Competency-based education (CBE) is a learner-centric framework that emphasizes what students "know and can show" more than how much time they spend in the classroom. CBE advocates claim that by allowing students to take as little or as much time as they need to demonstrate their mastery of course competencies, students develop higher…

The interest and participation in dual credit programs and courses has grown over the past several decades, especially within Texas; however, there is a lack of research that shows how the participation in dual credit programs and courses has impacted leading and lagging student success metrics once they enroll at a post-secondary institution. The…

Do older community college students build momentum toward graduation differently than their younger peers? One-third of students in community colleges are 25 years of age or older, and these students tend to have lower rates of graduation than their younger peers. Yet, we know little about how the factors that influence college graduation differ…

Postsecondary programs in early childhood education (ECE) can provide a pathway for new educators to enter the child care and early education (CCEE) field or for the advancement and professional development of individuals already in the field. At a time when CCEE administrators report difficulties in finding qualified applicants, the recruitment…

This joint study by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project points to important differences between the four-year and six-year completion rates for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduates who received bachelor's degrees. It investigates four-year and six-year college completion trends for 2004-14 CPS…

First-generation college students (FGCS), nearly 50% of which identify as Hispanic, are an underserved population. The psychosociocultural theoretical framework posits that individual, environmental, and cultural factors contribute to the academic success of Hispanic students. This study examined the relationship between these factors (i.e.,…

States and institutions employ articulation agreements to streamline curricular pathways. We investigate the efficacy of that streamlining by considering how course sequences, enacted through pre- and co-requisites, relate to graduation rates for transfer students at different time intervals. Applying a curricular complexity framework that…

Community colleges are essential for United States higher education, but their students have low retention and graduation rates. Community college students assigned to mathematics remediation are particularly unlikely to graduate. Corequisite remediation (college-level coursework with additional support) has shown short-term increased student…

California has long been a destination of opportunity--and challenge--for Black Californians. Known for its innovation and economic prosperity, California's higher education institutions play a critical role for social and economic mobility for Black residents. In "The State of Higher Education for Black Californians," published in…

California is projected to fall 1.1 million bachelor's degrees short of economic demand by 2030. Expanding access to higher education could help shrink the gap, but California also needs to boost the likelihood that students who enroll in college will stay on track to earn degrees. The share of adults with bachelor's degrees is slightly larger in…

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…

In this article, I utilize a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of Tulsa Achieves--a prevalent and understudied type of tuition-free college program. In contrast to concerns regarding tuition-free community college suppressing bachelor's degree attainment, I find that Tulsa Achieves increased the likelihood of transferring to…

Transfer articulation agreements are employed by institutions of higher education and state legislatures alike to improve transfer efficiency between two-year and four-year institutions. These agreements often aim both to increase transfer rates and baccalaureate degree completion and to decrease time to degree. Studies exploring the efficacy of…

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…

Colleges offer remedial coursework to help students enrolling in post-secondary education who are not adequately prepared to succeed in college-level courses. Despite the prevalence of remediation, previous research presents contradictory findings regarding its short- and long-term effects. This paper uses a doubly robust inverse probability…