The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) annually produces a report examining degree and credential production in Kentucky in the previous academic year (July 1 through June 30) and over the last five years. Using data from the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Data System (KPEDS), the report details the number and types of credentials…

Purpose: Jointly operated by school districts and postsecondary institutions, Early Colleges are either whole school program or programs within schools designed to serve students traditionally underrepresented in higher education. The Early College High School Initiative was established in 2002 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along…

In this paper, we analyze recently collected data that conducts a unique assessment of high school student performance for over two thousand students from five Chinese provinces. Across three domains of scientific intelligence tested, we document heterogeneous gender gaps in academic performance. These differences generally arise due to…

Is law school worth it? A Juris Doctor (JD) offers high median earnings and a substantial earnings boost relative to a bachelor's degree in the humanities or social sciences--two of the more common fields of study that lawyers pursue as undergraduate students. However, graduates of most law schools carry substantial student loan debt, which dims…

Each year from 2018 to 2020, roughly 16,000 students participated in Tennessee Reconnect at community colleges across the state. However, fewer than half of those Reconnect students persisted to the following year as grant participants. To promote Reconnect students' reapplication and persistence, Nashville State and Southwest Tennessee Community…

The American Institutes for Research® (AIR®) partnered with Girls Who Code (GWC) to conduct an independent study evaluating the effectiveness of two GWC summer virtual programs, the Summer Immersion Program (SIP) and the Self-Paced Program (SPP), on promoting the pursuit of Computer Science (CS)-related postsecondary education for high school…

In fall 2021, Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) published its first "Graduate Student Recruitment Report" (ED618011), a survey of 1,500 prospective graduate students that explored their program demands and preferences, search processes, enrollment decision making priorities, and key expectations of the institutions to which they inquire, apply,…

Racial diversity within the school workforce is valuable in 'fostering social cohesion and most importantly, in supporting pupils to grow and develop in an environment of visible, diverse role models' (DfE, 2018c, p.2). A diverse workforce is likely to promote greater cultural understanding and inclusion when educating pupils from diverse ethnic…

The federal government and many individual organizations have invested in programs to support diversity in the STEM pipeline, including STEM summer programs for high school students, but there is little rigorous evidence of their efficacy. We fielded a randomized controlled trial to study a suite of such programs targeted to underrepresented high…

This report is organized around 10 challenges (and associated solutions) based on data from a survey of 1,609 survey respondents, each of whom was screened to ensure that they had firm plans to enroll in a fully online program in the next year (online course takers in otherwise hybrid or classroom programs were not eligible). They also had to be…

The Hispanic-serving community colleges STEM Pipelines (HSCC-STEM) study is a research project that explores the transitions to and through Hispanic-serving two-year institutions for underrepresented minoritized STEM students. This brief uncovers the most viable HSCC STEM pathways for Latinxs and other underrepresented minoritized students as well…

This data brief is intended to shed light on the scope and scale of the disparities in college attainment across New York City. The analysis is conducted on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2008 and 2018 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. More specifically, it looks at educational attainment for working-age (age 25-64) residents of the…

The trend data detailed in this "Focus On" includes doctorates from the class of 2019. It presents data on the number of physics PhDs awarded in the U.S. including data on citizenship, women, and PhDs from underrepresented groups. It also includes data on educational background, time to degree, subfield of dissertation, and general…

UMass' flagship Amherst campus has become increasingly prestigious over the last decade and a half. The growing prominence of UMass Amherst has made the school competitive with the nation's most elite public universities. However, the policies that have largely driven the school's standings have controversial implications for Massachusetts…

Faculty diversity plays a key role in college student completion and can have a major impact on students' sense of belonging, retention rates, and persistence. This report examines faculty diversity relative to student diversity, as well as hiring equity, tenure equity, and changes in faculty representation over time for Black and Latino faculty…