Relatively few students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are enrolled in the most selective American colleges and universities. To improve enrollment, scholars have suggested that college admission offices provide these low SES students an admissions advantage, also known as class-based affirmative action. This study examined to what degree…

The first-year grade point average (FYGPA) is the predominant measure of student success in most studies on university admission. Previous cognitive achievements measured with high school grades or standardized tests have been found to be the strongest predictors of FYGPA. For this reason, standardized tests measuring cognitive achievement are…

This paper explores the relationship between legal practice and type of university attended and degree course studied for English and German lawyers. For England, some of the analysis is only based on data for barristers. We find that university attended matters a great deal for English barristers if they tend to have graduated from elite…

This brief describes (1) what parents look for when they choose a school and (2) how these preferences affect the sorting of students into schools under different school-choice policies. The findings are based on lists of preferred schools submitted by over 20,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 100 traditional and charter public…

Students and the public routinely consult various published college rankings to assess the quality of colleges and universities and easily compare different schools. However, many institutions have responded to the rankings in ways that benefit neither the schools nor their students. In "Engines of Anxiety," sociologists Wendy Espeland…

In 2010, Illinois policymakers sought to advance statewide school improvement by strengthening school leadership. Illinois became one of the first states to legislatively require a complete redesign of all its principal preparation programs with the goal of ensuring future principals would be "highly effective in leadership roles" and…

In this study, the author analyzed panel data on elite university students to test prominent explanations for how college attendance affects religious identities and behaviors. Results from random-effects logistic regression showed that in-college religiosity was primarily a function of pre-college religious background. While the secularization…

Context: Many professional master's athletic training program directors believe retention is a problem facing athletic training education. However, it remains unknown what steps, if any, are taken to improve retention. Objective: To inquire with program directors about their respective methods and interventions aimed at increasing retention rates.…

Educational efforts aimed at attracting the "best and brightest" into the teaching profession are widespread and include national programs, such as Teach for America and the New Teacher Project Teaching Fellows, as well as regional and state-based programs, city-based programs, and university-based programs. Yet, studies of attrition in…

Privileging elite academic pedigrees in graduate admissions preserves racial and socioeconomic inequities that many institutions say they wish to reduce. To understand this preference, I integrate across perspectives on trust in rational choice, social capital, and social network theories, and use the resulting framework to interpret 68 interviews…

New York City's public specialized high schools have a long history of offering a rigorous, college preparatory education to the city's most academically talented students. Though immensely popular and highly selective, their policy of admitting students using a single entrance exam has raised questions about diversity and equity in access. In…

Colorado has the second most-educated adult populace, but largely because it imports college-educated labor from other states. Almost 56 percent of Coloradans have a high-quality certificate, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or higher. Yet at the same time Colorado has the fifth lowest high school graduation rate in the nation. The state's…

We evaluate two low-cost college support programs designed to directly target insufficient study time, a common characteristic among a large fraction of undergraduates. We conduct our experiment across three distinct college-types: (i) a selective urban college campus, (ii) a less selective suburban college campus, and (iii) an online college,…

STEM is not just for scientists anymore. In today's economy, almost any job with decent pay requires STEM skills, and many jobs require advanced STEM abilities. But far too many U.S. residents are unprepared for the occupational demands of the 21st century. Formerly a world leader in math and science achievement, the United States now cannot keep…

When China liberalised its economy and opened up to the (Western) world, it actively promoted the English language at schools and universities on a massive scale. This learn-English movement, riding on the back of English as the dominant international language, has powered English into China's education reforms. We outline the movement and discuss…