Historically, the most common type of transfer student was described as traditional; they enrolled in a community college, earned an associate's degree, and transitioned to a four-year institution for degree completion. The highest degree of departure from one institution to the next occurs within the second year of enrollment (Hossler, et al.…

Using data from students and academic advisors at one of the nation's largest community colleges, our qualitative study examined the cost-related implications of efforts to increase full-time enrollment rates. Findings pinpoint several key interrelated financial factors that heavily influence students' assessment of the risk and rewards of…

Objective: Concurrent enrollment programming is on the rise in the United States. Offering authentic college coursework to high school students has been shown to increase college enrollment, persistence, and graduation, as well as cut down on cost and time to degree. This study provides perspectives on concurrent enrollment directly from students.…

In the United States, transferring from a two-year program to a four-year program has become an increasingly important route toward a bachelor's degree. However, the pathway has an extremely high attrition rate. Utilizing two recent institutional reforms in the University System of Georgia, I show that allowing community colleges to offer…

Prior research has explored how international students' interactions with domestic students and with other international students predict their self-reported short-term outcomes, particularly in the context of the environmental challenges that international students may encounter. The present study builds upon this earlier work by using…

Several states, including Texas, have implemented an "excess semester credit hours (ESCH)" policy. State ESCH policies assess a fee to students at public institutions when they exceed a set number of lifetime cumulative credit hours (e.g. students with more than the 120 credit hours needed for a bachelor's degree). In this article, we…

In this paper, a comparative evaluation of the undergraduate program of Chemical Engineering curriculums of Chinese and Ethiopian universities was performed. The study employed systematic qualitative methods to synthesize the current qualitative researches into an explanatory process. To comprehend the Chemical Engineering curriculum structure in…

This paper uses Advanced Placement (AP) exams to examine how receiving college credit in high school alters students' subsequent human capital investment. Using data from one large state, I link high school students to postsecondary transcripts from in-state, public institutions. I estimate causal impacts using a regression discontinuity that…

As college tuition rises nationwide, policy efforts to reduce these costs are increasingly focused at the 2-year level. However, it is not fully known whether increased access to college increases degree attainment. Compared to observationally equivalent peers who enroll in 4-year institutions, 2-year enrollees may face a decreased likelihood of…

Recent state policy efforts have focused on increasing attainment among adults with some college but no degree (SCND). Yet little is actually known about the SCND population. Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), we provide the first detailed profile on the academic, employment, and earnings trajectories of the SCND…

We explore the impact of excess credits, defined as additional credit hours accumulated by students beyond the required number of hours, on labor market outcomes. We consider whether additional credits have any impact on the labor market outcomes of job mismatch and income. Data are taken from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) study, a…

The majority of community college entrants aspire to earn a bachelor's degree; yet fewer than a third do. States use several strategies to support community college's transfer function, including a transferrable core curriculum, a block of pre-major coursework universally accepted at public postsecondary institutions. In this study, we used…

This study examined how transfer students perceived the value of the associate's degree in the context of reverse credit transfer. Five student focus groups of transfer students provided individual and collective discourses on the perceptions of the associate's degree. The findings show that transfer students perceived the associate's degree to be…

Educators seek to harness knowledge from educational corpora to improve student performance outcomes. Although prior studies have compared the efficacy of data mining methods (DMMs) in pipelines for forecasting student success, less work has focused on identifying a set of relevant features prior to model development and quantifying the stability…

An increasing number of universities have implemented prior learning assessment (PLA), but little research has examined the non-course matching approach referred to as block credit PLA. Adult learners pursuing a college degree often bring professional competencies, knowledge, and skills to the classroom. PLA enables adult learners to earn college…