In this dissertation, I examined the how honors programs and colleges serve as a tool for public universities to compete with private universities in the rankings game, as well as examining how that contributes to stratification processes. By building on the existing literatures within the organization of higher education, student experiences in…

Enrollment Management has been adopted by institutions of higher education as a strategy for managing enrollment to meet institutional goals, and it increasingly manifests as an administrative division that supports students. Many models of Enrollment Management exists, with the Divisional model being the most centralized; however, even within a…

Nontraditional scholars with online Ph.D. (NSOP) credentials may encounter skepticism about their credentials, which can be problematic if they opted for the flexibility and accessibility of online graduate education. Faculty members question NSOP motivations, program rigor, and institutional reputation. This study investigates the influence of…

Using archival records preserved by Iowa's community colleges, private four-year colleges, and public universities, this dissertation examines how Iowa's established higher education institutions responded to and adjusted to the "presence" of new two-year colleges from 1965 to 1975. This decade was a critical period of development for…

Most low-income, high-achieving students in the United States neither attend nor apply to selective universities despite research that shows that they are just as likely as their high-income peers to succeed if they do apply to those schools. Despite the fact that many universities have begun offering substantial financial aid packages that would…

Purpose: The purpose of this Delphi study was to explore the views of experts in the field of nonprofit private colleges and universities in the United States to define branding and identify current barriers to branding, to discover how those barriers can be overcome, and to determine what barriers to branding are likely to occur 5 years in the…

This study examined the effect that striving behavior has upon an institution's expenditures. While not the first study to examine such effects, it was the first to look across a multitude of institutional types, spanning seven levels of Carnegie classifications and encompassing public and private not-for-profit bachelors-granting schools to…

Higher education in America is resilient; in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, higher education manages to weather the storm of change, pressure, doubt, and criticism. Consider the following challenges: shifting demographics, escalating tuition, decreased state funding, retention and graduation rates, flat tuition revenue,…

Colleges and universities have been questioned regarding their use of endowments, with critics maintaining that these assets have significance beyond the financial benefits they provide and suggesting that institutions hoard endowment to attain unnecessary intangibles such as prestige. A few scholars have attempted to study the purposes of…

This qualitative case study examined the life impact of earning an online Bachelor's degree as an adult from a large private East Coast research university. As the number of adult students and the popularity of online learning continue to increase, there is a need for improved understanding of the value of online degree programs for adult…

The phenomenon of globalization has a significant impact on higher education, but the lack of a clear roadmap for how senior university officials should create and implement global engagement strategies and for how these approaches support (or impede) an organizational culture that fosters globalization remains a gap in knowledge in higher…

Service learning is an academic discipline that provides students with "hands-on" opportunities for developing skills in real-world, community-based projects that serve and benefit community members. This dissertation reflects an action-oriented process for improving the quality of the Service Learning Program at City University of…

Literature reveals that accreditation in the United States (U.S.) is a vital component of accountability to the higher education community. However, there is limited research on accreditation, specifically on the national accreditation of teacher and educator training programs. Therefore, this study is warranted in examining the perceived value…