Educators and policymakers have continued to search for the ideal medium for gauging learning and teacher accountability. After nearly 50 years since the inception of assessments to prove minimum competency, many attempts have been made to reform the process and the assessment tool. With the current focus in education being on career and college…

Corequisite remediation, which mainstreams students deemed academically underprepared into college-level courses with additional learning support, is rapidly being adopted by colleges across the nation. This paper provides the first causal evidence on a system-wide corequisite reform, using data from all 13 community colleges affiliated with the…

This report is third in a series of informational briefings developed as part of "The Guardians Initiative: Reclaiming the Public Trust," an effort to educate and engage trustees as advocates on key issues in higher education. The compact between American higher education and the broader society has always been multifaceted. Colleges and…

College students struggling to pass a college level math course required for Quantitative Literacy (QL) credit1 has been a common issue facing many institutions in higher education. In the fall of 2014, the Utah State Board of Regents solidified a statewide initiative that set goals for each of the Utah System of Higher Education institutions (UU,…

The intent of this study was to focus on distance learning students' and advisors' perceptions of distance advising at a large, public university. Specifically, this study addressed four questions: what were the perceived performance gaps between distance learning students and distance learning advisors practice, how distance learning students'…

Administrators at a large, public university launched a mandatory success course for freshmen placed on academic probation at the end of their first semester. We compared the rates of course participant and nonparticipant return to good academic standing; persistence to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years; and graduation (within 4 to 5 years). The…

This study tested a hypothetical model for predicting both graduate GPA and graduation of University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work Master of Science in Social Work (MSSW) students entering the program during the 2001-2005 school years. The preexisting characteristics of demographics, academic preparedness and culture shock along with…

Following a national trend, state policy has focused on accountability measures such as high-stakes high school exit exams, standards-based reforms, and graduation curriculum requirements. Yet the effect of these accountability policies on students' readiness for college is relatively untested. In a multilevel model (students within states), the…

The study presented in this bulletin is based on the analysis of the requirements for the bachelor's degree of 101 universities and colleges in the United States, including Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The first chapter contains a brief summary of the history of entrance and college graduation requirements for the bachelor's degree with special…