This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on academic "redshirting" in kindergarten, the practice of holding a child back for a year and enrolling them in kindergarten at age 6, using student-level data on all Delaware kindergarten students from fall 2014 through fall 2022. The rate of redshirting declined by 40% in fall 2020, then…

Graduate enrollment management (GEM) is a relatively new organizational concept and discipline. As an emerging profession, a common body of knowledge to structure and regulate the profession is critical to its professionalization. Identifying competencies is one method to create that knowledge and is a well-established method of measuring a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential relationship between student enrollment trends in elective secondary music ensembles and music ensemble teacher job turnover. Although student enrollment is widely accepted as an important concern for music educators and a crude proxy measure of music teacher quality, these normative…

We leverage a unique two-stage experiment that randomized access to private school vouchers across markets as well as students to estimate the revealed preference value of school choice. To do this, we estimate several choice models on data only from control markets before turning to the treatment data for model validation. This exercise reveals…

Tuition discounting has become a common strategy used in higher education to generate enrollment; however, little academic study has been done on its impact on the overall financial condition of higher education institutions. Those studies that have been completed regarding tuition discounting have primarily analyzed the use of tuition discounting…

This study examined the effect of specialized orientation courses on community college student academic achievement and retention. The study utilized a quantitative design and compared the outcomes of specialized orientation courses to a more generalized orientation course. Due to the lack of previous research, there was little to suggest either a…

Multilingual English learners (MELs) represent 10.4% of P-12 students and are the fastest-growing group of students in the United States. Another quickly growing student population are those dual enrolled (DE) in high schools and community colleges. DE increased 7% annually between 2002 and 2011, and increased by 11.5% from fall 2021 to fall 2022…

This dissertation examines the perceptions of parents who open enroll their children in an alternative public school by diving into the lived experiences of these individuals. The research is grounded in three theoretical frameworks: Parent Involvement Theory (McCurdy and Daro, 2001), Rational Choice Theory (Adler et al., 2014), and Market Theory…

Many institutions were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to change admissions policies as a response to logistical challenges around testing. However, even as logistical challenges have resolved, pandemic-era changes to higher education testing policies which reduced or eliminated testing requirements have remained in place in many schools. Now,…

Attracting prospective students could be difficult and expensive. Candidates, when choosing a future school for their studies, consider a great number of factors. Information from official university websites does not suffice to persuade. Word of mouth plays a significant role, among others. The aim of this paper is to present findings about…

How have changes in the price of enrolling full time at public 2- and 4-year colleges affected student decisions about whether and where to enroll in college? Using local differences in the growth of tuition at community colleges and public 4-year colleges, we study the impact of public higher education tuition prices on the post-secondary…

Over the last two decades, dual credit programs have emerged as viable pathways to postsecondary completion. Despite their potential, these programs remain largely untapped by high school students and their families who experience historical and ongoing educational injustices. This study explores the racialized organizational dynamics at a rural…

The mainpurpose of this study was to determine the relationship between undergraduate students' admission practices and their academic performance. The participants of this study were 233 undergraduate students who wereintheir first and third-year studies as well as two MaddaWalabu UniversityProfessors. A mixed Research method was employed to…

Policymaking too often happens among small groups of people, behind closed doors, which can lead to poorer design, worse outcomes, and a sense that government is a force to be reckoned with rather than a partner in problem solving. The New Practice Lab has long championed for participatory planning--bringing impacted people directly into…

This dissertation contains three chapters related to the study of how business cycles create real and persistent effects on economic agents. Chapter 1 focuses on young individuals' careers and college decisions; Chapter 2 on firms' firing and hiring asymmetric decisions and Chapter 3 on firms' sourcing strategies. In Chapter 1 "Strategic or…