The strengthening employability paradigm within higher education has led to a situation where the practical value of liberal arts programmes is contested. While the potential for such programmes to develop valuable generic skills is recognised, critiques of liberal arts programmes centre around their loose structure and lack of clear alignment…

This study leverages national data and a quasi-experimental design to examine the influence of enrolling in an exclusively online degree program on students' likelihood of completing their degree. We find that enrolling in an exclusively online degree program had a negative influence on students' likelihood of completing their bachelor's degree or…

The present study examines the differences between public baccalaureate institutional expenditures and Pell Grant recipient graduation rates at high and low Pell Grant recipient graduating institutions. IPEDS data were analyzed, including instructional, academic support, student services, institutional support, and Pell Grant recipient 6-year…

Institutional researchers use skills from their diverse backgrounds to collect, analyze and report data about their institutions to stakeholders representing various interests and levels of data literacy. However, there is little research into how these professionals process data and none into what aspects are important to institutional…

Public institutions of higher education (IHEs) have four basic revenue streams: state appropriations, tuition, donations and contracts, and earned income. Over the last 2 decades, there has been a massive decrease in state appropriations for higher education. Declining state appropriations have forced public IHEs to look to alternative revenue…

Many countries around the world are implementing changes to their systems of teacher education in an effort to improve the way teachers teach and how much children learn in school. This dissertation uses the case of Ghana to examine how a suite of ambitious reforms--including the upgrading of teacher education to university education, a new…

The private higher education (HE) sector in the UK is subject to little oversight or regulation. Consequently, it remains a largely unknown quantity. Yet, the UK government is keen to foster the growth of private providers as a means of stimulating competition across the "entire" HE sector that will purportedly lead to 'a greater choice…

Since the early 1900s, scholars, police, and the public have debated and discussed the role of higher education in policing. The questions of whether police officers should have experience in higher education and how that will influence job outcomes have not fully been answered to this day. The purpose of this research study is to examine the…

In Australian higher education, the push for curriculum innovation to enhance graduate employability is crucial but faces contention and debate. While the importance of integrating employability skills is widely recognised, perspectives on how and whether to incorporate these as curricular objectives vary, especially in liberal arts programs. This…

There is a well-documented relationship between academic match and bachelor's degree completion; students who undermatch are less likely to complete a BA than those who match or overmatch, net of academic qualifications and demographic characteristics. Little is known, however, about whether this association has changed over time. I argue that…

Studies of time and higher education emphasize how macro-level changes influence everyday university practices and how time is experienced and perceived in various ways. This paper adds to these studies by looking at time as infrastructure. We explore how students relate to time and unpack the challenges caused by the temporal structure of higher…

As a collective, women's experience in higher education has been disparate and differential to some men's experience over the last two centuries, fundamentally based on the societal influences of the time. In the formative years of higher education women attended higher education institutions for social stratification reasons or for marital choice…

This single case study uses the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Multiple Streams Framework to understand the ways higher education policy actors at the city-, state-, and system-level used information to build coalitions and change admission standards during the remediation debate at the City University of New York. By examining what information…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the process of developing a bachelor's degree program in business in partnership with an American university for a college located in Malaysia. According to the literature, the process for creating international partnerships is unclear (Dai, 2019; Gieser, 2015; Kosmutzky & Putty, 2016).…

Higher education and workforce systems have reformed over the last decade. These reforms are in response to an evolving economy, irregular political environment, a damaging pandemic, and declining enrollment in postsecondary education, and are an attempt to better prepare employees for new occupations and increased competition for students. One…