Establishing early academic momentum via credit accumulation is strongly associated with community college student success. Using data from one of the nation's largest and most racially diverse community college systems, our quasi-experimental study examined how different first-semester credit loads influenced persistence. For part-time students…

Credit hour policies, or performance-based financial aid policies, have become increasingly popular among policymakers seeking to improve degree completion rates. In the Unites States, the college completion agenda has been bolstered by national calls from intermediary organizations and philanthropic foundations alike to raise the overall rate and…

The economic importance of design, and design engineers to the success of a company has led to the exponential growth in the demand for qualified design engineers. To fill this demand, colleges and universities provide the best training available so that, after graduation these engineers will provide significant input from the first day of work.…

Enrollment trends highlighted in this 2018 Enrollment Report include a one-year comparison for two-year institutions, four-year institutions, and system wide. Trends over the last five years and the last ten years are also described. Over the past five years, Headcount and Full Time Equivalencies (FTE) in NDUS has decreased slightly, with change…

As the tenth in the Completing College series, this report updates the six-year college completion rates nationally and by state, by tracking the enrollment and completion outcomes for the fall 2015 cohort of beginning college students through June 2021. The national completion rate measures the performance of the entire higher education system.…

While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the…

The per-student data included in the State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report provide useful information about revenues relative to the need to fund higher education and are important for examining the impact of funding differences on public institutions and students across states and over time. However, examining state support on a full-time…

Student service members/veterans (SSM/Vs)--defined as undergraduates in the U.S. military or who have military experience--have been an emergent group of adult learners in American 4-year universities. Because SSM/Vs diversify universities and are supported by significant public investments, their success is critical. Little quantitative research,…

As a supplement to "Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates--Fall 2010 Cohort" (https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport12) (2016), this report focuses on six-year student success outcomes and college completion rates by state. Three sets of tables organized by institution type display the results, presenting…

The first round of data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System's (IPEDS) newest survey component, Outcome Measures (OM), was released to the public in Fall 2017. Importantly, the IPEDS OM survey begins to address some of the limitations of the prevailing Graduation Rate (GR) component data. These rates have only included…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

This paper examines the graduation rates between 2000 and 2015 of United States colleges and universities at the national, state, and institutional levels. This research focuses on two-year and four-year programs. Rates are investigated longitudinally along with variables that distinguish between public/private institutions, percentages of…

This study compared and contrasted preferences and experiences of traditional and nontraditional students. Students at a midsized state university in the southeast region of the United States were surveyed to determine the number of hours spent working off campus, hours spent studying, their preferred learning format, and current grade point…

Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state-level and national funding and enrollment trends over time. The SHEF report provides the earliest possible review of state funding for higher…

The State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report is produced annually by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) to broaden understanding of the context and consequences of public policy decisions in each state that contribute to public higher education funding levels and funding distributions across states and…