Academic Development Programmes (ADPs) are a distinct category of South African Higher Education that aims to provide alternative access to students who meet the minimum entry requirements for university but not necessarily for the particular academic programme of their choice. Although these programmes have existed for over 30 years, limited…

This study elucidates how doctoral students perceive the challenges and impediments of their doctoral programs. In this study, the demands of doctoral programs are characterized as challenges that stimulate students' potential and hindrances that threaten their well-being. Thirty-five full-time PhD students at various stages of their programme…

Studies indicate that student teachers' engagement in continuous professional learning, (i.e., student teacher professional agency [STPA]), can improve their readiness for their careers. Unlike earlier qualitative studies often from the Global North, this research contributes geographical and methodological relevance to the literature by…

Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) is on the rise to cater to non-traditional students. However, the surge in master's and doctoral students opting for ODeL raises concerns about the quality and timely completion of degrees. Existing literature on student attrition in higher education indicates that both student-related factors and institutional…

Pre-tertiary enabling programs have become an increasingly popular pathway to university in Australia in recent years, however little is published about how well enabling students fare once they start university. This paper examines and compares first-year retention and academic outcomes of students that entered Murdoch University between 2014 and…

Internationally and nationally, government and educational policies prioritise wellbeing to support education. Social-emotional learning (SEL), a frequently used term for wellbeing in the United States of America (USA), comprises accrued skills enacted over time. This article presents the findings of an arts-based narrative inquiry exploring eight…

In developing countries like Cameroon, students' participation in higher education can improve on the social, economic, and political status of the country. However, the mismatch between students' program choices and the preferences of the admission board may undermine this vision of national development. Surprisingly, even when students are…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to explore whether gamification and personalization as environmental stimuli to learners' learning engagement (LE) can affect their learning persistence (LP) in massive open online courses (MOOCs) and, in turn, their learning…

Recruitment and retention are critical for geoscience and the need for innovative ways of building these bridges to the geosciences is growing. Field experiences are a common attractor for students to the field sciences such as geoscience, but many research- and field-based experiences are limited to those who are already majors. Innovative,…

In 2017, the government launched Career Learning Pilots in order to test the design and provision of various training approaches for working adults with low to intermediate skills. As part of this initiative, the Department for Education provided approximately £11.3 million in funding to pilot projects that offered flexible and accessible ways of…

Social mobility, and in particular, intergenerational mobility, can be driven by increased opportunities for extended education. Movement beyond a family's social class will often see positive changes to overall life satisfaction, however, this movement can introduce feelings of alienation. This in turn can lead to detachment either from the…

Governments around the world use grant and loan programs to ease the financial constraints that contribute to socioeconomic gaps in college completion. A growing body of research assesses the impact of grants; less is known about how loan programs affect persistence and degree completion. We use detailed administrative data from Chile to provide…

Within the contemporary higher education landscape, maintaining student engagement and retention has become of critical concern to universities. Universities have mostly responded to this concern by implementing institutional engagement and retention initiatives by professional university staff. Thus far, however, the role that teaching academics…

It is recognised personal tutors play a role in supporting university students to complete their studies. However, approaches to tutoring differ widely across higher education, resulting in a paucity of reliable impact evidence. The college higher education provider in this research has weekly group tutorials for undergraduates. This mixed method…

One of the most worrying issues in Spanish education is the high school dropout rate, especially for those students who leave compulsory secondary education with no qualifications. Some of these students re-enter the system via adult education centres (AECs), where they can obtain the minimum qualification required by the labour market (the…