Many studies examine the impact of students' characteristics and behaviors on high school outcomes: high school completion, college enrollment or college completion. This study uses regression analyses to explore the association of students' characteristics and behaviors and students' positive high school outcomes: graduating on-time, enrolling in…

Improved college completion rates are critical to the future of the United States, and states must have better data to understand the nature of the challenges they confront or target areas for policy change. The 2010-2011 National Governors Association (NGA) Chair's initiative, "Complete to Compete", recommends that all states collect data from…

Over the past three and one-half decades, ACT has dedicated itself to conducting research that collects information from colleges and universities that will help them identify and better understand the impact of various practices on college student retention and persistence to degree-completion. Conducted in the spring of 2009, ACT's most recent…

This study conducted telephone interviews with 26 randomly selected English Language Coordinators from 26 Arizona school districts with enrollment patterns that were representative of the state as whole. Three primary questions were posed to the respondents: (a) How is the 4-hour ELD block being implemented?; (b) What are the benefits of the…

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and…

This report reviews the literature on noncognitive and other background predictors (e.g., personality, attitudes, and interests) as it pertains to graduate education. The first section reviews measures typically used in studies of graduate school outcomes, such as attrition and time to degree. A review of qualities faculty members and…

The study was aimed at evaluating the MA Education Programme of teacher education in Pakistan. Post-graduate teacher's training institutes in Pakistan grant the Master of Education (MA/M.Ed.), Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) post-graduate degrees in the field of education to enhance the careers and accelerate the…

The purpose of this study was to explore, track, and predict longitudinal differences (over the course of six years beginning fall semester 2001) between and among ISU low income, first generation, or the combination of low income and first generation freshman students; regarding persistence rate, and associated persistence factors, such as ACT…

The appeal of concurrent enrollment programs is widespread in Iowa and throughout the United States. The fifteen Community Colleges in Iowa provide extensive opportunities for high school students to enroll in and successfully complete college credit courses while in high school. Accountability in all educational programs is increasing, concurrent…

The need to improve the success rate of students in South African universities is widely regarded as a national priority. Measuring this success is, however, more difficult. Although the NPHE sets some benchmarks for system performance, there is currently no indicator set for longitudinal student performance. This article reports on a study done…

This study seeks to build on and contribute to research about the access to academic success of economically disadvantaged university students. The researchers aimed to answer the broad question, "How can a public university most effectively and efficiently facilitate the access to academic success and on-time degree completion of low-income…

For most high school non-completers, the GED[R] credential provides a bridge to postsecondary education, but little is known about how successfully GED (General Educational Development) Test candidates make that transition and whether enrollment rates change with time. The American Council on Education (ACE) has begun a three-year longitudinal…

Pathways through college vary by sex in ways that may contribute to the contemporary male-female gap in college graduation that favors women. Although past research has documented sex differences in college pathways, little research has investigated the underlying causes of this variation. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study,…

In 2009, Excelencia in Education launched the Ensuring America's Future initiative to inform, organize, and engage leaders in a tactical plan to increase Latino college completion. This initiative included the release of a benchmarking guide for projections of degree attainment disaggregated by race/ethnicity that offered multiple metrics to track…

This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" will look at recent research on transfer and articulation in light of the new movement to increase degree attainment by addressing the following three questions: (1) Do articulation agreements ease the transfer process and lead to degree attainment; (2) what are the factors that facilitate…