The first goal of this study was to better understand the differences between rural and urban students' selection of academic program upon entering a public university in Pennsylvania. The second goal of this study was to better understand if particular academic programs impacted rural to urban migrations after graduating from the university. The…

The United States has widely experimented with merit-based financial aid to make college more accessible and affordable for its youth. Varying in design and benefits, these state-run programs subsidize college costs for academically meritorious high-school graduates. While broadly linked to higher college attendance the distribution of aid…

This study empirically examines different factors that influence students to select universities in the UAE. The primary data were collected based on a survey of students at two public universities -- United Arab Emirates University and Zayed University, as well as three private universities -- New York University, Abu Dhabi University, and Alain…

This paper examines how colleges respond to the introduction of broad merit aid programs. Previous research has emphasized the impact of merit aid on enrollment, student choices, and post-matriculation outcomes. Yet much less is known about how state-implemented merit aid programs affect colleges' financial decisions. To explore impacts, college…

Background: Most community college students from low-income families have ambitious educational degree goals, but only a small fraction attains them. For many decades, sociologists have primarily attributed this problem to a cooling out process in which college practitioners diminish students' educational ambitions using academic reorientation…

In this dissertation, I explore questions relating to estimating and framing college net pricing. In the first study, I measure variation in actual grant aid awards for students predicted by the federal template Net Price Calculator (NPC) to receive identical aid awards. Estimated aid derived from the federal template NPC accounts for 85 percent…

College choices are among the most consequential decisions individuals make in their lifetimes. Students are entitled to information that meets five principles: simple, salient, comparable, timely, and trusted. "Consumer Information in Higher Education" describes how research informs these five key principles and recommends improvements…

Using a phenomenological method, this study explored the higher-education affordability perceptions of a purposively-collected group of 19 students at the pseudonymous Crestview Community College (CCC) in Colorado. The defining themes of the study were: (a) knowledge of the College Opportunity Fund (COF) program and perceptions of higher-education…

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in competency-based education, a learning modality which is mastery-based, self-paced and focused on demonstrations of knowledge and skill rather than where or how they were attained (C-BEN, 2016; Cuckler, 2016; Tate & Klein-Collins, 2015; U.S. Department of Education, 2002). The face of higher…

Introduced this year, "How America Pays for Graduate School" is a national study by Sallie Mae, conducted by Ipsos. This new study is designed to complement Sallie Mae's "How America Pays for College" report, which, for the last 10 years, has provided insights into how American families plan and pay for college, with a focus on…

For students and their families, deciding whether and where to go to college is one of the most important financial decisions they will ever make. However, unlike buying a computer, house, or car, most prospective students do not know how much it will cost them to attend a particular school until many of their choices about college have already…

By providing early, individualized estimates of college costs and financial aid, net price calculators can help prospective college students and their families look past often scary "sticker prices" and start figuring out which colleges they might be able to afford. These online tools, currently available on almost all college websites, can help…

The effectiveness and efficiency of financial aid programs for providing equality of choice between public and private institutions are examined. (SF)

A study analyzed demographic, socioeconomic, and financial factors in enrollment behavior of accepted applicants to Iona College (New York). Financial aid had a positive impact on enrollment decisions (excepting upper-income applicants): for every $1,000 increase offered, probability of enrollment increased 1.1 to 2.5%. Work-study was not…

The processes of choosing a college and being accepted by a college are analyzed, based on data on nearly 23,000 seniors from more than 1,300 high schools from the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972. Econometric modeling and descriptive statistics are provided on: student behavior in selecting a college, choosing school/nonschool…