Increasing graduation rates continues to be a high priority for administrators at community colleges nationwide. While several factors affect graduation rates, many researchers focus on how a student's status as declared or undecided may impact their likelihood of graduating. This study aims to examine the potential relationship between…

Sadly, an enduring legacy of the United States is inequities between groups of people based on their skin color. These inequities are ingrained within the educational system, such as a lack of opportunities and interventions and significant gaps in support and resources that target underserved populations. The problem that this study addressed was…

The study compared the Outcome Measures (OM) to the traditional Graduation Rates (GR) to ascertain if OM portrayed the performance of higher education institutions differently than GR and to determine which of the two metrics aligned better with accountability policy objectives. GR refers to the percentages of first-time, full-time students who…

Degree attainment is a shared goal of college students, higher education institutions, and the larger society, as graduates have lower rates of unemployment, higher rates of civic engagement, pay higher taxes, and are able to better prepare future generations for academic success as compared to their counterparts (Museus et al., 2008).…

The purpose of Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (2015) is to protect the educational rights of students experiencing homelessness across the United States. Despite the coordinated efforts of State and Local Educational Agencies to carry out these mandates and ensure equitable…

Maryland has a strong educational system with a state legislature actively establishing policy through legislation to benefit its citizens. Often these legislated policies need to be implemented with benchmarks or considerations for the differences between the counties. This study addressed the impact of dual enrollment programs created by…

The high school (HS) graduation rate of students with disabilities who have individual education programs (IEP) is historically low compared with their non-disabled peers. The problem was that a statewide initiative to improve the standard HS diploma graduation rate of students with disabilities, the April Dunn Act (the Act), was perceived as…

Even though teen pregnancy rates are declining, teen pregnancy remains a complex and problematic phenomenon in our culture. The problem addressed by this study was that although the number of births to teen mothers is decreasing, less than 50% of teen mothers are completing high school. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was…

Students with disabilities in U.S. community colleges continue to disproportionately experience lower degree attainment compared to students without disabilities. Furthermore, students with disabilities are twice as likely to choose community colleges for postsecondary education compared to four-year colleges. Students with disabilities in…

Graduating from high school is an important step toward becoming a successful adult. It is evidence that one has met the standards set by the public school system. Standards-Based Reform has been pursued since the 1980s and culminated in the development of the Common Core State Standards that were implemented by most states between 2011 and 2015.…

The student retention of freshman students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities as of recent has been comparably low which leads to low graduation rates. To understand this phenomenon, there is a need to investigate the factors that impact the enrollment and retention of freshman students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.…

In the higher education landscape, community colleges have served to help many under-resourced populations gain access to post-secondary education and a chance to pursue their dreams (Bailey, Jaggers, & Jenkins, 2015; Schudde & Goldrick-Rab, 2015). As with many under-resourced populations of students, the stakes are high for incarcerated…

Black and Latinx four-year college graduation rates remain low, per the research, which corresponds to 45.9 percent for Blacks and 55 percent for Latinx, but when compared to White and Asian four-year college students, these rates are 71.7 percent for Asians, and 67.2 percent for Whites (Shapiro et al., 2017). This descriptive qualitative research…

Students in foster care are a resilient group of individuals who often face many obstacles and changes in environment (e.g., home, school, community) from a young age. While the foster care system's goal is to provide a safe and stable environment for children, adolescents, and transitional age youth, there are many challenges students in foster…

Non-first-time students make up a large portion of higher education nationally, particularly in the two-year institution sector, and yet their completion outcomes are largely unstudied. Unfortunately, higher education as it is currently designed does not work well for many non-traditional students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the…