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.…

Over the past several decades, there has been a shift toward gender parity in enrollment in colleges and universities across the United States. While more women have been enrolling in institutions of higher education, there has been a stagnation in the graduation rates of these women. This mixed methods study sought to understand the role that…

Currently, roughly one-third of college students fit the federal government's definition of first-generation college student status, meaning neither parent has earned a baccalaureate degree (RTI International, 2023). This study utilized archival data at an access institution in the southeastern United States in a causal-comparative study using…

This longitudinal study of 17,455 students, the majority from underrepresented groups, investigated leaks in the vertical transfer pipeline from associate's-degree program entry to bachelor's-degree receipt. Investigated were both the size of the leaks and some associated variables. Pipeline progress examinations included quantification of early…

Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is no research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. We link statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. Virtual charter…

National statistics indicate Latinos are a growing demographic across the U.S. Additionally, census data shows Latinos have low college enrollment and completion rates. Bilingual education is a venue through which many Latinos are schooled. Most studies on the impact of bilingual education have focused on elementary grade levels. Those that expand…

Researchers have attempted to understand how institutions could retain and graduate more students by proposing models to examine different relationships. A large body of research on college student persistence, retention and graduation has emerged and most of the research has been focused around the freshman experience, with little consideration…

Despite the growing popularity of free college proposals, countries with higher college subsidies tend to have higher enrollment rates but not higher graduation rates. To capture this evidence and evaluate potential free college policies, we rely on a dynamic model of college enrollment, performance, and graduation estimated using rich…

Increasing transfer success of community college students has the potential to improve preparedness of America's workforce. Yet little is known about the types of institutions to which students transfer from community colleges. This is the executive summary of the report, "Persistence: The Success of Students Who Transfer From Community…

Academic dismissal policies are increasingly implemented to promote academic success, with existing empirical evidence mostly restricted to short-run outcomes. This study examines long-term academic outcomes of academic dismissal for two cohorts (N=1707) of first-year bachelor students in Economics and Business at a Dutch university. Using…

We explore generalizability and fairness across sociodemographic groups for predicting on-time college graduation using a national dataset of 41,359 college applications. Our features include sociodemographics, institutional graduation rates, academic achievement, standardized test scores, engagement in extracurricular activities, and work…

The physics bachelor's class of 2016 represents yet another all-time high. There were 8,432 bachelor's degrees conferred, an increase of 4% from the previous year and a 131% increase from the recent low in 1999. First-year graduate physics student enrollments have remained at about 3,200 students for the last 5 years. The number of physics PhDs…

Nearly half of all postsecondary students today begin their college journey at a two-year institution (49.2 percent). Students enrolled at a community college are more likely to come from lower-income families than those at four-year institutions. Indeed, low-income students are three times as likely to start at a community college as high-income…

The problem targeted by this study is the widening imbalance between admissions and graduation rates occurring at many long-standing institutions of higher education. This study applied the theory of disruptive innovation to gain insight into the policies, procedures, beliefs, and perspectives of how a single college that was established in the…

Physics bachelor's degree production continues to increase, with the 8,122 bachelor's awarded representing yet another all-time high. Further increases in physics bachelor's degree production are anticipated as undergraduate junior- and senior-level enrollments continue to climb. The all-time high of 1,860 physics PhDs conferred in the class of…