Understanding the diverse pathways women take toward graduate education is crucial but often overlooked. When these journeys are presented, they are typically compared to men's experiences, which can obscure the unique challenges and opportunities women face. This descriptive research study, one of five reports, aims to provide a comprehensive…

Having parents with higher educational attainment is associated with many positive academic outcomes for students (e.g., college enrollment, degree attainment). This study aims to raise awareness and promote understanding of the characteristics, aspirations, and graduate degree intentions of students who are considering graduate school,…

One understudied segment of the domestic talent pool is the Black or African American individuals who are U.S. citizens and aspire to earn a graduate degree. Gender differences within this talent pool are specifically understudied. The 101,039 individuals who are U.S. citizens, who provided gender and race/ethnicity information, and who had scores…

Graduate study has rapidly expanded since the late 1990s, with women overtaking men in their enrollment in all levels of graduate degree. Once thought to be a relatively meritocratic space, due to increasing selection as educational transitions move into higher degrees, more recent research on graduate education has shown it to be a space where…

Today, the Federal Pell Grant program is ubiquitous in conversations about how to pay for undergraduate education. Since 1982, it has supported more than 212 million students, making it a cornerstone of higher education access in the United States. However, what happens next for Pell Grant recipients who earn bachelor's degrees--especially when…

While discussions around increasing diversity often focus on attracting a broad range of students, the unique needs and challenges of specific groups--such as Hispanic graduate school aspirants--are frequently overlooked. This oversight is problematic given the growing demographic significance of Hispanic individuals in the United States and their…

In this article, authors examine literature on the enrollment, degree attainment, and experiences of Black women graduate students. Authors use socialization to examine the failures of academia to account for Black women's intersectional identities and identify ways administrators and faculty can further support these women's success.

Those who have spent time in state care as children, and are therefore 'care-experienced', are known to have lower life chances than the general population. While we know that care-experienced young people are significantly underrepresented in Higher Education nationally and internationally, little is known about their progression to postgraduate…

Teachers play a critical role in shaping student success, and the attainment of a graduate degree, particularly a master's degree, has been frequently regarded as an indicator of teacher effectiveness. This report examines state trends in teacher graduate degree attainment with an emphasis on master's degrees, highlighting differences by…

This article focuses on the university graduates' perceptions of their employability, and particularly how the social prestige of degrees relates to such perceptions. It defines employability in terms of positional conflict and makes an argument that perceptions of the employability and prestige are socially mediated and require social…

This qualitative study using narrative inquiry as methodology explores the ways in which five parents experienced the phenomenon of graduate studies within the context of parenthood. The study uses Connelly and Clandinin's (2006) three-dimensional narrative inquiry space to examine, deconstruct, analyze, and gain insight into dominant themes. The…

Previous studies of the role of college students' funding sources in their educational outcomes have focused on individual funding sources and have not paid much attention to the mixing of multiple sources. As rising college tuition has heightened the financial burden on college students, the use of multiple funding sources has become an adaptive…

For German higher education, the introduction of a two-cycle study structure resulted in a new transition stage after the completion of the bachelor's degree. In contrast to some other countries, this structural change was stretched over a relatively long period. At the same time, the number of students enrolled in higher education has increased…

An ample amount of research has been conducted on teenage pregnancy and its adverse effects. However, there is limited research on the educational resiliency of teenage mothers. This phenomenological study explored the experiences of former teen mothers who have successfully completed a master's or doctoral degree. Their personal journeys were…

U.S. studies have found that stratified graduate education accounts for most of the relatively strong intergenerational socioeconomic association among postgraduate degree holders. The same association has been observed, but not explained, in countries with higher education systems that differ from that of the United States. We explore the…