Western culture admonishes that ''winners never quit,'' but sometimes the termination of a specific goal is the best choice for a student. Cognitive perseveration is commonly defined as one repeating an action after learning that it produces a poor outcome and may be considered a form of ''never quitting.'' This type of cognitive perseveration…

Colleges and universities across the country are seeing their bond ratings drop and their budgets shrink. Employers complain that college graduates are not prepared for the workplace, and many students find themselves saddled with considerable debt and no job to show for it. These are trying times for parents, for students, and for institutions.…

The summer school sessions that colleges offer their undergraduates are sometimes considered supplementary activities and are rarely perceived as central to a college's mission or effectiveness. However, analyses of college transcript data that tracked a nationally-representative sample of undergraduates for several years and through multiple…

A growing number of educators and policymakers have begun focusing on the goal of preparing all or nearly all high school students for college and other advanced postsecondary learning opportunities. To meet this goal, states are adopting policies to encourage nearly all students, not just those seeking entry into competitive four-year colleges,…

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), state education agencies (SEAs) and local educational agencies (LEAs) have stepped up activities to broadly expand their data collection and reporting systems. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has advocated strongly for states to build robust student-level longitudinal data systems based on…