Public higher education produces many benefits that are vital to the New England economy, but it is increasingly at risk following years of state budget cuts. In 2017 in New England, real per-student state funding for higher education was lower than it was in 2008, with a double-digit decline in each of the region's states except Maine. States…

Sharing longitudinal student record data and merging data from different sources is critical to addressing important questions being asked of higher education. The Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) is a multi-institution, longitudinal, student record level dataset that is used to answer…

College student persistence continues to be a vexing problem for colleges and universities. In Rethinking College Student Persistence (2014), Braxton, Doyle, Hartley, Hirshy, Jones, and McLendon explored the indirect role between cultural capital and first-year student persistence. The significance of this role becomes more important when one…

The Washington Legislature directed the State Board of Education (SBE) to provide an analysis of the equity and adequacy of new graduation pathway options through stakeholder outreach and engagement. This report contains the "Second Interim Graduation Pathway Options Report--July 2020" and the "Washington Graduation Pathway Options:…

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced many changes in the lives of our students and families. In this article, the responses of students in criminal justice classes at a Hispanic serving institution in south Texas were collected and synthesized. The 252 responses were divided into seven frequently observed and repeated themes: jobs and job related,…

Many universities and colleges focus on student retention and completion as a measure of their success. Publications such as the "Chronicle of Higher Education" carry an increasing number of articles dealing with student retention, success, and completion. Academic libraries support this goal through a wide variety of services, teaching,…

Graduation and time to degree are paramount concerns in higher education today and have caught the attention of policy makers, educators and researchers in recent years. However, our understanding is limited regarding the factors related to graduation and time to degree beyond students' pre-college characteristics (demographics and academic…

From 2006 to 2016, degree completion in the so-called "hard sciences" increased in prevalence for both genders. Excluding social sciences and psychology, the percentage of bachelor's degrees accounted for by science and engineering disciplines increased five percentage points for men, and two percentage points for women. This brief…

The college experience often includes activities outside the classroom that involve engaging with other students in a shared interest. These experiences often transform into alumni engaging in alumni functions, or participating through other means of identifying with the college, including wearing college logos. Online alumni involvement,…

Non-traditional learners are currently the majority of students in higher education. One segment of this population are millions of adults with some college credits and no degree. Every year, the 400,000 students who leave college join those millions. When adults attempt to return to school, they experience low graduation rates. Despite over half…

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, dropping out is a persistent problem among 15- to 24-year-olds. Researchers have noted school districts that have been able to improve graduation rates have often done so through the "development of innovative models and pathways that help young people get back on track to…

Anxiety is an identified risk for students and its rates are increasing amongst young people. While there are numerous articles available on anxiety and adolescents, little is known about the impact that rurality may have on anxiety in secondary school students. In light of this, a systematic literature review was undertaken to explore not only…

In the United States, women are more likely than men to enter and complete college, but they remain underrepresented among baccalaureates in science-related majors. We show that in a cohort of college entrants who graduated from high school in 2004, men were more than twice as likely as women to complete baccalaureate degrees in science,…

A growing body of evidence suggests that vocationally focused programs of study substantially improve high-school completion and longer-run economic success. However, the corresponding recommendations to expand vocational programs may have unintended, negative consequences for low-income, academically successful students (i.e., the "missing…

Using value-added models, we find that high schools impact students' self-reported socioemotional development (SED) by enhancing social well-being and promoting hard work. Conditional on schools' test score impacts, schools that improve SED reduce school-based arrests, and increase high-school completion, college-going, and college persistence.…