The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects institution-level data from postsecondary institutions in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other U.S. jurisdictions (see appendix A for a list of other U.S. jurisdictions). This "First Look" presents findings from the provisional…

The literature on leadership in for-profit higher education institutions (HEIs) is scarce. While there is a handful of books that have been published on for-profit colleges, few studies have been conducted on the leaders of those colleges. The number of for-profit HEIs continues to grow and compete with traditional colleges and universities; many…

More than 2.3 million low-income young adults began postsecondary education in 2008. Where these students initially enroll is of greater consequence than it is to their economically better-off peers because the likelihood of completing college for students from low-income backgrounds depends strongly on where they start their studies. This brief…

Reductions in further and higher education spending, combined with cuts to helping-hand schemes such as the Education Maintenance Allowance, present a fundamental threat to everything educators stand for. This author discusses the need to build a credible alternative that puts tertiary education at the heart of a strategy for economic growth and…

The diversity of US institutions of higher education is manifested in many ways. This study looks at that diversity from the economic perspective by studying the subsidy structure through the distribution of institutional price-cost ratio (PCR), defined as the sum of net tuition price divided by total supplier cost and equals to one minus…

To understand why tuitions are increasing at institutions of higher education, policymakers need to look at the relationships between and among cost, price and subsidy. This brief explains how to understand those relationships, what the trend data show at a national level, places to go for more information, and questions to ask. (Contains 3…

This article concerns the provision of for-profit higher education in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), particularly in Dublin. It briefly sketches the general development of university/college provision in the RoI and, more importantly, it describes certain aspects of the current state of play and makes a tentative prediction for the future--namely,…

In 1974, John G. Sperling left a tenured position at San Jose State University with $26,000 in savings to start an academic program for working adults. In the beginning, he ran the operation out of his house. The program soon outgrew the house, Sperling relocated to Arizona, and the program adopted the name of that state's capital. Now the…

The role of for-profit educational organizations in the predominantly public and not-for-profit K-12 US schooling system is being fiercely debated across our nation. Little empirical research is available to help policy-makers develop informed decisions regarding the educational value that for-profit schools provide to our students. This paper…

This policy brief provides data on enrollments, prices, student characteristics, student aid, and completion rates at for-profit postsecondary institutions. The evidence provided in this paper is intended to inform discussions of the rapid growth of the sector in recent years. (Contains 4 tables, 5 figures and 3 endnotes.)

Nearly all observers agree that America's system of higher education is facing what Daniel Yankelovich has described as "a far different world than the one that existed in even the recent past." The new normal seems to be defined by escalating operating costs and declining funding and by more students seeking higher education with less…

It is widely acknowledged that many postsecondary students no longer follow a traditional path from college entry to degree at a single institution. Increasingly more students attend multiple institutions, transferring once, twice, or even three times before earning a degree. Standard institution-based reporting tends to ignore these students,…

The transition from high school to college can be more difficult for some students than others. States continue to report high numbers of students requiring remediation; Minnesota is not exempt from this trend. Examining Minnesota public high school graduates from the classes of 2007-2013 who enrolled in postsecondary education and those enrolled…

In January 2010, the General Assembly passed the Complete College Tennessee Act (CCTA), a comprehensive reform agenda seeking to transform public higher education through changes in academic, fiscal, and administrative policies at the state and institutional levels. While the higher education landscape has been shaped by the CCTA, it is also…

Despite widespread acknowledgement that Internet access in libraries and schools is filtered, the effects of that filtering on faculty who must utilize such a system for research, teaching, and curriculum development in American higher education are not known. This qualitative case study explored faculty experiences of Internet filtering in terms…