In the context of a political imperative to reorganise the Portuguese higher education system, a deep knowledge of student choice decision-making processes when applying to higher education is needed. Following a 'combined model' of student choice, which emphasises economic and social factors, this paper aims to answer two main related questions:…

More than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recent studies, complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education, and lawsuits filed against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveal that many academic institutions are engaging in blatant racial discrimination by gaming the system,…

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…

We explore generalizability and fairness across sociodemographic groups for predicting on-time college graduation using a national dataset of 41,359 college applications. Our features include sociodemographics, institutional graduation rates, academic achievement, standardized test scores, engagement in extracurricular activities, and work…

EMERGE is a college access program for talented but underserved high school students. EMERGE aims to encourage students from low-socioeconomic backgrounds (economically disadvantaged, first-generation college-going, or both) to attend selective colleges and universities since disadvantaged students are prone to academic undermatch--enrolling in a…

The relevance of the problem under study is based on the necessity to find the most productive method of positioning a higher educational organization at the educational services market within the conditions of transfer from the centrally planned economy to a market economy and changing of the thinking format of the young generation. The purpose…

The study provides new information on the relationships between students' socioeconomic backgrounds, utilization of college enhancement strategies, and subsequent 4-year college enrollment. Enhancement strategies represent student behaviors used to bolster the competitiveness of a college application, such as Advanced Placement exams and a variety…

We study the UK's university application system, in which students apply based on predicted examination grades, rather than actual results. Using three years of UK university applications data we find that only 16% of applicants' predicted grades are accurate, with 75% of applicants having over-predicted grades. However, high-attaining,…

Since the late 1970s, the Access to Higher Education (Access to HE) Diploma (the Diploma) and its predecessor Access to HE certificates and courses have provided opportunities for adults to undertake the preparation they need to progress to higher education (HE). The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) has been collecting data…

Background/Context: Prior research has stressed the importance of timing in the college choice process, especially as it relates to receiving early information and making plans and decisions. Little has been done, however, in terms of empirically demonstrating how soon students make their decisions about college and the ways in which the timing of…

A much larger proportion of English 14-year-olds expect to apply to university than ultimately make an application by age 21, but the proportion expecting to apply falls from age 14 onwards. In order to assess the role of socioeconomic status in explaining changes in expectations, this paper applies duration modelling techniques to the…

College education is fundamental to students' upward mobility, states' economic growth, and the country's economic competitiveness. Researchers have forecast that 63 percent of future jobs will require a college degree, yet in the coming years the United States will likely produce 3 million fewer college graduates than are needed to fill workforce…