Although many institutions and government agencies count degrees as the sole measure of determining departmental or program viability, this method fails to consider other factors such as how many students who are within programs are present to replace students who graduated from those programs or how many credit hours were generated in the area.…

TICAS, in partnership with MDRC and LEO, has worked for more than a year and a half with a community of seven evidence-based college completion programs. These programs, which span the country geographically, all employ a similar model that uses counselors, coaches, or case managers to connect students with a range of support -- personal,…

Over the last 30 years, the school choice movement has been one of the most prominent large-scale reform efforts in American education. In recent years, charter schools and voucher programs, in particular, have been a focus of policy makers and philanthropists. Mark Berends presents an overview of these two models, their prevalence, and what…

Behavioral economics and its concept of nudges are rapidly influencing the design of community-based financial education programs. This article addresses why nudges can be useful tools for effective financial education, explains the different types of nudges introduced by behavioral economics research, presents evidence of their effectiveness from…

A nonprofit community development financial institution and Extension collaborated to conduct a demonstration project to evaluate efficacy of Grameen peer-group microfinance methodology in addressing barriers faced by low-income women entrepreneurs in a small metro area. Program performance metrics achieved by 284 culturally diverse, low-income…

This note seeks to look back at the development and implementation process of the European Credit System for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET). It takes stock of its main achievements and how they are taken forward in the 2020 Council Recommendation on vocational education and training (VET) for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness…

Across the country, students are unwittingly leaving postsecondary credentials on the table without institutions awarding the associate degrees they have earned. A disproportionate number of those students are from populations that have been historically excluded from or overlooked in higher education, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous students,…

This is a brief overview of the complete findings shared in the Annual Report of the Cohort 3 TPSID Model Demonstration Projects (Year 2, 2021-2022). Information is provided about the TPSID (Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disability) projects including program characteristics, student characteristics,…

In dual enrollment programs, high school students can take college courses and earn both high school and college credit--but in the past, dual enrollment had been used mostly by high-achieving students. In 2016, the California Legislature passed a law that expanded access to students who had been underserved in higher education. The resulting…

Think College Reports present descriptive data in narrative and tabular form to provide timely information to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for review and use. This report provides an overview of descriptive program- and student-level data provided by Cohort 3 TPSIDs (Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with…

This report is an update to the Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) 2019 Transfer Report (see ED606179). WSAC submits a biennial progress report to the Washington state legislature that examines transfer associate degree effectiveness over time. As recommended by the 2019 report, this update is the first step toward applying an equity…

When Arizona State University announced in 2015 that it would offer a freshman year's worth of credit-bearing "massive open online courses" (MOOCs) for a fraction of the cost of its regular online and in-person classes, the news was met with both excitement and alarm. Education reformers proclaimed the move groundbreaking, saying it…

The Twilight School at Danbury High School in Connecticut helps students who are in danger of failing their freshman year to get back on track. In its first year, the program offered special credit-bearing after-school courses in biology and English to students who failed those classes in their first semester. The smaller class sizes and informal…

In recent decades, in line with improvements in technology, schools have increasingly opted for Online Credit Recovery Programs (OCRPs) over traditional face-to-face courses. Despite sharing a common goal with traditional face-to-face programs--providing a pathway for students to get back on track, to avoid failing additional courses and falling…

While there is no single profile of the adult learner in the 21st century, there exists a common desire to obtain a degree in higher education. Adult learners as a group are comprised of a large number of women and individuals from various racial/ethnic groups. In addition, they often possess varied learning styles and maintain multiple roles and…