Qualifying for merit is a competitive and contentious process in higher education. Many merit structures are based upon traditional faculty evaluation systems which do not reflect the changing nature of higher education and thus, yield inequitable results. This article presents the case of a large department at a mid-size regional university that…

The Further Education (FE) sector has documented difficulties with recruitment and retention of teaching staff, as many FE colleges report having 'hard-to-fill' vacancies and high levels of churn amongst new starters. Taking Teaching Further (TTF) is a programme designed to address these issues by providing support for FE providers to recruit and…

We design a commitment device for college students, "Study More Tomorrow," conduct a randomized controlled trial testing a model of its takeup, and measure its effect on tutoring attendance and grades. The device commits students to attend tutoring if their midterm grade falls below a prespecified threshold. Unlike other commitment…

This paper provides evidence on a large-scale teacher incentive program in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, which awarded group bonuses to teachers and school staff conditional on improvements in student performance. By using a difference-in-differences and triple-differences framework with a series of alternative counterfactual groups, I show that…

Detroit students who obtain a college degree overcome many obstacles to do so. This article reports the results of a randomized evaluation of a program meant to provide support to low-income community college students. The Detroit Promise Path program was designed to complement an existing College Promise scholarship, providing students with…

Views on the impact of academic research are divided, with some voices advocating for more impact and others calling attention to pathologies of the "impact agenda". One point of interest to most observers is the degree of alignment between academics, who do the research, and university leaders, who control rules and resources relating…

This concurrent, mixed-methods case study explores faculty valuation of economic and social rewards after participating in at least one of four educational development programs offered by our Center of Teaching and Learning (CTL) at a large, public, R1 institution. We wanted to know if the effectiveness of such programs might vary depending on the…

West Bengal, once a leading educational hub in India, has experienced significant stagnation in its school education system over the past two decades, with progressively declining enrolment rates. To address this issue, the state government introduced the Kanyashree Prakalpa in 2013, a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) scheme aimed at reducing…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how gamification components affect training outcomes through intrinsic or extrinsic motivation (IM and EM), drawing on the self-determination motivation theory. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, survey method has been used to analyse the hypotheses and objective of the research. A total of 260 surveys…

This study seeks to determine whether giving an explicit incentive to students in an upper-division first-semester electromagnetism course (EM1), in the form of partial credit for reworking unit exam problems, will improve their problem-solving skills as measured by performance on identical problems on the final exam. Three problems--a primarily…

This study is the first statewide analysis of the effectiveness of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. Introduced in 2019, TIA is the most significant and unprecedented teacher merit-pay system in the U.S. Leveraging the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a counterfactual scenario to assess the causal impact of TIA on…

This study explores the employee retention strategies implemented by administrators in educational institutions, focusing on Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. The qualitative case study involved 10 participants, including administrators and employees selected based on stable tenure and appropriate qualifications. Through face-to-face…

This report examines state-funded loan forgiveness and conditional grant programs, designed to alleviate student loan debt and address workforce shortages in high-need fields. These service-contingent programs incentivize graduates to work in targeted occupations or underserved areas in exchange for debt relief.

The Department for Education (DfE) developed the Early Years Education Recovery (EYER) programme to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a part of the programme, DfE committed £153 million for the development of high-quality professional development of early years practitioners. One element of this was the funding of additional places…

The teacher shortage is a critical issue in many rural areas around the world. This paper presents the findings of two studies that investigated the impact of financial incentives on teacher attraction and retention in rural schools in Western China. Using the theory of compensating wage differentials and a mixed-method approach, we found that…