Nearly half of all new community college students drop out of school before successfully completing a degree or credential. It has been found that the greatest percentage of these "non-completer" students terminate their college careers before entering their second year of attendance. First-year seminars (FYS) have long been believed to…

Student persistence remains an important focus for higher education professionals. National conferences and other professional development opportunities regularly highlight information on resources, supports, and programmatic efforts that are most effective at helping college students persist. Retention is a key performance indicator for…

College enrollment trends in the United States are a subject of ongoing concern due to the role higher education plays in shaping the future workforce. Enrollment has gone through periods of growth and decline over the past two decades, reflecting changes in the nation's demographics, economy, and views on the value of a college degree. Total…

The United States must tap into its growing minority population in STEM fields to maintain global competitiveness. Despite increased diversity in STEM work-related fields within the United States, African American (AA) students are still underrepresented in STEM majors, resulting in low community participation in STEM careers compared to their…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were 3,982 degree-granting postsecondary institutions in the United States in the 2019-2020 school year. Of these, 1,625 were public institutions and another 1,660 were private, nonprofit institutions (four-year and two-year schools). The private, nonprofit sector plays an…

Online learning in the higher education sector has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. Whereas online learning was once a viable alternative for the nontraditional adult student, enrollment trends now show an influx in traditional students opting for virtual education opportunities especially in the last three years during the COVID-19…

The pursuit of science is essential for the progress and development of a nation. However, there is evidence of a persistent decline in the number of students opting for science courses in undergraduate programs across the world. This paper investigated the perceptions of the students regarding the reasons for the dearth of science students and…

Summary: In spite of a large literature on the causal effects of financial aid, the impact of funding on college outcomes remains an area of ongoing research with important unanswered questions. Studying the impact of financial aid presents the ongoing challenge of how to identify causal effects, as aid receipt is rarely random and at least partly…

Borrowing has become increasingly central to U.S. students' college financing choices. However, concerns about indebtedness may serve as a barrier to attaining a college degree for many students, particularly women and Black and Hispanic students. This study explores the determinants and heterogeneous impacts of debt aversion, or aversion to…

The ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated educational inequities for students from institutionally marginalized communities. This article specifically examines the college (in)opportunities and conscious choices of rural Latinx students from California's San Joaquin Valley as they pursued higher education during the pandemic. This…

Although the purpose of this qualitative descriptive phenomenological study was to investigate how low-socioeconomic high school graduates describe their lived experiences in secondary schools and how their experiences influence them to graduate from high school and enroll in college. A purposeful sampling protocol was utilized to select 12…

Background/Context: Sometimes students with the academic credentials to attend more selective colleges enroll in a less selective institution or do not enroll at all, a phenomenon known as undermatching (Bowen et al., 2009; Roderick et al., 2011; Smith et al., 2013; Rodriguez, 2015). Undermatching is associated with lower graduation rates and…

Enrollment Management has been adopted by institutions of higher education as a strategy for managing enrollment to meet institutional goals, and it increasingly manifests as an administrative division that supports students. Many models of Enrollment Management exists, with the Divisional model being the most centralized; however, even within a…

Higher education institutions across the United States have increasingly faced an uncertain future as student populations shift, financial pressures mount, and skepticism rises regarding the value of higher education (Seltzer, 2018). As a result, university leaders find themselves endeavoring upon a blind venture of adapting the various corporate…

Financial stability in higher education continues to decrease as enrollment declines. Higher education administrators who do not address declining enrollment may experience lost revenues, potentially leading to inoperability. Grounded in Kotter's eight-stage process for leading change, the purpose of this qualitative single case, descriptive study…