In December 2019, Congress enacted and the President signed the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education Act (FUTURE Act; P.L. 116-91). The law The law amends the Higher Education Act (HEA) to permanently authorize mandatory funding for grant programs to support HBCUs and MSIs. Authorization for this funding had expired…

About 19 million people submit a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) each year, making it one of the most commonly experienced federal administrative processes. The widespread reliance on the complicated form and underlying calculation of financial need have spurred efforts to simplify and improve the application process and…

For the past 13 years, Sallie Mae's "How America Pays for College" study has surveyed American college students and parents of undergraduate students about their attitudes toward college and how they paid for it. The research examines families' attitudes toward the value of a college education, their key considerations about what school…

The United States and Pennsylvania economies remain deeply depressed compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. While the unemployment rate has come back down to around 7% (7.3% in Pennsylvania, 6.9% in the U.S.), Pennsylvania had 488,000 fewer jobs in October than February and the U.S., 10 million fewer. With COVID case rates higher than ever and…

This brief looks at how Pennsylvania distributed $174 million to Pennsylvania's public school districts in K-12 funding from the CARES Act that the federal government left up to states to allocate. The legislature and the Wolf administration agreed to distribute a fixed amount per district plus distribution of the remaining funds based on…

This brief is part of a broad landscape analysis focused on policy and practice issues related to the recognition of prior learning. The landscape analysis focuses on issues arising in the practice of the recognition of prior learning, policies that encourage or limit its adoption, and key research needs and future directions for the field. This…

This is the second year that the Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey--the longest-running and most-comprehensive survey of charitable giving to U.S. higher education institutions--has been under the auspices of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The brief that follows outlines basic findings from the 2019 survey,…

This dissertation seeks to understand the internationalization of public higher education in the United States through the investigation of an international programs office at a large land-grant university. The study identifies internationalization trends in higher education after World War II and focuses on the internationalization of The…

The Tribal Education Status Report (TESR), mandated by New Mexico's Indian Education Act, delivers a snapshot of efforts to support Native American students. The report highlights key initiatives, tracks educational trends, and proposes strategies to improve outcomes for these students across the state. The report breaks down New Mexico's public…

Access to high-quality early care and education (ECE) supports healthy child development, accelerates academic achievement, reduces educational inequality, and catalyzes economic growth. The benefits of ECE are even greater among economically disadvantaged children, children with disabilities, and multilingual learners. However, despite these…

This year's annual report begins with good news from the 2024-25 AAUP Faculty Compensation Survey: Wage growth for full-time faculty members in US higher education exceeded inflation for the second consecutive year, following three consecutive years of declining real (inflation-adjusted) salaries. However, despite the positive trend over the last…

The Washington Student Achievement Council's (WSAC) regional partnership model of state investment is in its third academic year, and the positive impacts are accumulating. This report unpacks four key areas where regional partnerships are designing, piloting, and implementing strategies with direct impacts on learners' access to education and…

Conventional wisdom suggests that a field of striving compels US public master's institutions (PMIs) to pursue prestige in the academic hierarchy. We posit that, due to their unique histories of democratizing college opportunity, PMIs face conflicting imperatives from two fields: an origin one of equity and another of striving. Our hypotheses are…

Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) across North America are located in communities grappling with the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The pandemic has intensified the stress on many Native communities already struggling with issues of economic sustainability and public health. Yet COVID-19--or "Dikos…

The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives of underrepresented minority students (URM) from several historically Black land-grant universities and minority-serving institutions (MSIs) who attended a STEM intervention program at a predominately White research-intensive university. Guided by expectancy-value motivation and…