For decades, educators and policy makers have decried low graduation rates at US colleges, advocating policies and making investments to improve graduation. We analyze a decade of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for four-year colleges to investigate how much institutions have improved their graduation rates from 2008…

This research study focused on the potential factors impacting students with disabilities (SWDs) course placement and graduation rates at Simmons High School (SHS), a large urban school in Massachusetts. Preliminary research found that approximately 50% of SWDs graduate each school year at SHS and are historically marginalized compared to their…

Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this…

Although interdisciplinary scholars have long debated the ethics of empathy, it continues to be widely seen as universal, prosocial, and reparative in education. Subject English, long associated with the work of producing civilised, moral and cultured students, is a critical locus for the activation of empathy. But what becomes of empathy in the…

Local teacher recruitment through "grow-your-own" (GYO) programs is a prominent strategy to address workforce shortages and ensure that incoming teachers resemble, understand, and have strong connections to their communities. Despite the growing popularity of GYO programs, there is little credible evidence of their effectiveness. The…

This study examines the influence of varying levels of online enrollment on community college students' likelihood of degree completion, with a particular focus on completion outcomes among traditionally underserved subgroups of students. Using institutional transcript data from a high-enrollment community college and a propensity score weighting…

The Biomedical Freshman Research Initiative (BFRI) is a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), a hispanic-serving institution. Our analysis showed that BFRI participation was associated with retention in the BS in Biomedical Science program and at UTRGV. No significant difference…

Doctoral students' program non-completion continues to be a worldwide phenomenon. Given the challenges across the globe following the 2020-22 pandemic, we need scholarly and skilled PhD and education (EdD) doctoral program graduates. A place to look for retention improvement is by studying what students learn and how they are taught in their…

Objective: Six-year cohort completion rates calculated for California community college students--who declared their goal to obtain a certificate, associate degree, or become university transfer ready--averaged just below 50% for cohorts entering the fall semesters between 2007 and 2011. The range of this completion rate varied from 23% to 67%.…

This article uses Yosso's (2005) framework of cultural capital and Matos's (2011, 2015, 2019) findings on cultural capital to examine how these frameworks can be used to recruit and retain Latinx college students. The article discusses the engagement of Latinx parents in higher education and offers suggestions on how higher education professionals…

Prior research in student retention emphasizes that building students' connections with the institution and their peers is key. Students from underrepresented populations often lack these connections, making them more prone to dropping out or transferring majors, especially in high-pressure engineering and polytechnic programs. In this article, we…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a parsimonious but rigorous model to assist decision-makers to determine critical factors which can lead to higher graduation rates amongst higher education institution (HEI) participants. It predicts the odds of dropout amongst university students, using HEI data from a developing country. This is used as a…

This article reports on the self-perceived impacts of service-learning experiences from the perspective of alumni who graduated from a technical university in Taiwan. Drawing on the alumni responses in a focus group interview, the study investigated how the respondents perceived the impacts of participation in a service-learning project. Findings…

Higher education institutions are increasingly relying on funding from the private sector (Council for Aid to Education, 2013) as state funding to higher education has decreased in recent years. Bridging the gap between university financial needs and available funding has become a high priority. In the process, higher education institutions have…

While there is an increase in racial and ethnic diversity on college campuses, the rate of degree completion remains uneven and disproportionate to the population (Aud et al., 2012; Williams, 2013). For Black and Latinx students at both two- and four-year institutions, degree completion issues remain persistent and have widened over time (Taylor…