This study considers whether performance funding policies systematically tend to harm some types of institutions of higher education while helping others. Building on theories of deck stacking and institutional stratification, a formal theoretical model of the effects of performance funding policies on individual institutions is developed and…

Student attrition rates in higher education are an ongoing concern in the U.S, and are costly to students themselves, colleges and universities, and the economy in terms of dollars and human potential. Thus, the need to identify solutions to student attrition is pressing for both students who are enrolled in institutions of higher education today,…

The "2022 Nebraska Higher Education Progress Report" is the 17th annual progress report designed to provide the Nebraska Legislature with comparative statistics to monitor and evaluate progress toward achieving three key priorities for Nebraska's postsecondary education system. They are: (1) Increase the number of students who enter…

Despite the expansive literature on higher education performance-based funding (PBF) policies, there is an oversaturation of quantitative studies focused on measuring metric performance at the statewide level. These studies have largely found that PBF fails to meet its goal of improving graduation rates and has unintended consequences for…

This study is an investigation of how a graduation initiative at a single university was implemented in ways that reveal approaches that do not prioritize what I consider to be the goal of higher education--"the common good of all." Using autoethnography combined with an indigenous-oriented approach I borrowed from another dissertation…

Deregulation of for-profit colleges led to a precipitous rise in enrollments from 1990 to 2010. Since 2010, regulation, investigations, and sanctions have led to enrollment declines in for-profit postsecondary institutions. Initially barred from receiving Title IV federal funds, in the form of Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, for-profit colleges…

Higher education today faces a host of challenges, from quality to cost. But too little attention gets paid to a startling fact: four out of ten students -- that's more than ten percent of the entire population -- who start college drop out. The situation is particularly dire for black and Latino students, those from poor families, and those who…

This dissertation presents a collection of three essays on the economics of higher education. Although these essays were conceived as independent research projects, they all concern higher education in Chile. For that reason, I begin in chapter 1 with a general overview of Chile's higher education system. I briefly describe the institutional…

The higher education community faces a wave of challenges. Concerns about affordability and costs have led to questions about the value of higher education to students and society. State and federal funding has been cut or has failed to grow as need has ballooned. Pressures to innovate clash with calls for preserving tradition. Values of academic…

The continued underserving of Maori and Pasifika communities by New Zealand universities has resulted in the need to hold universities and the wider tertiary education system to account through widespread data analysis. This paper analyses Maori and Pasifika enrolment in the Society and Culture and Natural and Physical Sciences fields of Aotearoa…

What does it mean to be 'excellent', particularly for the higher education institution? Without a definitive answer to that question, university rankings have become a proxy for quality and excellence. As such, higher education institutions are continually seeking ways to improve their rankings, with the implication being that these rankings…

Graduating from a liberal arts college leads to meaningful economic mobility (Hill & Pisacreta, 2019). College graduates typically lead longer and healthier lives, are more engaged civically, and generate more economic output (Committee on Education and Labor Report, 2019). Despite these facts, there continues to be widespread doubt about the…

This study used public policy implementation framework to examine issues of policy implementation at higher educational institutions and the educational change that is required as well as the capacity to carry out the policy and the stakeholders crafting the policy. The theoretical framework is based upon Fullan's Factors affecting the policy…

This first educational equity report for higher education from the Colorado Department of Higher Education (CDHE) and Colorado Equity Champions Coalition (ECC) supports Colorado's goal to reach 66% educational attainment by 2025 through the implementation of strategies aimed at erasing equity gaps. In order to better understand the issues Colorado…

This study summarizes the secondary career and technical education (CTE) landscape in Oregon under its last CTE state plan, which was implemented under the federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV), and it provides baseline information to guide implementation of Oregon's updated state plan under Perkins V.…