This paper studies the patterns of individuals' student loan repayment for up to 12 years, tracking borrowers through the formative ages of the early 20s to the late 30s. Using social sequence and cluster analysis to understand these longitudinal repayment histories, we identify five archetypes of loan repayment that describe borrowers'…

Dual enrollment (DE) programs allow high school students to take college coursework and simultaneously earn both high school and college credit. These programs have become increasingly popular in recent decades, with roughly one-third of high school students taking at least one DE course. However, the financial implications of taking DE courses…

Many existing student persistence and retention studies overlooked the different types of departure (e.g., dropout, transfer) and aggregate them into a single departure variable, as a result, the estimates from these studies are spurious when one is interested in what student characteristics prompt dropout but not transfer. This can be especially…

Objective/Research Question: This article examines the racial equity of transfer incentive policies by responding to the research question: How do students of differing races and ethnicities vary in their opportunity to benefit from transfer incentive policies? Methods: We utilized a mixed-methods approach, grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT).…

In a nationally representative sample, first-year U.S. college students "somewhat agree," on average, that they feel like they belong at their school. However, belonging varies by key institutional and student characteristics; of note, racial-ethnic minority and first-generation students report lower belonging than peers at 4-year…

Latinx student enrollment in college has dramatically increased in recent years, yet they are more likely than other racial groups to enroll at open access and public two-year institutions (Rodriguez, 2015). While public-two-year sector provides an encouraging postsecondary pathway for Latinx students, only 13% of all community college students…

This research brief uses nationally representative data from the 2012/17 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17) to examine post-college transitions of US undergraduates into the skilled technical workforce (STW), defined here as workers in a collection of occupations that require significant levels of science, technology,…

A previous "Evidence Speaks" report described the high rates at which student loan borrowers default on their repayment within 12 years of initial college entry, often on relatively modest amounts of debt. A striking pattern emerging from that and other prior work is how dramatically default rates vary by institution sector and by…

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education released groundbreaking data showing that half of Black or African American borrowers who first entered college in the 2003-04 academic year defaulted on their student loans within 12 years. New federal data released this fall show that these numbers have not improved: Black or African American borrowers…

Persistence studies in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields indicate that the pipeline to degree attainment is "leaky" and underrepresented minorities are not persisting in the STEM fields. Those students who do not persist in the STEM fields either migrate to other fields of study or drop out of higher education…

This First Look report presents selected findings from the 2012/17 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17), a nationally representative survey of undergraduates who entered postsecondary education for the first time in the 2011-12 academic year. BPS:12/17 covers the experiences of these first-time beginning postsecondary…

Background/Context: Sub-baccalaureate certificates can provide an accelerated pathway to gainful employment for the unemployed or underemployed. Certificates represented only 6% of postsecondary awards in 1980, but today they represent 22% of all credentials awarded and have superseded associate's and master's degrees as the second most common…

There is a need to quantitatively relate student demographics along with dual enrollment program participation and analyze those associations on postsecondary academic persistence. This task is made more difficult in that there is limited foundation research in these areas. Further, dual enrollment programmatic guidelines differ between states.…

This study models student-and institutional-level factors that influence vertical transfer among a national sample of White and underrepresented minority (URM) community college students. Results indicate that the predictors of transfer are different in many ways for White and URM students. Most notably, findings suggest that enrolling in…

Transfer and bachelor's degree attainment rates of low-income community college beginners lag behind their middle- and high-income peers. As community college continues to be an affordable and accessible route to higher education, consideration should be given to how to close the gap in transfer and bachelor's degree attainment rates of low-income…