Each year, hundreds of thousands of students leave higher education without earning their degree. Helping these students return and complete their degree is an enormous opportunity for higher education to propel social and economic mobility for students and their broader communities. With limited resources at postsecondary institutions, however,…

Earning a bachelor's degree or a post-secondary certificate can have a significant impact on a person's quality of life and financial future; however, statistics show that many high school graduates who continue to post-secondary studies do not complete their degree or certification. Adult education students (non-traditional students) are…

We study GO Centers, a college information program that is run by student peers and provides information about all aspects of the college-going process to academically prepared students on the margin of attending college. We use the semi-random rollout of the program along with detailed panel data on the universe of Texas public school students to…

Employers are demanding higher skilled and better educated workers. Yet employer sentiment and the high default rate on student loans suggests a mismatch between the programs students are completing and the work they are able to find. To report on trends in postsecondary education, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) mostly relies on surveys of…

This study examines the impact of providing parents with an informational brochure about the role of algebra II in college access on students' grade 11 algebra II completion rates in Texas. One hundred nine schools, covering all 20 Educational Service Center regions in Texas, participated in the study. Parents in the 54 treatment schools were…

Post-recession Federal policy initiatives, such as secondary/postsecondary career pathways and gainful employment higher education accountability standards, prioritize the alignment of education practices with market-driven outcomes. Using longitudinal student record data merged from college and state K-12 data systems with the Unemployment…

It is too early to predict the long-term impact of Indiana's recent financial aid reforms. However, given the remarkable progress achieved after only one year, an encouraging picture is emerging that foreshadows significant future improvement as further awareness and intervention efforts take hold. Indiana is a national leader in providing…

High school counselors play a key role in increasing students' access to college. With increasing student-to-counselor ratios as well as demands on their time, school counselors often lack the ability to provide adequate college counseling. In this article, we explored how school counselors can use educational technology, specifically the online…

Increasing awareness of the vital developmental implications of the care and education of young children has led to efforts in Maryland to advance early childhood care and education (ECCE). To that end, Maryland has consolidated ECCE services into one division of the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and developed a number of…

Florida has been a leader in the K-20 educational reform in an effort to ensure the seamless transition into postsecondary education for all students, but specifically improving preparation for, and access to, higher education for populations traditionally marginalized and underrepresented in higher education. The purpose of this study was to…

We study a popular dual enrollment program in Washington State, "Running Start" using a new administrative database that links high school and postsecondary data. Conditional on prior high school performance, we find that students participating in Running Start are more likely to attend any college but less likely to attend four-year…

The main controversy as a result of the commercialisation of international education markets is that international students especially those from China are unable to perform as well as UK students in UK universities. So far, research has yet to identify the influence of placements on the academic performance of Chinese students from entry to…

Several wealthy colleges and universities have recently begun removing all loans from low-income students' financial aid packages. This article reports on a study that found that the introduction of "no-loan" policies has positively impacted low-income enrollments, suggesting that this aid strategy may be an effective, though limited,…

California legislature made a policy change with Senate Bill (SB) 1644 (2000), shifting Cal Grant Programs to focus on entitlement; counter to the national trend of merit based grant programs. This article describes a study examining effectiveness and extent to which SB 1644 is meeting its legislative objectives: increase in higher education…

This study examines if and how holistic, person-centered academic advising, based on an integrative framework of educational psychology (Bronfenbrenner), sociology (Weber), and counseling (Rogers) theories, can be fostered, implemented, and assessed at a research university. The study design uses the coding of qualitative data and its translation…