This paper reports results from a resume-based field experiment designed to examine employer preferences for job applicants who attended for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges have seen sharp increases in enrollment in recent years despite alternatives such as public community colleges being much cheaper. We sent almost 9,000 fictitious resumes…

Online learning continues to grow at post-secondary institutions across the United States, but many question its efficacy, especially for students most at-risk for failure. This paper engages that issue. It examines recent research on the success of community college students who take online classes and explores similar comparisons using 656,258…

This annual report, in its seventh edition, found that Education Management Organizations (EMOs) tend to focus on managing charter primary schools and on enrolling relatively large numbers of students in those schools. Fifty-nine EMOs operate in 24 states and the District of Columbia, enrolling some 239,766 students. The report is the most…

Community colleges enroll almost half of all undergraduates in the United States. These two-year colleges manifest the American commitment to accessible and affordable higher education. With about 1,200 institutions nationwide, community colleges have made significant progress over the past decade in opening access and have become the critical…

In the first decade of the 21st century, the nation, the states, and colleges and universities began to grapple with the challenges of globalization, changing demography, the implications of the digital era, and of a less expansive public sector. Although not a transformative period for higher education, the decade saw significant innovations in…

The General Accounting Office (GAO) examined the extent to which the financial aid provided under Title IV of the Higher Education Act to students enrolled in proprietary schools is being spent to train individuals for demand occupations. Job opening projections in 12 states were used to estimate job demand, the National Center for Education…