This research explores the relationship between place and the career experiences of STEM-educated recent college graduates in the U.S. over the 2000-2010 decade. Specifically, it seeks to understand how these graduates' early career outcomes (earnings, odds of unemployment and underemployment) are contingent on the location where they received…

The purposes of this descriptive study were to better describe to the administrators of a Midwestern university the strengths and weaknesses of its physical education program, to furnish a description of the alumni with respect to employment longevity in the field of physical education, employment trends, and attitudes toward the program. The…

The present study examined the extent to which the U.S. STEM labor market is stratified in terms of quality of employment. Through a series of cluster analyses and Chi-square tests on data drawn from the 2008 Survey of Income Program Participation (SIPP), the study found evidence of segmentation in the highly-skilled STEM and non-STEM samples,…

This dissertation considers three research questions. Why do scientists become postdoctoral scholars (postdocs)? What role do postdocs play relative to other categories of labor in research production? What factors are associated with a postdoc being dissatisfied? The literature review in Chapter 2 summarizes findings about which scientists are…

The recent calls for increased accountability in higher education, and the rising demand for workers with middle skills, have combined to raise public awareness of the critical role of community colleges in educating the workforce. The accountability measures used by the institutions in answering this call, completion and retention rates, may not…

This study examined the development of nursing academic faculty at the college and university level as a profession using restricted data-sets from 1993-2004 of the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:93, NSOPF:99 and NSOPF:04). Faculty professionalization is defined within this study through characteristics in academic credentials,…

This study examined the relationship between cooperative education (co-op) and the early career outcomes of graduates at Missouri University of Science and Technology, a science and technological research university in the Midwest. The study's primary purpose was to provide university leadership with a quantitative evaluation of the university's…

Higher education in the United States is facing a potential leadership crisis. With the average age of campus presidents now surpassing 60 years, many senior level administrators will be expected to retire in the near future, creating a large wave of vacancies (Stripling, 2011). University and college boards are faced with the dilemma of fewer…

Education is a major focal point of individual justice within a free society as well as a central point of human capital for the world. This study compared the cognitive and personal developmental levels of community college students enrolled in developmental-level mathematics courses to students enrolled in college-level mathematics courses. In…

From the 1960s to the 1990s in the United States, a distinctive feature was observed in variations in the number of Bachelor's degree recipients by field of study. The number in each field demonstrated certain cyclical patterns. Similarly, the U.S. economy experienced fluctuations during a comparable period. Given this 40-year trend, this study…

Participants in this study included 2,421 special education doctoral students across the nation, responding to the "Survey of Doctoral Students in Special Education" in 1999 and 2009 as well as 813 special education graduates across the nation, responding to the "Survey of Earned Doctorates" through the National Opinion Research Center during the…

This dissertation is composed of three studies on Thai labor markets using a pseudo-panel data set: The first chapter estimates the rate of return to education in Thailand, while treating the endogeneity bias common to estimates from data on individuals. Pseudo-panel data are constructed from repeated cross sections of Labor Force Surveys…

This research explored the perceived factors that influenced the decisions of single and married mothers to enroll or not enroll in post-secondary education. The study then investigated the relationship between educational level and income for single mothers in Utah. From a survey of 1197 Utah mothers, this study concluded that mothers enroll in…

Individual variation in labor supply can arise from more than just a choice among discrete occupation groups, especially given the joint process of wage determination and time allocation. Other factors can include differential preferences for earnings, the time length of work and other related occupational attributes. Using data from the Wisconsin…