While some stakeholders presume that studying abroad distracts students from efficient pursuit of their programs of study, others regard education abroad as a high impact practice that fosters student engagement and hence college completion. The Consortium for Analysis of Student Success through International Education (CASSIE), compiled…

Do older community college students build momentum toward graduation differently than their younger peers? One-third of students in community colleges are 25 years of age or older, and these students tend to have lower rates of graduation than their younger peers. Yet, we know little about how the factors that influence college graduation differ…

In higher education, many students do not complete their studies within the term allotted. A Dutch university implemented an intervention aimed to reduce this form of academic procrastination. The intervention consisted of three measures: (1) requiring students to acquire all first-year credits within their first year in university, (2) reducing…

Purpose: Faced with declining government funding support and rising student loan debt, recently timely graduation in higher education has become a focal point of discussion at many institutions, particularly public universities. Timely graduation requires a student to successfully enroll in and complete a set of required and elective courses, the…

Predicting student's successful completion of academic programs and the features that influence their performance can have a significant effect on improving students' completion, and graduation rates and reduce attrition rates. Therefore, identifying students are at risk, and the courses where improvements in content, delivery mode, pedagogy, and…

Little is known about the effects of need-based financial aid disbursed late into college and how students respond when they approach lifetime limits for receiving aid. I exploit changes to federal Pell Grant eligibility rules that reduced the lifetime availability for grant aid from 9 to 6 full-time-equivalent years to examine these questions.…

Following a sample of students who participated in admissions lotteries at eight Early College High Schools (ECs) partnering with 2-year colleges, this study examined the college enrollment and degree completion of students who won admissions lotteries and enrolled in ECs in Grade 9 (i.e., EC students), and assessed the EC impact--in terms of…

Four-day school week schedules are being adopted with increasing frequency, particularly in rural areas. In this paper, we consider the academic implications of students in Oregon attending a four-day school week for the first time when they enter high school. We find 11th grade math achievement in 0.09 standard deviations lower among four-day…

This study considered the influence of National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) sorority membership on graduation rate and time-to-degree. Data from women at 18 four-year postsecondary institutions comprised the dataset (n = 2,104 members, 2,139 nonmembers). Findings showed members had a higher graduation rate and were more likely than non-members to…

We examine GPA and timely graduation among Native Hawaiian (NH) students using a unique dataset of bachelor degree recipients from the University of Hawai'i. Our findings indicate that NHs have lower average GPA at graduation and the differences persist across the entire distribution of GPA. More troubling were the larger differences in GPA…

Income gaps in college enrollment, persistence, and graduation raise concerns for those interested in equal opportunity in higher education. We present findings from a randomly assigned scholarship for low-income students at a medium-sized public 4-year university. The program focused solely on the first four semesters of enrollment and tied aid…

In 2012, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) released a report stating, in no uncertain terms, that "the American dream is imperiled." Data supporting this declaration highlighted a sagging economy and a record number of Americans who had fallen into poverty. A product of the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of…

This paper evaluates whether student loans given to poor students at a large university in Peru are effective in reducing the time-to-degree. It uses a methodology that avoids the "selection problem" because the students voluntarily request a loan depending on their economic situation. The econometric results confirm the negative effect…

Graduation and time to degree are paramount concerns in higher education today and have caught the attention of policy makers, educators and researchers in recent years. However, our understanding is limited regarding the factors related to graduation and time to degree beyond students' pre-college characteristics (demographics and academic…

The study investigated the relationship between timely graduation and academic and institutional factors for a cohort of Engineering students at a South African university. The sample was restricted to 1595 incoming students beginning during 2009-2011 who were tracked to 2016, allowing for an eight-year graduation period for the initial cohort.…