The last comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA) occurred in 2008, and the law has been overdue for another reauthorization for nearly a decade. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) has worked on reauthorization for nearly a decade. In this report, NASFAA updates its recommendations to…

In 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly tasked state education agencies with creating a centralized residency determination process that allows a third party to determine students' eligibility for in-state-resident tuition. This system, called the Residency Determination Service (RDS), supplanted the existing structure in which individual…

In the United States, college students must complete the Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FAFSA) to access federal aid. However, many eligible students do not apply and consequently forgo significant amounts of financial aid. If students have perfect information about aid eligibility, we would expect that all eligible students complete…

The interwoven issues of trauma and safety have swept through college campuses over the last decade, and they've arrived at doors of admission offices, encouraging officials to think more carefully about those concerns and take a closer look at how they handle them. Experts recommend in this atmosphere that admission offices discuss these topics…

Research has shown that family structure changes negatively influence educational attainment, but they overlook qualitative distinctions in college choice, such as college selectivity. Yet, college choice research has largely focused on static measures of family structure, failing to account for year-to-year family structure changes that occur…

College admissions decisions have traditionally focused on high school academic performance and standardized test scores. An ongoing debate is the validity of these measures for predicting success in college; part of this debate includes how success is defined. One potential way of defining college success is a student's creative accomplishments.…

University administrators often strive for racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity in their student populations. Today, administrators face a new demographic challenge as women increasingly outnumber men in applications, enrollments, and graduation rates. This article discusses the causes and potential consequences of the growing gender…

This applied dissertation was conducted to provide the graduate program in marine sciences a valid predictor for success in the admissions scoring systems that include the general Graduate Record Exam. The dependent variable was persistence: successfully graduating from the marine sciences master's programs. This dissertation evaluated other…

Purpose: This project is meant to answer the research question: What applicant character traits do Nurse Anesthesia Program Directors and Faculty identify as favorable predictors for successful completion of a nurse anesthesia program, and what evaluation methods are best to evaluate these traits in prospective students? Methods: A prospective…

In preparing students for college, high schools serve a dual purpose. They are responsible for providing both a strong academic foundation and the information and support needed to navigate the college application process (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Ample tools exist to measure and assess students' level of academic preparation for…

This study examined the attitudes of individuals seeking scholarships to study abroad, exploring whether their views on languages and language policy models vary based on gender, study programs, and countries. An online survey was administered to approximately 130 Hungarian government scholarship applicants from diverse nations. Statistical…

Given growing disparities in college enrollment by household income, policymakers and researchers often are interested in understanding whether policies expand access for low-income students. In this brief, we highlight the limitations of a commonly available measure of low-income status--whether students receive a federal Pell grant--and compare…

Foster youth are among some of the nation's most underserved students in higher education. Of the more than 430,000 youth in the foster care system, only about 50% will graduate from high school and as little as 3% will ever earn a bachelor's degree (Pecora, 2012; Wolanin, 2005). While critically important for smoothing students' transition from…

This article uses philosophical analysis to clarify the arguments and claims about racial discrimination brought forward in the recent legal challenges to affirmative action in higher education admissions. Affirmative action opponents have argued that elite institutions of higher education are using negative action against Asian American…

In 2009, President Obama called for a simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), resulting in the average family completing the FAFSA in 20 minutes. Yet, during the 2013-2014 college application season, nearly 900,000 Pell Grant-eligible high school graduates did not complete the FAFSA, leaving $2.9 billion in Pell…