Many students who enter college do not finish, reflecting numerous academic, financial, and social barriers to postsecondary completion. Success Boston Coaching (SBC) provides students in the Greater Boston area with coaching during their first 2 years of college to help them overcome barriers to postsecondary completion and connect them to…

This study examines how performance-based funding (PBF) for public four-year institutions in the U.S. is associated with the production of short-term certificates. Results indicate that high-dosage PBF is associated with increases in both the number of short-term certificate programs offered and the number of short-term certificates awarded, even…

There is a well-documented relationship between academic match and bachelor's degree completion; students who undermatch are less likely to complete a BA than those who match or overmatch, net of academic qualifications and demographic characteristics. Little is known, however, about whether this association has changed over time. I argue that…

Although the positive relationship between social determinants and college attainment is well established, less is known about how social class specifically relates to the linear and timely completion of postsecondary degrees. In this paper, we empirically examine on-time completion of bachelor's degrees using social class proxies for a national…

Do older community college students build momentum toward graduation differently than their younger peers? One-third of students in community colleges are 25 years of age or older, and these students tend to have lower rates of graduation than their younger peers. Yet, we know little about how the factors that influence college graduation differ…

Increasingly, undergraduates take more than 4 years to complete a baccalaureate, a situation widely perceived as a waste of time and money, for students, their families, and taxpayers. We first identify several phenomena that result in a longer time to degree and document the frequency of such delays. Then, using nationally representative data…

As college tuition rises nationwide, policy efforts to reduce these costs are increasingly focused at the 2-year level. However, it is not fully known whether increased access to college increases degree attainment. Compared to observationally equivalent peers who enroll in 4-year institutions, 2-year enrollees may face a decreased likelihood of…

This study estimates the short- and long-term effects of undergraduate educational debt on students' decisions to apply and to enroll in graduate school after completing requirements for a baccalaureate degree, using marginal mean weighting through stratification method (MMW-S) to analyze data from the National Center for Education Statistics…

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, going to college has become increasingly financially difficult in the United States. Tuition prices continued to rise, state funding for higher education declined, and the mean family income declined or stagnated for all but the top 20 percent of families (Goldrick-Rab 2016). In a period where college…

This paper compares the employment outcomes of liberal arts graduates from Dutch university colleges with those of their peers who pursued conventional, subject-specific bachelor's degrees. Using data from the Dutch National Alumni Survey, the analysis includes 14,933 respondents who completed a master's programme at a research university, with…

Little is known about the effects of need-based financial aid disbursed late into college and how students respond when they approach lifetime limits for receiving aid. I exploit changes to federal Pell Grant eligibility rules that reduced the lifetime availability for grant aid from 9 to 6 full-time-equivalent years to examine these questions.…

A third of the 2- and 4-year undergraduates beginning college in 2011-2012 changed their major in the first 3 years of enrollment. Yet, few studies have examined the effects of major switching on student outcomes, particularly in community colleges. Major switching can delay or impede college completion through excess credit accumulation, or it…

Following a sample of students who participated in admissions lotteries at eight Early College High Schools (ECs) partnering with 2-year colleges, this study examined the college enrollment and degree completion of students who won admissions lotteries and enrolled in ECs in Grade 9 (i.e., EC students), and assessed the EC impact--in terms of…

The study of student loan debt remains a timely and relevant higher education finance research and policy-oriented topic, especially when considering the alarming growth rates of student loan debt balances. The Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit released in May of 2018 shows that among all debt balances, student loans remain the only…

Traditionally colleges have relied on standalone non-credit-bearing developmental education (DE) to support students academically and ensure readiness for college-level courses. As emerging evidence has raised concerns about the effectiveness of DE courses, colleges and states have been experimenting with approaches that place students into…