Purpose: Prospective students and other stakeholders in the education system use global and national rankings as a measure of the quality of education offered by different higher educational institutions. The ranking of an Institution is seen as a measure of reputation and has a significant role in attracting students. But are students happy in…

In light of the current discourse around the alleged discriminatory nature of the SAT and ACT exams against underrepresented minority students, and the increase in American institutions of higher education choosing to adopt test-optional freshman admission policies, this study sought to identify weather these policies are associated with changes…

The last decade has seen tremendous growth in the proportion of students of color among undergraduates in the United States, and yet racial inequalities persist when it comes to enrollment at top-tier universities, college completion rates, and the concentration of student loan debt following college graduation. In this article, the authors point…

This article extends a line of research on intentional change at public metropolitan research universities that aims to improve undergraduate student success (as measured by graduation and retention rates) while improving access (as measured by Pell and minority rates). Some of the issues that have emerged from this line of research involve the…

Despite decades of efforts to diversify the legal profession, White lawyers in the U.S. remain substantially overrepresented. As a necessary step for fostering equity in the workplace, law schools must work to reduce or eliminate the current racial disparities in their persistence and graduation rates. Therefore, this study explored the link…

Looking at the current figures for enrolment and completion, vocational education and training (VET) in Denmark is in a bad way. Over the course of the last 15 years, significantly fewer students have enrolled in VET, whereas enrolments in general upper secondary education have increased. Furthermore, approximately half the students enrolling in…

What does it mean to be 'excellent', particularly for the higher education institution? Without a definitive answer to that question, university rankings have become a proxy for quality and excellence. As such, higher education institutions are continually seeking ways to improve their rankings, with the implication being that these rankings…

I examine what the characteristics of competitive community colleges are and how the ranking systems identify the ideal qualities of community colleges through a comparison of community colleges to prestigious four-year institutions. I provide information regarding the institutional differences and the characteristics of top-ranked community…

One advantage of online learning settings relative to conventional classrooms is their anytime, anywhere accessibility. While online education programs provide students with flexible learning opportunities free from the restrictions of geographic location, a consistently growing number of students who prefer to learn exclusively online still…

The paper critically reviews the results of Korean massification in higher education (HE) and focuses on the consequences related to graduate employment. By analysing statistical data and reviewing related articles, this study explores the process of the massification of HE, investigates major factors influencing the expansion, and analyses and…

When colleges look to compare themselves with others, they are not much different from high-school students chasing popularity: Everyone wants to be friends with the Ivy League, but the Ivy League is really picky about whom it hangs out with. Each year colleges submit "comparison groups" to the U.S. Department of Education to get…

Hundreds of middle level and high schools are trying new strategies to improve attendance as an important path to improving achievement; graduation rates; and in many states, funding. Celebrity wake-up calls are just one of the tactics that school administrators are turning to as they look to leverage their own mix of sizzle and substance to…

Greek engineering Schools have a high status and attract good students. However, we show that in the leading institution, the National Technical University of Athens, only 27% of the students admitted in 1992-2003 graduated after the nominal five years study: the median graduation time was 73 months (reaching 93 months in one School) and 12% are…

This study applies a data envelopment analysis model developed for national universities to 93 national liberal arts colleges. Such models can be used by individual institutions for benchmarking purposes or by researchers seeking to compare the practices of highly efficient liberal arts colleges with the practices of relatively inefficient…

A few years ago, in "Student Success in College (SSiC)," the authors profiled twenty colleges and universities that were unusually effective in fostering student engagement and success, defined as better-than-predicted scores on the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and better-than-predicted graduation rates. These schools are…