School districts increasingly gauge school quality with surveys that ask about school climate and student engagement. We use data from New York City's middle and high schools to compare the long-run predictive validity of surveys with that of conventional test score value-added models (VAMs). Our analysis leverages the New York school match, which…

Today, nearly 43.1 million people are stopped out of college without a credential. Of these, 37.6 million are working age adults under age 65. As states look to increase the skills of their labor forces and institutions confront changing demographic realities, re-engaging with these "Some College, No Credential" (SCNC) individuals has…

In a period of growing concerns about the financial viability of many colleges, students and their families have little information about the extent to which a particular institution is struggling. The U.S. Department of Education uses heightened cash monitoring (HCM) and financial responsibility metrics as two tools to identify colleges that…

Declines in state appropriations have decreased the ability of public research universities to hire faculty, particularly tenure line faculty. Many universities have grown nonresident enrollment as a substitute for state funding. This study investigates whether faculty hiring was associated differently with nonresident enrollment growth versus…

In this brief, the authors examine changes in enrollments at the Los Angeles Community College District between fall 2017 and summer 2023 to document the extent of pandemic-era enrollment declines overall and across student populations.

Obtaining a postsecondary education is an important factor in long-term labour market success (Frenette 2019) and a key mechanism for achieving intergenerational income mobility (Simard-Duplain and St-Denis 2020). Previous research ending in 2014 documented substantial gaps in postsecondary enrolment rates between higher- and lower-income youth…

Guidance counseling is well known to foster enrollment in higher education among students from low social origins in the United States and Canada. However, because students in these North American countries face obstacles that do not exist in many European countries, generalizing previous findings to the European context is difficult. Against this…

Using a rich and unique nationally representative sample of a cohort of young adults selected in the late 1970s and surveyed routinely through the 2010s, this study characterizes patterns in college enrollment with respect to the timing of initial enrollment, enrollment interruptions, and graduation (or non-completion) and investigates the…

Declining enrollment quickly raises financial challenges within colleges and universities, such as decreased tuition and fee revenues, costs that can be difficult to nimbly control, and reputational risk. For public institutions within the same state, declining enrollment can also have a secondary impact: increasing competition. While a state's…

This quantitative, exploratory study examined the budget decisions made by administrative leaders and academic leaders at 15 Pennsylvania community colleges as measured by the Budget Criteria Instrument (BDCI). Sixty-two leaders ranked 15 budget criteria items on the 4-point Likert scale used by the BDCI and the responses were analyzed based on…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global student mobility, leading to sharp declines in international student enrollment at U.S. higher education institutions (HEIs). Research on the effects of the pandemic highlights key challenges faced by international students, including financial instability, mental health concerns, and experiences of racism…

Who 'owns' student success at an institution of higher education? Which unit is responsible for student outcomes? The answer to those questions at most universities is complicated. The evidence-based programmes, processes and interventions institutions implement to bolster student success are rarely 'communications' initiatives, but they all…

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the impact of tuition fee increases in England on the full-degree mobility of undergraduate students from the European Union. First, we investigated whether the increase in tuition fees reduced the number of EU students in English higher education institutions. Our analysis shows that, on average,…

As a result of systemic barriers, undocumented immigrants are more likely to enroll in community colleges and to enter these institutions with higher prior academic achievement than their peers. I explore the potential spillover benefits of this hyperselection on other students using data from a large community college system and two…

Since 2011, the Ontario provincial government has made significant investments into improving the efficiency of vertical transfer--from community colleges to university--within its post-secondary education system. During this period, local policy analysts have repeatedly emphasized the need to account for geography when developing strategies to…