Objective: Few community college students who aspire to transfer ever do so. Prior research suggests that relationships with advisors, faculty, and administrators may play an important role in promoting successful transfer outcomes, particularly for traditionally underserved students. This study examines how students identified and weighed…

Education is the value proposition that provides individuals the opportunity to become meaningful contributors to society, their community, and their immediate families. It is the calling card of personal achievement and individual intrinsic benefits. Education is about access and opportunity. Institutions continue to navigate strategies of access…

As nations continue to use OECD data to ensure preparedness for global competitiveness, questions concerning how inequality is constructed and maintained in different nations are critical. Drawing on Bourdieu and Savage, I argue that social capital continues to perpetuate social inequality both prior to and during university attendance despite…

To increase the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, U.S. education policy has emphasized the pathways from education to STEM careers. While some scholars argue that employers prioritize the degree, and not institutional affiliation, in hiring graduates, the argument needs to be warranted with more recent data…

Creating world-class universities (WCUs) has recently become a significant policy and practice in higher education in China under the Double World-Class Project. However, some negative effects have encouraged decoupling from the policy goals. To identify the reasons, we conducted policy document analysis and purposive interviews at three elite…

This paper revisits the scope of Catherine Malabou's thinking as a development of the ontological turn in continental philosophy. It puts this excursion of thinking alongside an account of education in modernity as the apotheosis of biopower. It aligns biopower, as manifest in education, as form of 'technological enframing'. In this it challenges…

Parent PLUS loans are a growing concern due to their limited income-driven repayment protections and their potential to maintain longstanding racial wealth gaps. Previous research has examined factors associated with student debt burdens of college graduates, but no research has examined factors related to parent borrowing for college. In this…

Alumni of selective graduate programs, such as those from top business and law schools, have high lifetime earnings and are overrepresented in influential positions in society. Given limitations in nationally representative datasets, many existing studies of graduate school enrollment in the literature focus only on the United States and collapse…

The recent expansion of the overseas education market in China has led to the rise of "Background Promotion Projects" designed to strengthen the applications of elite university aspirants. Based on ethnographic findings of a particular Background Promotion Project, a Chinese high school entrepreneurship competition, this study analyses…

University faculty are frequently tasked with promoting academic honesty among students. However, there is little reliable evidence about whether faculty actions can prevent academic dishonesty. The purpose of this study is to examine whether more severe punishments from faculty can reduce academic dishonesty among students. We analyze nationally…

Meritocracy is used by governments in many societies as an 'effective' way to represent social justice and legitimise -- explain away -- class inequality. By focusing on a small number of working-class students who achieve academic 'success' and have reached elite universities in an ideal meritocratic environment -- Chinese schooling -- this paper…

As noted by many historians, the modern tale of American education is one of a pendulum swinging between concerns about excellence and those about equity. In many matters of policy and practice, excellence and equity are in tension, if not actual conflict. It can be assumed that progressives will always take the "equity" side. So if…

This research involved a qualitative case study (N=15) that identified several layers of concern centered around the Black college student experience using Critical Race Theory and Bridging Multiple Worlds Theory. Through two rounds of qualitative semi-structured interviews, the current study addressed the concerns of access for Black students at…

This dissertation addresses three separate questions in human capital and development economics. In the first chapter, I study how college admission concerns drive students' field choices in a field-specific college admission system. To study this question, I leverage a college admission policy reform in Ethiopia that sharply increased the…

This digest provides descriptive, aggregated statistics related to the experiences of 10 cohorts of graduates of City Schools from school years 2010-11 through 2019-20. The compilers use multiple indicators of college access, including the process of applying for college and financial aid, enrollment in the fall following high school graduation,…