Rural communities in forested regions across the United States are in the midst of a transformation driven by a complex mixture of economic, policy, and demographic dynamics. This research examines, through survey results, rural youth educational aspirations in two forest- dependent regions and the role that perceptions of the local school,…

Latina high school students aspiring to careers in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) participated in the year-long Latina STEM Fellowship (LSF) program. A team of education professionals interviewed the students to better understand how these Latina students visualize a future STEM career, their perceived…

A high school diploma should mean that all students are ready for college "and" a career, but in Rhode Island, it did not. According to a 2019 audit, just four in a hundred Rhode Island seniors were prepared for both college and a career, and more than half graduated without concrete career skills. When the author became commissioner of…

High school and college students are inundated by indicators and rankings supposedly designed to help them decide where to go to college and what to study once they arrive. In "Metrics That Matter," coauthors Zachary Bleemer, Mukul Kumar, Aashish Mehta, Chris Muellerleile, and Christopher Newfield take a critical look at these metrics…

High school administrators, teachers, coaches, and guidance counselors, collectively termed as educators, are responsible for educating teenage students while preparing them for adult life. High school students culminate their education not just with a diploma, but also a decision about what to pursue as an adult. Although there is a common desire…

This article argues that the "airlift" language often used to describe the eight hundred Kenyan students who attended US and Canadian universities between 1959 and 1963 is misleading. It assumes that the students were being plucked out of substandard education, yet these youth had received some of the most rigorous education in the…

The need for a larger labor force in Southwest Minnesota is at peak heights and employers are looking for strategies that keep local high school and college graduates in the region. The analysis of 38,154 southwest high school graduates shows that their post-high school paths and plans are related to whether an individual has meaningful workforce…

We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial on the effectiveness of a novel, 100-percent online math tutoring program, targeted at secondary school students from highly disadvantaged neighborhoods. The intensive, eight-week-long program was delivered by qualified math teachers in groups of two students during after-school hours. The…

Not all students who could benefit from college apply. With novel data on over 1.2 million high schoolers, we show that nearly 25% start but never complete a college application. We use descriptive techniques, data visualizations, and fixed effects models to explore this population of college-interested "non-submitters" to observe…

In this paper, we present a study of Turkish international students' experiences in the U.S. by examining data from EksiSozluk, a Turkish social media platform. Drawing on social-emotional learning as a theoretical foundation, we investigated the types of challenges Turkish international students faced in the U.S. and the coping strategies and…

Educational challenges in rural places are compounded when discussions include race and ethnicity. In this chapter we explore how family, school, and community factors influence rural African American students' educational aspirations. Based on this review of literature, we make recommendations for student affairs practice.

Despite numerous equity initiatives aimed at increasing participation in higher education, students from regional and remote communities continue to be underrepresented in Australia. This paper presents a scoping review of empirical studies, published between 1991 and 2016, that examined aspirations for higher education of students from regional…

This article explores how the ideology of individualism sustains a conflictual school/sport intercollegiate system within the neoliberalism university [Giroux, Henry A. 2014. "Neoliberalism's War Against Higher Education." Chicago: Haymarket Press]. Life-history interview with 47 U.S. collegiate athletes reveal how institutional…

The need for more STEM graduates in the workforce has been an ongoing conversation for decades; however, very little attention is spent on the differing levels of degree attainment. This study focuses on variables that predict (positively or negatively) the degree aspirations of STEM majors six years after they begin their post-secondary education…

In this study I examine the academic self-concept (ASC) of students who changed from vocational to academic tracking at the transition to upper secondary education in Germany. I ask (1) how their ASC differs to the ASC of their established peers in academic tracking, and (2) how their ASC is affected by the change in the learning environment.…