The college enrollment landscape has changed vastly in the last couple of decades. As such, regional public universities (RPUs) have had to become increasingly strategic in how they recruit new students to attend their institutions. For example, total college enrollment has declined from 2010 to 2017, and this population continues to become more…

These are the appendices for the report "The Effects of Expanding Pell Grant Eligibility for Short Occupational Training Programs: Results from the Experimental Sites Initiative." Four appendices are included in the document: (1) Implementation of the 2011 Pell Experiments; (2) Study Design and Analytic Approach; (3) Supporting Details…

The 2017-18 State Budget Act allocated $5M to the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges (CCC) to support a Veterans Resource Center (VRC) grant program designed to help CCC establish or enhance on-campus VRCs. In an effort to better understand the current state of VRCs in the wake of this funding, Irvine Valley College (IVC)…

The Inspector General Act of 1978 (Public Law 95-452), as amended, requires that the Inspector General report semiannually to the Congress on the activities of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) during the 6-month periods ending March 31 and September 30. This Semiannual Report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department…

Minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are considered models of excellence to support underrepresented racial and ethnic students; however, multiple definitions of MSIs complicate the consumption and production of research on these critical institutions. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) uses set criteria to define MSIs, based primarily on…

The "South Carolina Higher Education Statistical Abstract" is a comprehensive, single-source compilation of tables and graphs which report data frequently requested by the governor, legislators, college and university staff, other state government officials, and the general public. The 2024 edition of the Statistical Abstract marks the…

Parents and guardians are the biggest influencers on enrollment for students. Nearly all are invested and involved in the college search process with their students. But are colleges and universities really engaging them? Are they communicating the right information, with the right frequency, across the right channels? Are they helping families…

Module A of the OECD Higher Education Policy Survey (HEPS) 2022 elicited information on policies to promote digitalisation of higher education in OECD member and accession countries. In total, 30 jurisdictions responded, providing comparative information on various areas of digitalisation policy, from regulation and governance to financial and…

If universities want to survive into the century while maintaining relevancy to the business world and the global market, they must utilize innovative methods that engage students from the time of admission through graduation. Successful engagement equates to economic growth and positive branding. Students who are 'invested' and feel that the…

College-provided scholarships, or tuition discounts, are in the news. The National Association of College and University Business Officers recently estimated that the average discount for full-time, first-year undergraduates at private nonprofit colleges and universities hit 50 percent in the fall of 2017. In other words, these institutions…

Over the past 25 years, performance measurement has gained salience in higher education, and with the explosion of structured data and the impact of business analytics and intelligence systems, there are new angles by which big volumes of data can be analyzed. Using traditional analytical approaches, pairs of reciprocal cohorts are considered as…

In aggregate, state appropriations are the largest revenue source for public higher education in the United States. However, these appropriations have significantly declined over past decades, drawing serious concerns about the potential negative impact on schools and students. This paper provides a more comprehensive study of the effects of state…

"Paving the Path to College Aid: Expanding Access to the Cal Grant Program" looks at promising practices for increasing Cal Grant application rates, including the initial implementation of AB 2160, a new law introduced by Assembly member Phil Ting and sponsored by Ed Trust-West, to streamline the Cal Grant application process by…

Low-income students, even those with strong academic credentials, are unlikely to attend a highly selective college. With a field experiment, we test an intervention to increase enrollment of low-income students at the highly selective University of Michigan. We contact students (as well as their parents and principals) with an encouragement to…

Do tuition vouchers and cash subsidies promote educational or labor force outcomes for "non-traditional" students? I use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impacts of a state aid program with an unobserved eligibility cutoff. Eligibility has no impact on degree completion for students with a preference for community…