Higher education offers many benefits to individuals and society--including increased employment opportunities and higher wages--and can help disrupt cycles of intergenerational poverty by improving economic outcomes for those who earn postsecondary credentials. Public community and technical colleges offer a relatively affordable, open-access…

The Tennessee Education Lottery Scholarship (TELS) program was designed to meet the unique needs of the State of Tennessee, while also incorporating the hallmark elements of existing merit-based aid programs in other states. This manuscript provides a snapshot of TELS recipients and their outcomes, including narrative discussion on the current…

This Executive Summary provides a brief overview of the Annual Report of the Cohort 3 TPSID Model Demonstration Projects (Year 3, 2022-2023). Information is provided about the TPSID (Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disability) projects about program characteristics, student characteristics, academics, academic…

Think College Reports present descriptive data in narrative and tabular form to provide timely information to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for review and use. This report provides an overview of descriptive program- and student-level data provided by Cohort 3 TPSIDs (Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with…

Think College REPORTS present descriptive data in narrative and tabular form to provide timely information to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for review and use. This report provides program- and student-level data reported by TPSIDs (Transition and Postsecondary Programs for Students with Intellectual Disabilities) during the…

It has become increasingly difficult to succeed in the U.S. workforce with only a high school diploma. While 75% of the middle-class workforce had only a high school education in the 1970s, that percentage dropped to below 40% by 2007. An estimated two-thirds of all jobs in 2020 will require some postsecondary training, up from just a quarter of…

The dataset used in this report was created by combining Bridge to Finish intervention records, provided by the United Way of King County (UWKC), with student information provided by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC). The intervention records span the terms from summer 2018 through fall 2021. SBCTC data include these…

There are almost 90 million forced migrants around the world, many of whom could benefit from online higher education, and yet there is evidence that displaced people face challenges in online learning environments. This paper reports on a study in the context of a UK university's master'slevel distance learning program that offers Sanctuary…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between student characteristics and student retention in a predominantly online college using data from two cohorts of entering students in either 2017-2018 or 2018-2019. Due to the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable indicating retention, this study relied on the point biserial…

Equity students entering higher education through Enabling programs often encounter significant challenges as they transition into the academic field. This transition involves navigating the hysteresis juncture, a moment of misalignment between students' ingrained habitus and the expectations of the academic environment. This study explores the…

Originating in the 1970s, Competency-Based Education (CBE) deviated from traditional time-based benchmarks, emphasizing mastery of specific skills and competencies. Its initial adoption is mainly attributed to a response to a more traditional educational system that was heavily reliant on time-based (credit hour) benchmarks of success to indicate…

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs), lasting two or three years, capture about a quarter of higher education enrollment in the world and can play a key role enhancing workforce skills. In this paper, we estimate the program-level contribution of SCPs to student academic and labor market outcomes, and study how and why these contributions…

The UK government has been called on to reform the Visitor immigration route by increasing the length of time short-term exchange students are permitted to stay in the UK from six months to one academic year. The contribution of international students to the UK is celebrated and discussed within the higher education sector. However, not as much…

There is steadily growing consensus around a critical issue in our nation's higher education system: the need to modernize our postsecondary data infrastructure. Recognizing that building the Student-Level Data Network (SLDN) outlined in pending federal legislation will require the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to make key…

The impact of college STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] summer bridge programs is not well understood. This nationwide study pooled data from 27 colleges and universities involved in the NSF's [National Science Foundation's] STEM Talent Expansion Program to model changes in college career aspirations for 2 groups: 383 STEM…