Five years ago Alaska's high school graduating class of 2011 became the first with the opportunity to accept the state's "invitation to excellence," the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS), to pursue their postsecondary studies. Eligible graduates could receive up to $4,755 per year for up to four years to study at a participating…

This article explores the promises and pitfalls of using National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) data to measure a variety of postsecondary outcomes. We first describe the history of the NSC, the basic structure of its data, and recent research interest in using NSC data. Second, using information from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data…

Despite the introduction of pre-college programs to offer support to under-represented students in the 1950's and 60's (Jager-Hyman, 2004), the achievement gap between white students and students who belong to under-represented student populations has not shrunk significantly. Today, there are more students belonging to under-represented…

This study examined whether eligibility for the Florida Student Access Grant, a need-based grant for low-income students in Florida, affects college enrollment, credit accumulation, persistence over time in college, and, eventually, graduation. The sample for this study included seniors in Florida public high schools in 1999-2000 who submitted a…

This report provides a detailed analysis of Nebraska's progress toward increasing its educational attainment. This report presents the Nebraska Legislature with comparative statistics to monitor and evaluate progress toward achieving three key priorities for Nebraska's postsecondary education system: (1) Increase the number of students who enter…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand the college-going experiences of 10 high-achieving first-generation Latino college juniors and seniors at a Hispanic-Serving Institution in the southwest. Despite facing barriers, many first-generation Latino students succeed in attending and completing their postsecondary education. Yet,…

This report builds on the 2013 and 2014 Reports on Unmet Need and Student Success at Maryland Public Four-Year Institutions by providing data on six-year graduation rates for the students in the original 2008 entering cohort. For this report, both descriptive analysis and logistic regression were used to understand the relationship between…

College choice is often tied to persistence and it emphasizes how family background affects both enrollment in higher education and persistence to degree. Despite extensive research related to both access to higher education and choice processes, there is still much to be learned about students' postsecondary decisions. This qualitative study…

In the nearly fifty years since the adoption of the Higher Education Act of 1965, financial aid programs have grown in scale, expanded in scope, and multiplied in form. As a result, financial aid has become the norm among college enrollees. Aid now flows not only to traditional college students but also to part-time students, older students, and…

This paper examines the effect of early childhood investments on college enrollment and degree completion. We used the random assignment in Project STAR (the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio experiment) to estimate the effect of smaller classes in primary school on college entry, college choice, and degree completion. We improve on…

The Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) submits this report in response to the 2014 Joint Chairmen's Report, which requested an update to the 2013 MHEC report that examined impacts of financial need on student success. The charge included in the 2014 Joint Chairmen's Report was the following: "As part of the Access, Affordability, and…

In many public U.S. universities, Hispanic undergraduates are underrepresented in terms of enrollment and graduation. This mixed-method geographical study investigated whether some public universities outperform others in recruiting and retaining Hispanic undergraduates. The quantitative findings showed that the effect of financial aid and…

Few words have dominated the vocabulary of college retention as has the word "persistence." Many institutions still struggle to engage faculty and administrators in building campuswide retention efforts, to find the organizational levers that translate the abstractions and complexities of retention theory into scalable and durable initiatives, and…

This investigation determined the degree of importance for selected personal-psychological, academic, peer, financial, and family factors influencing the decision to attend college by first-generation, Appalachian (FGA) sophomore students. Outcomes were further related to the degree of academic and social integration in college and the likelihood…

The Alaska Performance Scholarship was established in state law in 2011 and first offered to Alaska high school graduates beginning with the class of 2011. Described as "an invitation to excellence" to Alaska's high school students, its goal was to inspire students to push themselves academically in areas that correlate to success in…