Large numbers of qualified students do not apply to and enroll in college. Yet, earning a college degree is one of the primary pathways for economic success and is increasingly required for good jobs and high wages. A number of programs and practices aim to improve college readiness and enrollment, including "Take Stock in Children's®…

Athena Swan was established in 2005 with the goal of advancing the careers of women in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) subjects in higher education. Since then, it has expanded its remit in various ways and has generated some controversy. This paper explains how Athena Swan operates as a policy-scoring scheme,…

Large numbers of qualified students do not apply to and enroll in college. Yet, earning a college degree is one of the primary pathways for economic success and is increasingly required for good jobs and high wages. A number of programs and practices aim to improve college readiness and enrollment, including "Take Stock in Children's®…

Higher education has made impressive progress concerning student learning outcomes assessment practices. Yet--despite the assumption that better assessment would lead to better student learning--few examples of demonstrable student learning improvement exist at the academic degree or university levels. In 2014 Fulcher, Good, Coleman, and Smith…

State support in higher education (HE) is often justified on the grounds that HE is important for the development of the country. However, little analysis is normally done in order to assess the impact of education quality initiatives. The Mexican government has been engaging in a policy of HE quality improvement that can be traced to 1989. In…

Background/Context: Community colleges are central to the United States' college completion goals. A popular strategy pushed by a number of influential policy organizations and foundations is a policy of tying state funding to community college completions, otherwise known simply as performance funding. This is happening despite little to no…

The purpose of this study was to develop a Framework that can be used to implement an online Competency-based education (CBE) program using a Learning Management system such as Moodle. CBE refers to a system of instruction, assessment, grading, and academic reporting that is based on students demonstrating that they have the knowledge and skills…

The Australian government initiated a review of higher education in 2008. One of the outcomes of the review was the formation of a national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), with responsibilities to: register all higher education providers, accredit the courses of the non self-accrediting providers, assure…

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program was established in 2007 and forgives borrowers' remaining federal student loan balances after they have made at least 10 years of qualifying loan payments while working in public service. Starting in September 2017, the first borrowers potentially became eligible for the PSLF program and began…

External quality audits are now being used in universities across the world to improve quality assurance, accountability for quality education and transparency of public funding of higher education. Some countries such as Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have had external quality audits for more than a decade but there…

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 is a nationwide initiative designed to assess the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). For the first time, REF 2014 introduced the wider impact of research, alongside the quality of research and the vitality of the research environment, into the assessment of research…

In recent years the student population in the UK has grown considerably, and students are entering higher education with a more diverse range of qualifications and skills. This is particularly the case in post-1992 universities with a widening participation agenda, as these institutions have a larger share of students from non-traditional…

The author conducted annual evaluations of the Associates Program from its inception. He attended one or more of the national symposia for Associates each year, interviewed each of the Associates and submitted reports to the National Center. As the number of participants in the Associates Program approached 100 and in 2008 the National Center…

This paper presents a case study of implementation of a new system of faculty teaching evaluation at a graduate school of business in Thailand. The research employed a non-experimental, longitudinal case study design in the analysis of student course evaluation data gathered over a period of 21 terms during a seven-year period. The report…

Purpose: This paper reports on an empirical study exploring the way in which campus-based higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK apply their internal quality assurance and enhancement (QA/QE) procedures to their e-learning courses. The purpose of this paper is to identify those characteristics of e-learning courses which affected the…