While Black students have experienced significant growth in college enrollment since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Higher Education Act of 1965, they are still less likely than their white counterparts to attend and graduate from a post-secondary institution (Ryan & Bauman, 2016). There have been previous studies on college…

University choice is a high-risk decision for prospective students which requires substantial effort to evaluate a range of choice factors. Understanding this complex process is a crucial task for higher education marketers. Of particular importance are the differences across market segments. This study analyses the importance of choice factors,…

After Hurricane María, approximately 3,500 students enrolled in on Florida's school district from Puerto Rico. Displaced Puerto Rican high schoolers incurred the transitional costs of forced migration at a time in their educational trajectories when they are formulating their postsecondary plans. While student mobility is not uncommon, prevailing…

Less-advantaged students are under-represented at prestigious universities, but can we infer that they actively avoid them? This research measured university applicants' knowledge of 115 UK universities. Using card-sort tasks within an interview format, 56 Year 13 students from different types of 16-19 education described how they chose five…

In this dissertation, I offer two independent studies that each contribute to the literature on the college choices. The first paper examines the impact of Arizona's merit based scholarship on college enrollment decisions. I find that both enrollment and tuition and fees increased at Arizona's three large public institutions after the…

This study describes the college choice experiences of high school students eligible for the Pittsburgh Promise, a place-based merit-aid scholarship. The Pittsburgh Promise provides scholarships of up to $10,000 to eligible students graduating from Pittsburgh public and charter schools who enroll at postsecondary institutions within the…

Most high school reform efforts understandably focus on boosting the success of low-income students who are underachieving academically, but in every school district where students struggle, there are academically capable low-income and minority students who do graduate prepared for college. Yet each year, many of these students choose to attend…

This article, based on work funded by the American Association of University Women, examines how personal and environmental factors shape non-college attendees' decisions to forgo college directly after high school. Group interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 48 racially diverse recent high school graduates (27 men and 21 women) who…

Analysis of 15 U.S. metropolitan areas illustrates that characteristics of higher education in urban marketplaces are diverse. Metropolitan areas of the west and southwest rank highest when variety, access, dependence, and quality are used to assess the marketplaces. Size, region, and strategic economic location explain some of the variations.…