Both income inequality and the achievement test score gap between high- and low-income children increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. Recent work by Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, and Turner (2014) suggests that, unlike the test score gap, the gap in college enrollment is essentially constant. This article takes a…

Despite rich evidence on the benefit of summer enrollment at the K-12 level, the college completion literature has so far focused on college readiness, remediation, and financial aid, and has largely overlooked the potential benefits of taking summer courses among college students. Academic momentum theory suggests that summer enrollment may…

We used the recent introduction of general tuition fees at public universities in several of the German federal states as a natural experiment to identify whether tuition fees reduce the time to graduation and the extent to which they do so. We employed a difference-in-differences approach with the states that introduced fees as the treatment…

The authors update prior analyses of the undergraduate origins of individuals who earn a PhD in economics in the United States. They include the list of the top institutions worldwide graduating the largest number of undergraduates who subsequently earn an economics PhD from a U.S. university and lists of American institutions with the largest…

In the 2013-14 academic year, 46 percent of students who completed a degree at a four-year institution were enrolled at a two-year institution at some point in the previous 10 years. This is a one percentage point increase over the comparable figure for degrees awarded in 2010-11. The prior two-year enrollment may have been brief (as little as a…

This qualitative study describes the experiences of 16 successful first-generation college students (FGCS) utilizing a theoretical lens, informed significantly by bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), which guided our qualitative analyses of interview transcripts to examine the activities, roles, and relationships of these students…

This study examines select demographics of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellows (n = 644), and whether or not the cohorts of AERA Fellows are becoming more diverse in racial and gender terms in relation to the inaugural year of Fellows in 2008. This study tests the mission statement of this exclusive program to "……

Higher education has experienced many changes since the 1970s, including an increase in the price of college, an increase in student employment during college, a decrease in college completion rates, and an increase in time to degree. This paper ties these trends together by causally linking changes in financial aid with time to degree and student…

Undergraduate programs for teachers often do not satisfy future teacher needs. The goal of this project was to improve the undergraduate experiences of future teachers at a California State University in two areas: the quality of pedagogy in content courses and creating cohorts for better scheduling and on-time graduation. Students participated in…

For over a year, COVID-19 has disrupted all our lives, including our education system and the future for many Coloradans. Recovery from the pandemic is in sight, but Colorado's industries more than ever will depend upon postsecondary education to help produce the workforce needed in a changed environment and altered economy. It is vital to promote…

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive picture of social selectivity in higher education in Italy by focusing on enrolment and two alternative indicators of success: retention and timely completion. The existing literature has shown that young individuals of disadvantaged backgrounds have lower enrolment probabilities and higher chances of…

Human capital production is central to economic wellbeing from a national perspective: it improves productivity, spurs technological innovation, and promotes sustainable economic growth over time. Equally important, investments in human capital are central to economic wellbeing at the individual level. College graduates tend to earn more money,…

Over the previous two decades, state lawmakers have made two fundamental changes to how they finance their public universities. They have shifted more of the costs of higher education to students and their families through higher tuition rates; and created new grant programs that are not solely based on financial need but require prior…

The Tuition Opportunity Program for Students (subsequently renamed the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, also known as TOPS) was created by Act 1375 of the 1997 Regular Legislative Session. The first college freshman class to receive TOPS awards entered postsecondary education in the fall of 1998. Act 1202 of the 2001 Regular Legislative…

The purpose of this study was to compare business undergraduate online/hybrid course perceptions across three different preferred classroom environment delivery modes: online, hybrid, or face-toface (F2F). Four different perceptions were measured: perceived favorability of online/hybrid courses (PFoOC); intent to recommend online/hybrid courses;…