Australia is following a global trend in doctoral education policy to improve PhD completion times and rates. It is widely believed that accurate data on PhD completion are needed to assess the success of reforms and drive changes in doctoral education. In this article, new national completion data (2005-2018) provided by the Australian Department…

Challenges to establishing and maintaining undergraduate research programs include how to demonstrate impact as evidence for future funding, establish eligibility criteria when resources are limited, and assess new components. To address these challenges, undergraduate researcher GPA, credit accumulation and time to graduation were evaluated…

Despite vast research on transitioning to higher education and student diversity, little longitudinal evidence exists of how individual differences of first-year students predict their graduation times. The present study explored the relation between first-year students' study profiles and graduation times in two different disciplines, by…

We study the effects of access to high school math and science courses on postsecondary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enrollment and degree attainment using administrative data from Missouri. Our data include more than 140,000 students from 14 cohorts entering the 4-year public university system. The effects of high…

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) surveyed member institutions to better understand institutional policies and practices related to prior learning assessment (PLA) and fielded a student survey to understand student perspectives on PLA. This brief shares findings and recommendations from this…

In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education, we surveyed approximately 1,500 students at one of the largest public institutions in the United States using an instrument designed to recover the causal impact of the pandemic on students' current and expected outcomes. Results show large negative effects across many…

Increased student mobility within the British Columbia (BC) Transfer System (BCTS) means that students can easily enter and exit postsecondary studies. However, a significant amount of time may elapse between when a student acquires credits and when they wish to use, re-use or transfer those credits. This has led to BCTS member institutions facing…

Of all associate degrees reported to the National Student Clearinghouse for the 2010-11 academic year, 575,067 were earned by students with no previous degrees or certificates. Within the next six academic years, 65.1 percent of these students enrolled at four-year institutions and 41.4 percent earned bachelor's degrees. This brief report presents…

As the demand for lifelong learning increases, many working adults have turned to online graduate education in order to update their skillsets and pursue advanced credentials. Simultaneously, the volume of data available to educators and scholars interested in online learning continues to rise. This study seeks to extend learning analytics…

This country note presents the results of an analysis of Austria undertaken within the Labour Market Relevance and Outcomes of Higher Education Partnership Initiative project. The project was implemented by the OECD with the support of the European Commission with the aim of helping policy makers and higher education institutions enhance the…

A substantial share of students studying in a face-to-face setting supplement their coursework with online courses, yet we have a limited understanding of online course-taking behavior. This study advances knowledge in this domain by examining an administrative dataset from the Pennsylvania State University. The detailed nature of our data allows…

Graduate and doctoral schools around the world struggle to shorten the long time to degree and to prevent high dropout rates. While most of previous research studied individual determinants of PhD completion, we analyze the impact of two structural reforms of the doctoral program on thesis completion at a selective European graduate school.…

This paper intends to present a preliminary study focusing doctoral education in NOVA Lisbon University. This University is less than fifty years old and it is growing, but a slight decrease in the doctoral population was observed in the last years, the completion times are not the ideal and attrition exists. So it is important to know the…

Students in Idaho high schools have the opportunity to earn postsecondary technical credit through the tech prep program. This study examines the college outcomes of retention, completion, time-to-degree, and technical skills attainment for tech prep participants, who matriculated to the partner stand-alone technical college within…

In this study, we identified factors influencing completion rates (graduation) of undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We used hierarchical, logistic, and linear regression models to analyze the data and found significant predictor variable interactions across various underrepresented versus…