When the COVID-19 pandemic began, the federal government responded by expanding the country's safety-net programs, including through stimulus payments. There were also significant federal policy changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest food assistance program in the United States. Benefit amounts were increased,…

Federal student aid formulas prioritize income over wealth. Using nationally representative data from two cohorts, we argue that federal student aid policy thus under-addresses wealth-driven financial need and that this oversight contributes to racial disparities in student debt, in turn reinforcing the United States's longstanding racial wealth…

Homeless and low-income students share multiple overlapping risk experiences; however, some studies report little to no observed differences in outcomes between these students. From the cumulative risk perspective, homelessness is perched at the extreme edge of economic insecurity, suggesting that homeless students encounter additional hardships…

School finance inequities are a key driver of disparities in educational outcomes. Higher per-pupil funding levels allow schools to provide more qualified educators, smaller class sizes, and high-quality physical resources such as modern instructional technology. We study how Washington state school districts generate and allocate funding for…

This report describes results from the Long-Term Impact of Early College High Schools Study--funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) (#R305A210017)--which aimed to explore the long-term impacts of early college (EC) high schools on students' academic outcomes (e.g., college enrollment, degree attainment) and workforce, financial, and…

The study addresses the widening income and racial access gap in higher education resulting from enrollment management teams' operationalization of academic capitalism. The study focuses on the local, micro level, emphasizing how enrollment management leadership teams make sense of enrollment management, recognizing that enrollment management and…

Graduate education is among the fastest growing segments of the U.S. higher educational system. This paper estimates the returns to Master's degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics and initial labor market conditions. We use rich administrative data from Ohio and an individual fixed effects model that…

Researchers have long documented a persistent Black-White gap in wealth. These studies, however, often treat race as a discrete category, eluding its socially constructed nature. As a result, these studies assume that the "effect of race" is consistent across all individuals racialized as Black. Studies that make this assumption…

The purpose of this study was to elicit smoking couples' preferences for the 'format' and 'content' of couple-based interventions and partner support from both partners' perspectives, using an online discrete choice experiment (DCE) survey. An online DCE study was conducted during online interviews with 56 smoking couples (N = 112). Conditional…

Educational inequality is a long-standing and persistent challenge. Never has this inequality been more evident than during the COVID-19 era. The pandemic put existing divisions into sharp relief, and made them worse. Recent evidence tells a terrible story of the consequences of the pandemic--and the response of the education system to the…

This paper presents the first evidence of how students make career technical education (CTE) course-taking decisions. Among the universe of Michigan high-schoolers we find large disparities in CTE access and participation by gender, race, and income. We decompose participation gaps between supply (access) and demand (preferences) with a simple…

This mixed methods study explores predictive factors for housing insecurity (HI) and homelessness. Using multi-variable analyses with data from an original survey (48% response rate, n = 1,416 students), we found that income, race/ethnicity, awareness of services and being impacted by a natural disaster, all significantly impact HI and…

Many studies on higher education access have focused on challenges faced by the civilian population. Indeed, there are many obstacles that people face when seeking to enter certificate- and degree-granting programs, including affordability, inequitable admission standards, and family and work demands on their time. Veterans, however, have access…

This study sought to determine how tutors within the College of Education (CoE) scope at Ada, and in Accra, both townships in the Greater Accra Region, react to emotional intelligence and marital satisfaction. An expressive survey research design was used in the study to gather data from 96 married tutors, utilising structured questionnaires and…

Graduate education is among the fastest growing segments of the U.S. higher educational system. This paper provides up-to-date causal evidence on labor market returns to Master's degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics and initial labor market conditions. We use rich administrative data from Ohio and…