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…

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…

While it is clear that not all mergers and consolidations are a success story, and some collapse under backlash from students, faculty, and other community members, the University System of Georgia (USG) has completed an astounding number of successful mergers between its institutions. This case study provides an overview of the timeline of the…

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…

Although numerous quality ratings exist in today's media-centric environment (Money Magazine, and U.S. News and World Report, etc.), it is quite difficult to provide any reasonably meaningful estimates of institutional quality, either qualitative or quantitative. Global ratings of university "quality" abound, despite the fact that there…

Students with higher achievement scores and high school grade point averages are more likely to succeed in college as measured by their retention and graduation rates. Furthermore, an institution's ability to attract better prepared students results in a better academic reputation of the institution. The fact that better prepared students are…