This report fulfills the statutory responsibilities of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission pursuant to T.C.A. (Tennessee Code Annotated) Section 49-7-202(f) to report on the progress made toward full articulation between all public institutions. In order to evaluate articulation among institutions, this report tracks the occurrence of…

The British Columbia post-secondary system is articulated or "seamless" in that it allows for students to make dynamic transitions into and through the system. But what types of transitions do students actually make? What level of student debt do they incur? What credentials do they earn and how do these credentials help them to secure…

Since 1997, four national studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Education have been completed on the Federal TRIO programs. Data from these studies demonstrate that participation in a TRIO program has a significant impact on the educational outcomes of low-income, first-generation students and students with disabilities. This paper provides…

Performance funding in higher education ties state funding directly to institutional performance on specific indicators, such as rates of retention, graduation, and job placement. One of the great puzzles about performance funding is that it has been both popular and unstable. Between 1979 and 2007, 26 states enacted it, but 14 of those states…

This last report from Mathematica's evaluation of Upward Bound analyzes data from the final round of survey and transcript data collection as well as administrative records from the National Student Clearinghouse and the federal Student Financial Aid files. It provides the first estimates of the effects of Upward Bound on postsecondary completion.…

The 2009 SOAR (Student Outcome and Achievement Report) relies upon two sets of data, the academic performance data (which are collected directly from the colleges and universities) and the SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test)/ACT (American College Testing Program) data, to examine the relationship between students' academic achievements and…

To improve performance, Connecticut must: (1) Increase student access and success in all types of postsecondary education (4-year, 2-year, training), particularly in critical workforce fields; (2) Reach consensus on what constitutes a "college-ready" curriculum for high school students; (3) Improve college graduation rates; and (4)…

The quest for educational equity is a moral imperative for a society in which education is a crucial determinant of life chances. Yet whether there is an economic return to the taxpayer for investing in educational justice is often not considered. It is possible that the economic benefits of reducing inadequate education exceed the costs,…

President Obama is the most prominent of a growing number of American policymakers to embrace the idea that some form of postsecondary education is crucial to students' success after high school. This year's edition of "Diplomas Count", a report by "Education Week" and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center,…

In nearly two decades as a community-college leader, Martha J. Kanter has earned acclaim for a strong record helping disabled and low-income students graduate from college and for her bold efforts to overhaul curricula to help more students master basic skills. After working for more than 30 years at nearly every level of the California community…

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and…

Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Student Engagement and includes: (1) Texas Public School Attrition Study, 2007-08: At Current Pace, Schools Will Lose Many More…

This paper reviews state cross-institutional policies designed to better integrate state community colleges with traditional four-year colleges and university system schools, commonly referred to as "transfer and articulation policies," and examines how patterns of college attendance, transfer, and degree earning vary across states with different…

Our study examined the factors related to the retention/academic success of African American males at a mid-sized, regional, predominantly white university in the south. The selected university has an African American male graduation rate, of approximately twenty three percent, which is thirteen percentage points below the national Black male…

In British Columbia, K-12 school Aboriginal students' completion rates are far from equivalent to those of their non-Aboriginal peers. In addition, there is a high degree of variability in Aboriginal students' school completion rates across schools and communities. Administrative data associating approximately 1.5 million school census records of…