Colleges and Universities continuously attempt to increase enrollment each year; while prospective students struggle to gauge whether a degree offers a clear and articulable return on investment. The purpose of this action research study is to investigate influencing enrollment factors (hereinafter "factors) that determine a prospective…

In the Netherlands, the implementation of mandatory procedures in which prospective students do a final check on their initial higher education program choice (so-called matching procedures), were introduced to improve student-program fit. We argue that prospective students who lack feelings of fit with the program during these matching procedures…

Geography of opportunity research has identified places with few or no college options: so-called "education deserts." This study extends this geography of opportunity research, exploring how geographical constraints affect students' choices, particularly the choice to attend a for-profit college. Using the Education Longitudinal Study…

Aligning with the NREA's "college and career readiness" research priority, this article presents a systematic literature review of 134 publications regarding the state of rural college access and choice research between the years 2000 and 2020. We use Perna's (2006) college choice model to guide our comprehensive summary of current…

Less than one-third of dual enrollment participants choose to matriculate with the host institution after high school, especially at a community college. Using Perna's college choice model, this qualitative study explored how dual enrollment participation shaped students' choice to attend the host institution the semester after high school…

Recent research has increasingly been studying the long-lasting effects of secondary education structures and processes on higher education (HE) outcomes. While the influence of socioeconomic composition on higher education enrolment is established, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We posit that the composition effect partially runs…

Do students respond to sticker prices or actual prices when applying to college? These costs differ for students eligible for financial aid. Students who do not understand this may not apply to some colleges because of the perceived high cost. We test for this form of "sticker shock" using College Board data on SAT scores sent, as a…

Dual-credit courses expose high school students to college-level content and provide the opportunity to earn college credits, in part to smooth the transition to college. With the Tennessee Department of Education, we conduct the first randomized controlled trial of the effects of dual-credit math coursework on a range of high school and college…

The proximity of proprietary institutions to working-class urban areas is rarely explored as a factor in Latina student college choice. Utilizing Chicana Feminism as a conceptual lens, this study explores the path of proprietary college choice for Latina high school students. Qualitative interviews and geographic data reveal how factors of race,…

Despite calls by policymakers and educators to increase college access, various student subgroups are often ignored by the research community. For example, the process through which rural Latinx students choose to enroll in college and the types of colleges they matriculate to is understudied in the literature. This study addresses the limitations…

In the first chapter, I analyze the growth patterns of postsecondary education costs in re-cent years. It shows the trends of college revenue, expenditure and other financial items using data drawn from the Delta Data Project between 1987 and 2010. Connections between various categories of revenue/spending and state-level macroeconomic indicators…

This study used a strategic enrollment management (SEM) approach to studying high school students' transition to a two-year college and their initial college success. Path analyses suggested two important findings: (a) clear career choices among students, family influence, academic preparedness, and college recruitment efforts predicted earlier…

This study examined the student and high school contextual factors associated with high school students' enrollment in Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs). The authors drew on a conceptual framework of college choice involving the concepts of multiple capitals and individual and organizational habitus to examine the postsecondary trajectories of…

The world of higher education is a world of sorting, selecting, and ranking--on both sides of the market. Colleges select students to recruit and then to admit; students choose where to apply and which offer to accept. The sorting process that gets the most attention is in the higher reaches of the market, where it is not too much to say that…

Whilst there has been growing attention paid to the imbalance of Higher Education (HE) applications according to social class, insufficient attention has been paid to the successful minority of working-class young people who do secure places in some of the UK's leading HE institutions. In particular, the influence and nature of pre-university…