Across the country, colleges using Complete College America (CCA) strategies are improving graduation rates. But despite these overall gains, data continues to show persistent institutional performance gaps for BILPOC (Black, Indigenous, Latinx, People of Color) students and students ages 25 and older. Students in both of these groups…

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its latest "Race for Results"® report a decade after its inaugural publication, revealing progress in some areas but persistent disparities for children of color in the United States. The report utilizes Casey's Race for Results index based on 12 indicators of child and youth well-being, showing…

In this report, the authors tally the cost of child care and the price of attending a public four-year college--including tuition and fees, housing, food, books, and transportation--to determine a student parent's actual annual cost of pursuing a degree. That number is used to calculate the "student parent affordability gap," that is,…

Based on a recent survey, this issue of "DataPoints" finds that work, expenses and family issues are the top three challenges to success cited by community college students. A breakdown of those categories shows the specific hurdles.

Higher education leaders are looking for high impact ways to improve retention and graduation rates in a climate of austere budgets. Increasingly, higher education sees the interplay of finances and academic performance as a key driver of student success. Across the nation, measurable improvements in student success outcomes are observed when…

University students have faced a challenging year, and the academic experience has been widely discussed. But higher education is much broader than just what happens in the lecture hall, with the benefits of the university experience coming from participation in extra-curricular activities, work placements and other enrichment activities, as well…

The combination of work and study has been hailed as crucial to ensure that youth develop the skills required on the labour market so that transitions from school to work are shorter and smoother. This paper fills an important gap in availability of internationally-comparable data. Using the 2012 Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), it draws a…

In 2012, more than 13 percent of undergraduates attended for-profit postsecondary institutions, up from 9 percent in 2009. The rapid growth of the for-profit sector has renewed public scrutiny and concern about the historically poor labor market outcomes of students at many of these institutions and the amount of debt students in these…

Higher education leaders are looking for high impact ways to improve retention and graduation rates in a climate of austere budgets. Increasingly, higher education sees the interplay of finances and academic performance as a key driver of student success. Across the nation, measurable improvements in student success outcomes are observed when…

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines not just what students know in science, reading and mathematics, but what they can do with what they know. This report is the product of a collaborative effort between the countries participating in PISA, the national and international experts and institutions working within…

Researchers from the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce, Anthony Carnevale and Nicole Smith, examine the challenges working students face and the impacts of these challenges on completion and debt. Working and paying tuition and fees "as you go" is no longer an option for the majority of America's college students;…

Five years ago Alaska's high school graduating class of 2011 became the first with the opportunity to accept the state's "invitation to excellence," the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS), to pursue their postsecondary studies. Eligible graduates could receive up to $4,755 per year for up to four years to study at a participating…

The Alaska Performance Scholarship was established in state law in 2011 and first offered to Alaska high school graduates beginning with the class of 2011. Described as "an invitation to excellence" to Alaska's high school students, its goal was to inspire students to push themselves academically in areas that correlate to success in…

Following the collapse of the US investment bank Lehmann Brothers in September 2008, the world economy began a downward spiral, with many countries falling into recession. Australia experienced significant stock market losses and unemployment rates began to climb. This briefing paper considers how young people fared in previous downturns and…

In this report the authors seek to answer the question of whether combining school and work is detrimental or beneficial to a student's school educational performance and labour market outcomes. They find that young people who combine school and work are distributed right across the school population. Results show that individuals can combine…