Increasing graduation rates continues to be a high priority for administrators at community colleges nationwide. While several factors affect graduation rates, many researchers focus on how a student's status as declared or undecided may impact their likelihood of graduating. This study aims to examine the potential relationship between…

The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has been reviewing state report cards for the past seven years. They continue to examine the landscape of state report cards because they believe states must increase transparency and build trust by sharing information. But after many years, it was time to look at state report cards with fresh eyes. In addition to…

This paper used graduation statistics of the Namibian secondary higher education over two decades to determine linkages to human capital of the youth and its multiplication into economic development. The paper assessed the effect of regional differences to show historic educational discrimination and why the education reform was required to…

Purpose: Using a political economy framework, this paper examines the financing trend, by investigating three systematic spikes occurring between 2004 and 2016. The study aims to provide a useful review of the interaction of politics, financial decisions and educational outcomes. Additionally it provides a useful guide, especially to academics, to…

Objective/Research Question: Community college graduation rates are typically quite low, and developmental mathematics enrollment and coursetaking patterns may constrain academic outcomes. To identify ways in which community college graduation rates may be improved, decision trees were utilized to examine the STEM coursetaking patterns of N =…

Understanding how students with low socioeconomic status finance their tuition over time can help us comprehend the impact of students' decisions on their subsequent curricular progress, graduation, or dropout. This work presents a curricular analytics approach using process mining techniques to study educational funding trajectories as processes.…

We investigate how the presence of a college affects local educational attainment using historical natural experiments in which "runner-up" locations were strongly considered to become college sites but ultimately not chosen for as-good-as-random reasons. While runner-up counties have since had opportunity to establish their own…

Higher education in countries like Ghana faces significant challenges, including financial barriers, which usually hinder students' educational progress and graduation rates. While some students usually rely on family support and personal savings, these resources are generally insufficient for covering all educational expenses. Although student…

Nationwide, school principals are given wide discretion to use disciplinary tools like suspension and expulsion to create a safe learning environment. There is legitimate concern that this power can have negative consequences, particularly for the students who are excluded. This study uses linked disciplinary, education, and criminal justice…

Degree completion rates have recently dominated national debates regarding the value of higher education (Gagliardi et al., 2018). Inherent in this debate is the issue of how to utilize institutional data to evaluate student performance (Hubbard et al., 2020). This process, known as data-driven decision-making (DDDM), has been studied at four-year…

According to the United States Department of Education (2012, 2016), degree completions are a vital measure of overall institution success. Significantly, declining student persistence rates and low degree completions are consistent problems in public colleges throughout the United States. Not only are diminishing retention and incomplete degrees…

This qualitative case study uses comparative case study methodology with discourse analysis to compare Arizona and New Jersey regulations, policies, procedures, and practices influencing high school graduation rates for Hispanic and Native American youth. National and state reports (NCES, 2019) indicated a gap between high school graduation rates…

The Partnership for College Completion (PCC) was founded to "advance equity in higher education" by supporting colleges and universities to improve college completion for Black, Latinx, and Pell-eligible students--those groups that experience persistent disparities in completion. Simultaneously, PCC engages in state policy reform to…

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…

Increasing graduation rates continues to be a high priority for administrators at many institutions of higher education. With longitudinal data from a large research university in the Western United States, the purpose of this study was to examine the potential relationship between matriculating with or without a major declared and degree…