Education administrators are placing greater demands on university faculty, staff, and admission counselors to enroll and retain more students. Understanding this transition and the associated challenges is important for institutions of higher education so they can better assist black male students as they navigate through college and…

Completing the A-G course sequence is the standard pathway to college for California high school graduates; however, findings indicate that there is substantial variation in A-G enrollment and completion rates across student subgroups and schools. This brief describes the distribution in access to and success in A-G courses as well as strategies…

Developmental education is the starting point for many 1st-year college students, especially from underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation populations. One such 1st-year program linked block-scheduled academic skill-development courses with a required interdisciplinary general education science course where instruction was provided…

This paper examines how colleges respond to the introduction of broad merit aid programs. Previous research has emphasized the impact of merit aid on enrollment, student choices, and post-matriculation outcomes. Yet much less is known about how state-implemented merit aid programs affect colleges' financial decisions. To explore impacts, college…

Background: Pipeline and pathways models influence persistence metrics used to study how students navigate engineering education. Purpose: This study presents pipeline, pathways, and ecosystem models and their associated metrics, compares and contrasts these models using an intersectional approach to explore persistence, and advocates for use of…

Building on previous research showing how well ninth-grade student behaviors predict on-time high school graduation, this experimental study investigates the impact of a ninth-grade intervention on student attendance and course passing. The study, conducted in 41 geographically and demographically diverse high schools within a single state,…

Student attrition is a significant problem and a huge challenge from an institutional point of view. Although completion rates in Poland are lower than in most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the problem has not been studied thoroughly. In order to shed light on that problem the aim of this paper is to present the…

Currently, the state of California has dedicated much focus to reducing absenteeism in schools through the In School + On Track initiative, which revitalizes efforts made to keep accurate and informative attendance data. Additionally, absenteeism has been integrated into California's Local Control and Accountability Plan to monitor district…

Online students are often short-changed when they reach their most important milestone--graduation. For many institutions, virtual graduation has proven to be a holy grail of sorts--critically important to student experience, but illusive in form and difficult to achieve. This article explores several existing models of virtual graduations, and…

The provision of grant aid is important to students' postsecondary opportunities and success. It is well established that grant aid increases the probability of enrollment in postsecondary education. A slate of studies in recent years has extended this research to examine whether grant aid also has an impact on persistence and degree attainment.…

This study illustrates a method for evaluating the accuracy of performance metrics and identifies potential institutional and student attributes that may increase the likelihood of classification errors. Longitudinal data were obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Eduation Data System for public 4-year institutions (N = 558) to evaluate…

Learning Support Services at the University of California, Santa Cruz is intended to aid students--particularly those who are at highest risk of academic failure--to master the required material and succeed in their courses. It includes two primary components: modified supplemental instruction (MSI) and tutoring. This study uses data from…

Background: College-completion policies dominate state higher education policy agendas. Yet we know little about how policy actors make decisions--and what sources of evidence they use--within this policy domain. Focus of Study: This study explores the use of evidence in college-completion policymaking in depth, focusing on Texas. In addition to…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to discover the social change model of leadership values of 8 high school principals. The Higher Education Research Institute (Astin & Astin, 1996) of the social change model of leadership and Leithwood's (1992) educational model of transformational leadership was applied as the theoretical framework for…

Despite an increased need for qualified and certified teachers, teacher preparation programs like the physical education teacher education (PETE) program are diminishing. This study focused on nine PETE programs existing within higher education institutions in this selected area within the Southern region of the United States. The purpose of this…