Many institutions were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to change admissions policies as a response to logistical challenges around testing. However, even as logistical challenges have resolved, pandemic-era changes to higher education testing policies which reduced or eliminated testing requirements have remained in place in many schools. Now,…

Low-income students are underrepresented at selective colleges. Most evaluative criteria used by admissions officers are correlated with income, including test scores and performance in high school. Inspired in part by the current state of the use of testing in college admissions, this study examines how the quality of colleges attended by…

In higher education institutions (HEIs), online course delivery has been steadily increasing over the past couple of decades. However, the COVID-19 pandemic quickly accelerated this trend with some HEIs being better prepared than others. This case study explores how an open admission, regional university in the United States developed a robust…

This study addresses the persistent challenge of student retention in higher education by investigating the often-neglected role of staff in shaping student belonging and success, with a specific focus on open-enrollment, dual-mission institutions in Utah. Recognizing the complexities introduced by shifting student demographics and the growth of…

We use student-level administrative data from Delaware for 43,767 high school students across five 12th grade cohorts from 2017 to 2021. We apply Item Response Theory (IRT) to high school transcript data, treating courses as items and grades as ordered responses, to estimate both student transcript strength ([theta]) and course difficulty. We…

Pre-enrolment self-assessments are a promising way to address student commitment and retention in an early stage. Such assessments aim to inform study decisions by evoking reflection and providing advice for further preparation. Though these assessments require a solid validation process, so far the consequential validity aspect tends to be…

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ban on race-conscious admissions, the pursuit of diversity and equity in higher education is increasingly under threat. While access to higher education has improved overall for historically underrepresented students, the quality of that opportunity remains uneven, particularly along the lines of race/ethnicity…