This study uses secondary data to explore the relationship between the percentage of Latinos enrolled in a postsecondary institution and two educational outcomes: graduating within six years and total amount in student loan debt. Research on the concentration of Latino students in higher education have mostly focused on Hispanic Serving…

Postsecondary co-enrollment, or simultaneous enrollment at multiple institutions, is becoming increasingly common among U.S. college students. This descriptive analysis documented the characteristics and co-enrollment patterns of Latinx/a/o students in the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (12/17). Findings of the study revealed…

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the care crisis in the United States to the fore. Unprecedented closures of child care programs throughout 2020 placed a disproportionate burden on families, and mothers in particular. For parents enrolled in college or considering postsecondary enrollment at the time of the pandemic, the loss of child care services…

Participation in the modern U.S. economy requires that most workers have education and training beyond high school, with over 60 percent of all jobs and 80 percent of middle-class jobs requiring some level of postsecondary education. This report draws upon data from the 2012/14 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/14) to…

Deregulation of for-profit colleges led to a precipitous rise in enrollments from 1990 to 2010. Since 2010, regulation, investigations, and sanctions have led to enrollment declines in for-profit postsecondary institutions. Initially barred from receiving Title IV federal funds, in the form of Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, for-profit colleges…

Latinx student enrollment in college has dramatically increased in recent years, yet they are more likely than other racial groups to enroll at open access and public two-year institutions (Rodriguez, 2015). While public-two-year sector provides an encouraging postsecondary pathway for Latinx students, only 13% of all community college students…

Objective: Increasing rural community college degree attainment is very important to foster rural areas' economic and social well-being. Rural community colleges differ greatly from their suburban and urban counterparts in financial aid patterns and student bodies. However, existing literature is vacant with respect to student financial aid and…

In this brief, the authors propose three measures of "early momentum" for two reasons: Research is beginning to show that these near-term metrics predict long-term success, and the metrics focus attention on initial conditions at colleges that are particularly important for solidifying the foundation for student success. While these…

When planning for college, students face a range of constrained choices governed in part by variation among institutions. What are the economic consequences of those decisions and constraints during and after college? We know borrowing patterns vary by institutional sector, yet colleges within a sector vary considerably by admission and graduation…