Over the past 30 years, a shift occurred in higher education that saw more of the burden for paying for postsecondary education placed on students. Combined with rising tuition and fees, this has led students to take on increasing amounts of student debt. Despite the historic rise in student loans, surprisingly little attention has focused on…

This dissertation comprises three chapters. The first two address issues within the education system, focusing on strategies to attract and retain high-quality teachers in the public sector. The third chapter, a collaborative effort with Martin Martinez and Miguel Saldarriaga, explores the application of machine learning tools for nowcasting…

Higher education appropriations have been a widely studied topic by researchers and became more of a concern after the Great Recession. Assessing factors influencing appropriations to Research I institutions is of particular interest as they possess substantial enrollment capabilities but can create great inequities and access issues without state…

Social determinants of health (SDH) are social and economic systems that directly contribute to health disparities and inequalities. This study examined SDH and their relation to education, also an SDH. The relationship between SDH and online undergraduate achievement, as measured by grade-point average (GPA), was studied. Cumulative inequality is…

Even with extensive retention research dating from the 1960s, community colleges still struggle to identify the reasons why students do not return to college. Data mining has allowed these retention models to evolve to identify new patterns among student populations and variables. The purpose of this study was to create a predictive model for…

The unprecedented increase in the number of students enrolled in colleges and universities in Africa coupled with growing unemployment and underemployment of higher education graduates calls for a comprehensive and in-depth inquiry into the quality of higher education for the entire continent. The purpose of this study is to identify factors…

The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe the student composition of accredited physical therapist assistant (PTA) programs located in the United States to determine if there were any significant differences between racial and ethnic minority and non-minority groups. Additionally, this study attempted to address gaps in discovering…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between college persistence and family income, parental education level, and type of financial aid for first-time, full-time Hispanic economically disadvantaged students selected from a South Texas Hispanic-serving institution. The dependent variable, college persistence, was measured by…

In this dissertation, I use data from Chile to study the determinants of schooling trajectories. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on higher education, Chapter 3 on secondary education, and Chapter 4 on teachers. Chapter 1 explores the role of a socio-emotional ability, self-efficacy, in understanding why students with comparable qualifications transit…

This dissertation's two primary purposes were to construct an alternative socioeconomic status model and estimate how it predicts student success in higher education. This research filled a gap in knowledge about the widely acknowledged disparities in higher education based on socioeconomic status. Prior research has often relied on parental…

The vision statement of the first community college in the Dominican Republic (DR) notes that it is "an institution of higher technical level aimed at offering opportunities for development, forming competent, ethical and innovative professionals through a relevant curriculum assuming a solidarity integration with business and social…

The persistent difficulty of retaining college students through graduation has become a global problem. The purpose of this quantitative, descriptive, and retrospective study was to apply data mining methods, tools, and algorithms to analyze enrollment data for issues affecting STEM students' retention at an historically black college (HBCU). The…

Disruptive innovations are used to lower costs and augment access to high-quality, affordable higher education, but little systematic research is available on the topic. Higher education institutions use disruptive innovations to save students time and money. To understand the process of disruptive innovation, I investigated the rapid diffusion of…

Leveraging a sample of more than 198,000 adult entrepreneurs, both currently involved in the startup of a business or formerly involved in business creation, this study investigates the perceptual, societal impression, economic, and demographic variables that are predictive with an individual's decision to engage in entrepreneurial activity.…

This study examines the trend of foreign doctorate recipients from U.S. higher education institutions who decided to stay in the United States after their degree completion, and it explores individual, institutional, and country factors predicting whether the foreign doctorate recipients stay in the United States or return home. Analyzing data…