In recent years many public colleges have attempted to attract and enroll high-achieving and diverse out-of-state students. Understanding why admitted out-of-state students choose to accept or decline their offers of admission has become an important part of these institutions' efforts to achieve their enrollment goals. In this study, out-of-state…

Structural equation modeling (SEM) considering how students' non-cognitive attributes influence first-year college student persistence remain extraordinarily rare--as are studies that test and expand upon published structural models or studies that include college student food security. This study addresses each. We surveyed "Beginner"…

Louisiana's performance-based funding (PBF) policy is one of the most recent implementations of performance funding established by a state for accountability purposes. Instead of examining direct academic outcomes, this study focuses on tuition increase as an (un)intended outcome of PBF implementation. We use data from multiple sources to create a…

Widespread attention to college tuition and student loan debt has resulted in increasing scrutiny of high levels of compensation for college and university administrators. Prior research has sought to identify a "pay for performance" relationship in executive compensation, but discovered no clear link between presidential salaries and…

In recent decades, several dozen colleges and universities have instituted loan-reduction initiatives (LRIs), such as "no-loan" programs. Institutions frequently cast such initiatives as efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity on campus. Using a difference-in-differences analytic strategy with national institution-level data, we…

Postsecondary students increasingly enroll in online courses, which have the potential to further democratize higher education by expanding access for historically underserved populations. While a number of studies have investigated student outcomes in online courses, past data limitations have hindered robust examination of a potential mechanism…

In 2010, the Obama Administration proposed new regulations designed to hold institutions of higher education (IHEs) accountable for student outcomes. I examine the effects of the regulatory uncertainty surrounding these "Gainful Employment" (GE) regulations on enrollment at for-profit IHEs. I utilize informational debt rates of GE…

Time management skills are an essential component of college student success, especially in online classes. Through a randomized control trial of students in a for-credit online course at a public 4-year university, we test the efficacy of a scheduling intervention aimed at improving students' time management. Results indicate the intervention had…

The study of student loan debt remains a timely and relevant higher education finance research and policy-oriented topic, especially when considering the alarming growth rates of student loan debt balances. The Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit released in May of 2018 shows that among all debt balances, student loans remain the only…

Economic recessions impact higher education institutions in complex ways. Several analyses have examined the influence of the 2007-2009 recession on tuition, enrollments, revenues, and expenditures, but the connection of these resource allocation patterns to a student success outcome--namely, retention--is limited. This study examined…

The current study examines costs, measured by educational and general (E&G) spending, and cost efficiency at 252 public master's institutions in the United States over a nine-year (2004-2012) period. We use a multi-product quadratic cost function and results from a random-effects model with a first-order autoregressive (AR1) disturbance term…

The Integrated Postsecondary Education System (IPEDS) collects data on Title IV institutions. The Delta Cost Project (DCP) integrated data from multiple IPEDS survey components into a public-use longitudinal dataset. The DCP Database was the basis for dozens of journal articles and a series of influential policy reports. Unfortunately, a flaw in…

This paper investigates the amount of academic service performed by female versus male faculty. We use 2014 data from a large national survey of faculty at more than 140 institutions as well as 2012 data from an online annual performance reporting system for tenured and tenure-track faculty at two campuses of a large public, Midwestern University.…

This study investigates whether public universities respond to declines in state appropriations by increasing nonresident freshman enrollment. State higher education appropriations declined substantially during the 2000s, compelling public universities to become more dependent on net-tuition revenue. State policy controls often limit the growth of…

High school students' accuracy in estimating the cost of college (AECC) was examined by utilizing a new methodological approach, the absolute-deviation-continuous construct. This study used the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) data and examined 10,530 11th grade students in order to measure their AECC for 4-year public and private…