This paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Despite conventional wisdom that most graduate students complete their programs, only 58 percent of who started their program in 2004 graduated within 6 years. Between the 2004 and 2013…

The interest and participation in dual credit programs and courses has grown over the past several decades, especially within Texas; however, there is a lack of research that shows how the participation in dual credit programs and courses has impacted leading and lagging student success metrics once they enroll at a post-secondary institution. The…

Delays in meeting math requirements can impede the progress among community college students who aspire to earn a baccalaureate degree. To investigate this issue, we used state administrative data from Texas to examine the prevalence and predictors of math course repetition and how math course repetition predicts transfer students' outcomes. More…

Few studies have been completed on the persistence of certificate-seeking students attending American proprietary career colleges. Therefore, this study investigated variables predicting the persistence of certificate-seeking students at ABC Career Health College (a pseudonym), a Texas proprietary career institution. Data for the quantitative…

There is interest in admission criteria that predict future success in biomedical graduate school programs, but identifying predictors of PhD attainment is inherently complex. In particular, high noncompletion rates of PhD programs have long been recognized as a major crisis. Here, we present a quantitative analysis of the PhD students enrolled in…

A portion of state-allocated funding for Texas community colleges has been reserved for the completion of outcome metrics, also known as performance-based funding. Texas community college leaders are faced with the challenges of adapting to increasing pressures from performance-based funding, while also ensuing institutional missions and goals are…

In response to concerns about the additional costs and time-to-degree associated with traditional developmental education programs, several states and postsecondary systems have implemented corequisite reform where academically underprepared students take both a developmental education course and college-level course in the same subject area…

In the state of Texas, the Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) has consistently created initiatives to bring Texans closer to the completion of a post-secondary program; this includes certifications and degrees that include marketable skills like Automotive Repair, Heating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and Welding. In the past 4 years, THECB…

Faced with national shortages of school psychologists, it is important that graduate educators explore different service delivery options to educate the greatest number of potential candidates to meet this need. One of the greatest areas of practitioner shortages is in the rural and less populated regions of the country, where a university can be…

The number of English learners (ELs) who do not reclassify as English proficient after the first five years of schooling has increased in the Houston area and the state of Texas. ELs are a diverse population of students with varying levels of English proficiency. Many students who begin school as an EL reclassify as English proficient in a timely…

In this study, we identified factors influencing completion rates (graduation) of undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We used hierarchical, logistic, and linear regression models to analyze the data and found significant predictor variable interactions across various underrepresented versus…

This qualitative study extends the research on postsecondary delay by examining the college experiences of six male nontraditional students from the North Texas area who purposefully postponed college education for 3 years after high school graduation to fulfill religious commitments. Unlike the majority of delayers, the participants successfully…

There is a national push for college completion. For some students, graduation may be stymied by financial status, in addition to other factors. The current study was conducted through secondary analysis of matching archival datasets from select East Texas institutions on full-time, first-time-in-college students with no previous college…

In an era of increased accountability for colleges and concerns about an affordable education, it is useful to understand whether students can adequately manage the debt burden they hold after leaving higher education. In 2015, Texas called for cumulative undergraduate debt to be 60% or less of public institution graduates' first-year earnings by…

Guided pathways are emerging as a strategy to help students complete a credential in a timely manner by encouraging or requiring them to select a program, and develop a degree plan or map, on a specified timeline. At a minimum, institutions may ask students to identify a meta-major, which is a broad area of academic programs with related courses…