The purpose of this report was to identify best practices in the design of college and university admissions facilities with the goal of enhancing recruitment and yield of prospective students. The Admissions Advisory Committee at the University of Rhode Island conducted a literature review examining the importance of the campus visit experience…

The author reports on the U.S. Supreme Court hearing regarding the Texas admissions case that exposes gaps in the affirmative-action law. As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas at Austin, it became evident that the court's past rulings on such policies have failed to…

Justice Goodwin Liu reexamined seminal affirmative action in higher education legal cases beginning with the landmark 1978 case, "Regents of the University of California v. Bakke" and leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in "Gratz v. Bollinger." Liu argued that the "Bakke and Gratz" lawsuits were…

Assessment of Prior Learning (APL) refers to a process where adults' prior learning, formal as well as informal, is assessed and acknowledged. In the first section of this paper, APL and current conceptions of validity in assessments and its evaluation are presented. It is argued that participants in the assessment are an important source of…

The Australian Government decision in response to the Bradley review to introduce a demand-driven funding model for undergraduate university places from 2012 was met with mixed reaction across the higher education sector. The removal of caps without subsequent fee deregulation is considered by some to be unsustainable. Opinions suggest that…

One in three undergraduate students enter university for the first-time when they are over 21--not that one would notice given the obsession of both media and politicians with younger students progressing to university straight from school or college at 18 or 19. This focus on younger students has been put into even sharper relief in the debate…

A nationally representative sample of high school students is used to examine where students go for college information and how those information sources affect the number of schools to which students apply. Results show that Latino/a students are least likely to access college sources and have applied to the fewest number of schools. Among…

Previous research suggested that candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups were less likely to receive an offer of a place from an "old" university. These findings were disputed in a re-analysis carried out for HEFCE which found that only Pakistani candidates were significantly less likely to receive offers (from both…

The history of the development of higher education in the provincial areas of Russia has not been adequately dealt with in the pedagogical literature. Recently, however, more researchers have begun to deal with this topic in connection with the intensive development of the regions. In setting up the model of higher professional education in the…

Homeless youth and youth in foster care are often unprepared for the transition to adulthood. Given the economic benefits of college, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to examine the college experiences of these vulnerable youth. GAO examined: (1) college enrollment and completion for foster and homeless youth; (2) the extent to…

Critics say that for-profit career colleges--which, according to industry figures, enrolled 3.2 million students in the United States in 2009--have been plagued by deceptive recruiting practices that lure students into programs they could find elsewhere for much less money. Students often borrow tens of thousands of dollars to attend these…

Federal student aid comes from the federal government--specifically, the U.S. Department of Education. It is money that helps a student pay for higher education expenses (i.e., college, career school, or graduate school expenses). Federal student aid covers such expenses as tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, and transportation.…

This toolkit serves as a comprehensive resource on the issue of higher education access and success for homeless students, including information on understanding homeless students, assisting homeless students in choosing a school, helping homeless students pay for application-related expenses, assisting homeless students in finding financial aid…

Higher education officials have long been familiar with the concept of "summer melt," where students who have paid a deposit to attend one college or university instead matriculate at a different institution, usually presumed to be of comparable quality. In previous research, drawing on longitudinal data from various urban school…

This dissertation contains three chapters that explore various aspects of the economics of education, with a focus on higher education. In particular, the first two chapters deal with college major as it relates to earnings, occupational choice, and high school curriculum, while the third discusses the relationship between college-student match…