As the country experiences a recession and institutions of higher education increase tuition to compensate for diminishing state support, the transferability of credits among and between institutions is essential to students seeking to earn a baccalaureate degree. Students, parents, and taxpayers cannot afford to pay twice for the same courses or…

Students with disabilities are attending postsecondary school in increasing numbers. College students with disabilities have lower retention rates, take longer to complete degrees, and have lower degree completion rates than do their peers without disabilities. Thus, students with disabilities face a number of significant challenges adjusting to…

This report examines the effects of increasing science course-taking requirements in the Chicago Public Schools. CPS has been at the forefront of the national movement to require a college-preparatory curriculum for all high school students. In 1997, CPS mandated that all entering ninth-graders take a college-preparatory curriculum in high school,…

This paper addresses the findings of a study conducted on identifying the psychological and socio-demographic factors contributing in completers and non-completers of distance learning program. A sample of 232 distance learners ranging in age between 25-45 years old participated in this study. For psychological factors, the Perceived Competence…

Within a 25-year period, the dramatic changes from college education as a "private good" that serves a predominantly white male student population to college education as a "public good"--where almost 90% of high school students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds aspire to attend college--has forced higher education to face a…

High schools often are the anchor of their communities. Nowhere is this more so than in rural north-central Missouri where Trenton High School is the community. Over the last 10 years, this 400-student comprehensive high school mirrored the community's economic downturn and experienced a significant increase in students living in poverty--to the…

As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and draws more students from across the globe, more representative data are needed to understand at-risk and underrepresented populations in higher education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The authors argue that the current…

This study examined the initially intended outcomes of the 2001 Florida Senate Bill 1162, a Florida law that established an educational policy granting community colleges the ability to confer baccalaureate degrees in teacher education programs. The intended outcomes included teachers filling growing vacancies statewide. This study found that 69%…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental, quantitative study was to investigate the effectiveness of supplemental instruction (SI) as a means to address the existing high attrition and low graduation rates evidenced at a rural southern community college. The research problem addressed the high attrition rates in barrier courses and low graduation…

This report presents the number of high school completers, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and the dropout data for grades 9-12 for public schools in school year 2009-10. State Education Agencies (SEAs) report annual counts of completers, dropouts, and enrollments to the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of…

Journey to College and Career (JTCC) is a PreK-12 program implemented at the research site to help students graduate from high school and plan for their future. JTCC had not been evaluated for its effectiveness at the research site regarding high school retention by determining (a) whether the goals and objectives of JTCC were being met and (b)…

Community colleges have been criticized for having lower graduation rates than four year colleges, but few studies have looked at non-graduation transfer, in which a student leaves the community college for a four-year college without taking an associate degree. The current study utilizes institutional data and a discrete-time event history model…

The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (Commission) has statutory responsibility for developing a five-year statewide master plan for higher education that sets forth system goals, objectives, and strategies and is aligned with meeting the goals of the state. The Legislature has identified in state code eight areas of special…

This report describes the universe, methods, and editing procedures used in the 2012-13 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data collection. IPEDS data consist of basic statistics on postsecondary institutions regarding tuition and fees, number and types of degrees and certificates conferred, number of students enrolled, number…

This second annual report on national college completions rates continues to respond to the limitations of institution-based research by focusing on student-level data, tracking the completion of postsecondary certificates and degrees among first-time degree-seeking students who started their postsecondary education in fall 2007 and tracking their…