The primary purpose of the current study was to predict the likelihood of enrollment in Graduate School based on three independent variables: cost, time-to-completion, and return on investment. To achieve this purpose, a Z-test for the hypothesis of two proportions was utilized to create a predictive model. The model aimed to help institutional…

In the process of higher education choice, the prospective students compare and organise universities into a preference order, which indicates status hierarchies among institutions. In this study, the aim is to investigate how (and based on what) recent business graduates construct institutional hierarchies in the national higher education…

This dissertation contains three empirical papers that quantify how institutional status hierarchies in postgraduate education relate to professionals' employment and earnings outcomes. Chapter 1 examines the effects of postgraduate educational program status hierarchies on earnings among recipients of postgraduate professional degrees in…

A worldwide trend towards high levels of participation in higher education, paired with concerns about the post-university destinations of an increasing pool of graduates, have brought about two parallel phenomena: a process of sharp stratification in higher education and the growing relevance of postgraduate education as undergraduate study…

Home BAME students are under-represented on postgraduate courses in England, especially at elite universities, however, there has been little research on why this should be. This research starts to fill this gap, arguing that gatekeepers to postgraduate courses at some of the most elite universities contribute to maintaining white supremacy.…

The purpose of this study is to characterize the graduate education development for creating world-class universities from the insight of the doctoral education in China. A systematic review is applied to examine the doctoral education development in contemporary China. The findings argue that there are tremendous challenges in China's current…

University ranking systems influence a wide range of educational stakeholders, including students, faculty members, and campus administrators. Of these ranking systems, the "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of colleges and universities has been the subject of much research. However, little research has examined specific "U.S.…

Conventional wisdom suggests that a field of striving compels US public master's institutions (PMIs) to pursue prestige in the academic hierarchy. We posit that, due to their unique histories of democratizing college opportunity, PMIs face conflicting imperatives from two fields: an origin one of equity and another of striving. Our hypotheses are…

Coauthorship has intensified as a mode of production across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first in a large number of fields. Yet sole authorship remains a publishing mode in some fields. Publishing is not only an individual behavior but is also nestled in organizations. To that end, incentives to sole -- or co-author work may vary…

In this dissertation, I examine the role elite high schools play in the perpetuation of privilege in America and how, if at all, that role has changed over time. I explore the characteristics of students who attend elite high schools and the relationships between attending those schools and entering elite colleges, earning a top 10% income,…

Given increasingly crowded education marketplaces, an emerging perspective views education as a marketable product and seeks to explain what drives loyalty of alumni. Satisfaction has been used as an indicator of education quality and resides in a complex relationship of factors pertaining to students and institutions. The nonprofit graduate…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) diversity research programs seek to make progress in increasing the number of underrepresented students that pursue STEM at the highest degree levels. Yet few programs have outlined their path to help students achieve the STEM PhD. Our program, Opportunities in Genomics Research (OGR),…

Public Master's granting universities have long been viewed as a sector "caught in the middle" between their much more prestigious research university counterparts and the more numerous community colleges. The little research that exists on this sector of institutions has suggested that the Master's university classification merely…

The purpose of this case study was to explore faculty members' perceptions of the QEP in a public doctoral university with highest research activity. Particularly, the study explored how faculty members perceive the role of the QEP in student learning and institutional effectiveness, the relevance of the QEP activities in student learning and…

The study was based upon surveying colleges/schools of education with graduate programs from the "US News and World Report" "Best Education Schools 2011" (N = 89). Results indicated that greatest time was spent on data collection, data management, and compilation; while least time was focused on instrument technical…