The massification of higher education has dramatically changed the association between credentials and jobs in advanced countries, while its impacts in transitional economies have received less academic attention. To address this research lacuna, the paper utilizes rich information from China's national surveys of college graduates from 2003 to…

Full-time teaching-focused faculty at research universities may hold alternative titles such as Assistant Teaching Professor, Instructor, or Lecturer. We manipulated the title of a fictitious faculty target to investigate how such titles are perceived. Student and lay respondents (N = 317) respected and liked all targets, and their ratings did not…

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…

This supplemental technical report provides methodology for the full report (published separately). The full report compares employment and earnings outcomes of 2013 graduates in AISD with and without industry certifications and whether graduates with certifications worked in a related field. [For the full report, see ED627090.]

This third installment of "Hard Times" updates the previous analyses of college majors, unemployment, and earnings over the Great Recession. While there is wide variation by college majors, hard times have become better times for most college graduates, but the recovery is far from complete. Hard times are becoming better times for most…

The evolution of community colleges from their origins as junior colleges to institutions with dual missions to provide both academic and workforce preparation raises questions about the impact of a college's mission focus on its students' labor market success. We examine this question using data from the 58 colleges in the North Carolina…

Gainful employment and earnings to support a family living are significant policy goals of the applied baccalaureate program. Therefore, employment is an important metric to study; however, there are limitations in the data and process used in past reports that make understanding the true impact of applied baccalaureate programs on an individuals'…

Washington's community and technical colleges (CTCs) play an important role in producing baccalaureate degree graduates in the state. They expand opportunities for both graduates and employers, build upon professional-technical associate degrees, and provide a clear pathway for students who may be place bound or have difficulty finding a transfer…

A college degree is often viewed as a key step toward better employment and higher earnings. Many community college students, however, never graduate and cannot reap the financial benefits associated with a college degree. Although existing research suggests that financial aid interventions can modestly improve students' short-term academic…

Postsecondary education has been linked to improved access to employment opportunities for individuals with and without disabilities. The purpose of this study was to determine factors associated with increased employment outcomes for Vocational Rehabilitation consumers enrolled in community college short term occupational skill training programs.…

Earning a college degree increases a person's life outcomes in income, employment, health, and quality of life. The average person with a bachelor's degree earns almost twice as much as a high school graduate and nearly triple that of someone who did not finish high school. The unemployment rate for people with bachelor's degrees is about…

A substantive amount of research has been conducted on how work influences persistence and completion, for those who decide to leave we know little about where they go to work and how much they earn. The purpose of this study was to explore the work behaviors of a cohort of students who began their postsecondary experience at a community college…

The growing use of part-time, non-tenure track faculty in higher education has become a nationwide phenomenon. The college-teaching part-time instructor is one who is working for low pay, has little job security, and has few benefits. College part-time instructors' employment is in a contingent state. They do not have the job protection provided…

To increase the rate at which adult basic skills students advance to and succeed in college-level occupational programs, the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) developed the Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training, or I-BEST. In the I-BEST model, a basic skills instructor and an occupational instructor team…

The "Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Fact Book on Higher Education" is one of the nation's most comprehensive collections of comparative data on higher education. For decades, state leaders, policy-makers, researchers and journalists have used the "Fact Book" to find useful data quickly--and to learn more about…