Increasing productivity in educational systems is of great importance. Researchers are keen to predict the academic performance of students; this is done to enhance the overall productivity of educational system by effectively identifying students whose performance is below average. This universal concern has been combined with data science…

Despite the overwhelming evidence that higher education data are nested at various levels, single-level techniques such as regression and analysis of variance are commonly used to investigate student outcomes. This is problematic as a mismatch in methodology and research questions can lead to biased parameter estimates. The purpose of this study…

In order to help undergraduate students towards successfully completing their degrees, developing tools that can assist students during the course selection process is a significant task in the education domain. The optimal set of courses for each student should include courses that help him/her graduate in a timely fashion and for which he/she is…

During the last decade, there have been numerous reports detailing the importance of increasing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors in the United States. Simultaneously, an increasing number of studies are being developed to predict a student's success and completion of a STEM degree, recognizing that retention is a…

National calls for improving science education (e.g., "Vision and Change") emphasize the need to learn disciplinary core ideas through scientific practices. To address this need, we engaged small groups of students in developing diagrammatic models within two (one large-enrollment and one medium-enrollment) undergraduate introductory…

Conducting research and engaging in discussions with administrators and legislators can be important contributions toward alleviating the trend toward lower graduation rates among college students. This study used archival data obtained from the university registrar to examine how engagement in a credit-bearing undergraduate career course related…

Using the 2000/01 Baccalaureate & Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:00/01), this paper employs multilevel modeling to test a conceptual model of graduate school choice that draws significantly from human capital theory while incorporating the salient concepts of cultural and social capital. The model posits that the graduate school choice…

The history of higher education presents us with many examples of small groups of students living, working, and even eating together in mutually beneficial ways. In recent years, institutions have employed a variety of learning community (LC) models, including residential, academic, and mixed models, to recreate these small groups and encourage…

This paper investigates the main indicators of scores of K-12 leavers who were admitted at Princess Sumaya University for Technology, PSUT, in Jordan and their graduation scores. It uses time series data covering the period 1993-2012, including all 3,229 Bachelor graduates in all specialisations. The paper applies several statistical techniques to…

The student populations in colleges and universities in the United States have become more diverse in the students that they serve. It has been argued that disaggregation of student data would allow researchers to test the saliency of student development models. However, there is only a small body of research available on first-year Black male…

Assessment of the business curriculum and its learning goals and objectives has become a major field of interest for business schools. The exploratory results of the authors' model using a sample of 173 students show robust support for the hypothesis that high marks in course-embedded assessment on business-specific analytical skills positively…

Multilevel modeling provides several advantages over traditional ordinary least squares regression analysis; however, reporting results to stakeholders can be challenging. This article suggests some strategies for presenting complex, multilevel data and statistical results to institutional and higher education decision makers. The article is…

There is much debate on the merits and pitfalls of standardized tests for college admission, with questions regarding the format (multiple-choice versus constructed response), cognitive complexity, and content of these assessments (achievement versus aptitude) at the forefront of the discussion. This study addressed these questions by…

In this paper, the authors propose one model for an institution-specific analysis which they then apply to the study of their home institution, Mount Holyoke College. The paper advances their understanding of the determinants of study abroad in two important ways. First, it shows that going beyond descriptive statistics and simple correlations and…

The trends from 1970-75 in course-by-course grading at a large public urban university are described. A total of 144 undergraduate courses were analyzed to determine if systematic grade inflation was occurring. Multiple linear regressions were fitted to more than 125,000 final course grades by courses. Most course grading patterns showed little…