Each year, roughly 30% of first-year students at US baccalaureate institutions do not return for their second year and billions of dollars are spent educating these students. Yet, little quantitative research has analyzed the causes and possible remedies for student attrition. What's more, most of the previous attempts to model attrition at…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged with much popularity in the last five years, yet many questions remain about whom MOOCs best serve and what constitutes learner success. Completion rates, a common metric of student success, remain low (averaging < 8%) and may be a misleading measure of success unless learner intentions are…

Recommendations arising from the "Review of Australian Higher Education" (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008) see universities aiming to increase enrolments of school leavers generally and those from low socioeconomic status backgrounds particularly. Similar trends in other countries have had mixed success. Enrolments of…

Social networking is a tool being explored by many institutions as a means of connecting to and communicating with students. This study explores whether or not students' use of social networking services (SNSs) has significant effects on social connectedness, college adjustment, academic engagement, and institutional commitment. Students' use of…

Existing research demonstrates a strong relationship between the prevalence of irregular enrollment patterns among community college students and their low rates of degree attainment (Adelman 2006; Bahr 2009; Berkner et al. 2000; Goldrick-Rab 2004, 2007; Horn and Nevill 2006). However, very little is known about the features and processes that…

For the past 10 years, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges has been tracing the rate of transfer from the two-year colleges to four-year colleges and universities across the nation. In order to derive a transfer rate, the number of students enrolled at the college, subdivided according to certain criteria, must be divided into the…

This study assessed the usefulness of the College Student Inventory (CSI) (M. Strait, 1988) as a needs assessment tool in community colleges by determining which, if any, of the 19 scales of the CSI distinguish enrollment status and academic success in students attending community colleges. A total sample of 1,368 students at 8 community colleges…

This paper explores the need for a better understanding of the influences of prices and student aid on student enrollment and college budgets. The theory of net price has not been found to adequately explain changes in enrollment. Based on a critical review of recent research on student price response, this paper develops an alternative approach…

Since 1995, the University of California has been prohibited from employing affirmative action principles in student admissions. In response to this constraint, the UC has sought to pursue a number of other avenues for promoting the selection and retention of a diverse student body. In this paper we look at how officials and staff within the UC…

With the increasing number of part-time and adult students entering universities over the past several years, students who tend not to follow the traditional pattern of study, the task of accurate enrollment predictions has become increasingly difficult. The use of the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) software package to effectively track both…

Six research avenues were used to study transfer students for recruitment and enrollment management purposes: (1) current application, enrollment and program data of transfer students were examined; (2) internal persistence rates of transfer student cohorts were tracked for 6 years; (3) persistence rates of transfer students after 1 year were…

A screening mechanism using objective data was developed to determine which of the nearly 60 different associate degree and diploma occupational programs offered by Gateway Technical Institute should be subjected to in-depth evaluation and at what frequency the evaluation should be conducted. Four factors for which objective data were available…

Rather than studying the structural paths through which variables affect student persistence in education, this paper offers a reduced form model that focuses on precollege, demographic, and certain current achievement and financial aid variables. This approach does not specify structural paths, but it does have the advantage of requiring only…

This study used Markov chain matrices to simulate the effect of varying degrees of change in student characteristics on retention and graduation rates. Data were applied to a 1-year enrollment transition matrix that tracks how students of each class level progress into the same or higher class levels, to a completed degree, or to non-returning…

Two studies were conducted at the Southeastern Louisiana University (SLU) to determine possible uses of errors and omissions on surveys of incoming and freshmen college students. The subjects of the first study were 1,927 individuals who had applied for admission to SLU and attended freshman orientation in the summer of 1989. Blanks and incorrect…