Unlike other disciplines, social work has made accreditation decisions about undergraduate and graduate programs independent of licensure examination pass rates of graduates. While education, regulation, and practice are heralded as the three pillars of social work, there have been few meaningful linkages between them. Despite recognition that…

Student affairs scholarship has highlighted the importance of supervision, which is often an underdeveloped function of many professional positions. This study focused on 11 residential life mid- and senior-level supervisors to understand how restorative practices (RP) may be used to supervise staff. Major themes included conceptualizations of RP,…

Examining rhetoric is important to understanding educational policymaking. This study focuses on rhetoric on one educational policy, performance-based funding (PBF) for higher education. In contrast to previous research on PBF, we analyze rhetoric in both states that implemented the policy and those that opted out. We employ a sequential…

Community colleges, who are dependent on state and federal funding directly and through need-based student grants, have limited power in higher education. Similarly, public universities continue to lose decision-making authority as the neo-liberal philosophy permeates higher education broadly. This is an opportune time for public community…

Outstanding federal student loan debt exceeds $1.6 trillion and is owed by approximately 45 million borrowers. Thus, a policy to broadly cancel federal student loan debt would directly apply to a discrete segment of the U.S. population. Cancelling some amount of federal student loan debt would alleviate loan repayment burdens for qualifying…

Funding for public higher education has been cut in Kentucky in the decade starting 2008 (Spalding, 2019). Due to several contributing factors, including entitlement programs, healthcare costs, the great recession, and other competing demands at the state level, this is a nationwide trend and is not predicted to reverse any time soon. This funding…

With graduation rates under strict scrutiny, American institutions of higher education (IHEs) are examining ways to improve student retention. Students go through several monumental transitions throughout their undergraduate and graduate careers, which affect the trajectory and nature of their academic experiences. One unanticipated transition for…

In this report, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) seeks to fill the gaps in the conversation by providing thoughtful, systemic, and targeted policy solutions to address underlying flaws in the student loan repayment and servicing systems that lead borrowers into financial hardship. The report outlines…

This Open Access book addresses the theoretical grounding of the pedagogical dimensions of higher education leadership and its empirical study. The book's general point of departure is that educational leadership is a multi-level phenomenon, operating as policy work on a transnational and national level, as educational leadership on various…

This study explores university-based teacher educators' and undergraduate students' engagement with literacy coursework that meets the requirements of state accreditation while also developing instructional practices that honor the languages and literacies of racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse children. In this dissertation, the…

Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this…

This statutory report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from April 1, 2024, through September 30, 2024. The audits, investigations, and related work highlighted in the report are products of OIG's mission to identify and stop fraud, waste, and abuse; and promote…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how instructional designers in higher education in the United States described their experiences with collective affective emergent states (team cohesion and collective efficacy) when collaborating with faculty to design online courses. The foundation for the study was the…

Purpose: This study examined the conceptions of assessment and its relationship to self-regulation and self-confidence among pre-service teachers. Design/methodology/approach: Participants were 278 pre-service students attending a teacher's college in Bahrain. This study employed the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach to investigate the…

Examiners' judgements play a critical role in competency-based assessments such as objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs). The standardised nature of OSCEs and their alignment with regulatory accountability assure their wide use as high-stakes assessment in medical education. Research into examiner behaviours has predominantly explored…