The Kauffman School is a public, tuition-free charter school serving Kansas City students. In the 2019-20 school year, the school enrolled 1,186 students in grades 5 through 12. Most (88 percent) of the students were low income, and 89 percent were Black or Hispanic. To measure the impact of the Kauffman School on its students, the authors…

For more than 70 years, the "Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange" has provided critical insight into students' and scholars' academic mobility patterns. In 2021, the need for comprehensive data is as vital as ever, allowing a better understanding of historical mobility flows into the United States while analyzing the…

In this dissertation, I investigate three barriers that students in China face when pursuing higher education: the unequal distribution of college enrollment quotas, the complexity of the college application process and financial constraints. These barriers exist worldwide, but the unique characteristics of the Chinese higher education system make…

This annual publication is the only long-standing, comprehensive information resource on international students and scholars in the United States and American students studying abroad for academic credit. "Open Doors" features graphic displays, data tables, and policy-oriented analyses and is an essential resource for those concerned…

Admission officers at post-secondary institutions face the contemporary challenge of evaluating applicants who have chosen to attend online high schools. The rapidly increasing enrollment in online educational programs has drastically outpaced the research related to the outcomes associated with this decision. The goal of this quantitative study…

The challenges public comprehensive universities face today are expanding--they have been challenged to enroll and graduate more students, adopt new technologies that lower cost without sacrificing quality, and align program and curricular offerings with the skills that employers require. While these universities have a long history of adapting to…

The debate over affirmative action policies in higher education is not so much about whether having racially and ethnically diverse college campuses is desirable, but rather about how best to achieve that worthy objective. Most universities prefer employing explicit racial preferences that allow them to recruit and admit the highest-scoring black…

This dissertation contains three essays on the economics of education and innovation. In the first essay, I study the effects of increased access to higher education by examining a dramatic 1961 Italian reform that increased university enrollment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields by more than 200 percent in a few years.…

Since 1998, the Iowa Department of Education's Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Preparation (division) has compiled and published "The Annual Condition of Iowa's Community Colleges," commonly known as the "Condition Report." The intent of this report is to provide clear, objective data about Iowa's community…

This report provides a summary of highlights of the 15th annual AISD High School Exit Survey administered online to seniors in every AISD high school during May 2017.

This report presents postsecondary enrollment for AISD's Class of 2011 during the year after high school graduation. Since 2002, AISD postsecondary enrollment has increased incrementally, from 62% to 68%.

Though rural schools have closed a long-standing high school graduation gap compared with urban schools, they struggle to achieve parity in college graduation rates. Sociology of education literature on college attendance explains this stratification using race/ethnic or social class differences, but has not fully explored spatial stratification…

A significantly higher percentage of AISD graduates enrolled in postsecondary institutions in 2014 (66%) than enrolled in 2013 (63%). Eighty-one percent of Class of 2013 graduates enrolled and persisted in a postsecondary institution 2 consecutive years after high school graduation. The supplemental report (published separately) provides technical…

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of programs that target first-generation college students, often low-income or minority students, for recruitment to college or that aim to improve campus participation and retention among these populations. Such programs simultaneously address themselves toward academic performance and the conditions of…

This report assesses whether significant differences existed in the postsecondary enrollment, employment, and earnings of 2011 AISD high school graduates, based on their Career and Technical Education (CTE) participation, industry certification status, and eligibility for articulated college credit. [This report was funded by a federal Carl D.…