College degree attainment benefits both private citizens and society. Historically, degree attainment rates have differed based on students' race, income, and parental education. Along with differences in degree attainment rates, time to degree has been increasing for all students nationally. Increased time to degree has adverse effects for…

I study how postsecondary admission policies affect the composition and subsequent academic outcomes of new cohorts. I leverage the staggered replacement of lotteries and waitlists at California's community college nursing programs with admissions that rely on grades, work experience, and other measures. The change in admissions increased the…

The community college is an institution where constant change is needed to keep up with technology, student needs, and industry standards. The evolution of developmental subjects, especially developmental math, is a needed change within the community college system. This research examined the impact of the new Reinforced Instruction for Student…

This mixed methods study at Delaware Technical Community College documented a turbulent time in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student pass rates in the spring 2019 and spring 2020 semesters were analyzed using a paired t-test. The null hypothesis, P1 = P2, was rejected, at [alpha] = 0.05 level of significance. Pass rates were…

African American college enrollment rates continue to increase, while graduation rates do not. This state of affairs lends itself to a wealth disparity between African Americans and other racial groups. As such, this research investigated if university demographics and classification of institutional type can predict African American student…

The Rhode Island Education Policy Primer provides an overview of how public education operates in Rhode Island. The Introduction offers context on the inequitable origins of Rhode Island's public school system, as well as the role that activism has played in expanding educational opportunities. The At a Glance section provides a quick look at…

The issue of college completion has become a hot-button topic for higher education and the public in recent years. While completion is not a new issue, several national and state-level efforts, including President Obama's 2020 college-completion goal to increase the number of college graduates to 50 percent of the population, have brought…

States have introduced a range of policies and strategies aimed at boosting college readiness by strengthening collaborations between secondary and postsecondary education sectors. One popular strategy is Early College High Schools, which allows historically underserved student groups to complete college-level coursework and improve their college…

The Powered by Publics (PxP) initiative has been an ambitious undertaking from the beginning, aiming to produce hundreds of thousands more undergraduate degrees and halving equity gaps for low-income, minoritized, and first-generation students by 2025. APLU has collected student performance data from the 127 participating institutions over the…

Education administrators are placing greater demands on university faculty, staff, and admission counselors to enroll and retain more students. Understanding this transition and the associated challenges is important for institutions of higher education so they can better assist black male students as they navigate through college and…

Completing the A-G course sequence is the standard pathway to college for California high school graduates; however, findings indicate that there is substantial variation in A-G enrollment and completion rates across student subgroups and schools. This brief describes the distribution in access to and success in A-G courses as well as strategies…

This paper examines how colleges respond to the introduction of broad merit aid programs. Previous research has emphasized the impact of merit aid on enrollment, student choices, and post-matriculation outcomes. Yet much less is known about how state-implemented merit aid programs affect colleges' financial decisions. To explore impacts, college…

Background: Pipeline and pathways models influence persistence metrics used to study how students navigate engineering education. Purpose: This study presents pipeline, pathways, and ecosystem models and their associated metrics, compares and contrasts these models using an intersectional approach to explore persistence, and advocates for use of…

Building on previous research showing how well ninth-grade student behaviors predict on-time high school graduation, this experimental study investigates the impact of a ninth-grade intervention on student attendance and course passing. The study, conducted in 41 geographically and demographically diverse high schools within a single state,…

Student attrition is a significant problem and a huge challenge from an institutional point of view. Although completion rates in Poland are lower than in most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the problem has not been studied thoroughly. In order to shed light on that problem the aim of this paper is to present the…