

Background: The global discourse on higher education underscores its pivotal role in personal development, societal progress and economic prosperity. However, actual implementation and practices within universities have not kept pace, and students with intellectual disability still struggle, as their journey towards accessing and succeeding in…

The test-optional movement in American college admissions emerged as a response to the challenged notion that standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, predict student success. Research has shown that the tests may be discriminatory towards students from disadvantaged racial and ethnic backgrounds. This study examined two cohorts of incoming…

This report looks at the provision of A level subjects in England in 2023. Provision in a subject is defined as the number or percentage of schools with at least one student taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE) "Find and compare schools in England" service.…

This study offers a comparative examination of desegregation policy reforms in Belgium, Chile, and the Netherlands, addressing equity reforms to universal school choice systems. Through an analysis of the reform trajectories, we explore the evolution of policies, the causal mechanisms of change, efforts to institutionalize policies, and the…

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the role of the Quota Law regarding the potential social mobility of students with high socioeconomic adversity, using administrative data from a federal university in Brazil. We used Confirmatory Factor Analysis technique to construct an adversity index, composed of variables that may negatively…

This paper reports partial results from a larger study of how three different groups of stakeholders--university admissions officers, faculty in graduate programs involved in admissions decisions, and Intensive English Program (IEP) faculty--interpret and use TOEFL iBT® scores in making admissions decisions or preparing students to meet minimum…