This paper takes stock of the state of language learning in the UK, as the country teeters on the edge of Brexit and becomes used to being led by the first Prime Minister in over 50 years to have studied Languages at university. The author, Megan Bowler, a Classics student at the University of Oxford, looks at the broad benefits to individuals,…

Massive school closures are occurring in urban school districts across the United States. Research suggests that school closures are the outcome of racialized neoliberal policies and decades of disinvestment that have left many urban districts with fiscal deficits and declining student enrollments. However, some urban communities have successfully…

Previous studies have shown that state performance funding policies do not increase baccalaureate degree production, but higher education scholarship lacks a rigorous, quantitative analysis of the unintended consequences of performance funding. In this article, we use difference-in-differences estimation with fixed effects to evaluate performance…

Many state education leaders are taking a fresh look at their school finance formulas in hopes of finding ways to contain costs and get more for their dollar. That is an understandable response given that education is the largest item on most state budgets. This paper examines how current funding practices lead to inefficiencies, particularly…

This report summarizes and analyzes fall enrollment in Iowa's community colleges during fall 2016. Each year, Iowa's 15 community colleges submit data on enrollment on the 10th business day of the fall semester. Some highlights from this report include: (1) Fall 2016 enrollment is 91,430 students, a decrease of 1.8 percent from last fall's…

Community colleges report opening Spring term enrollment figures to the Illinois Community College Board using a brief web based survey. Overall, short term statewide results of the fiscal year 2013 Spring enrollment survey show decreases from last year. Compared to the same term one year ago, statewide Spring 2013 headcount enrollments and…

This case deals with a university program which is well respected but requires changes to be made to it as enrolments dwindle. Pressure from administration is making the Program Head and Program Committee members as well as Senior Instructional Designer LeFort consider new options for its delivery. Online learning is not a well-established…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of education in the state and across the nation, irrevocably impacting the lives of students, families, and educators like no crisis before it. Educators, families, and leaders responded to the crisis with extraordinary resilience. In the face of an unprecedented threat to public health, the state…

After years of remarkable expansion, the for-profit higher education sector is showing signs of an industrial reset in the wake of increased federal regulations aimed at addressing claims of aggressive recruiting practices and high student default rates throughout the sector. Large publicly-traded for-profit universities, such as the University of…

This paper analyzes mission drift in baccalaureate colleges. "Becoming a university," defined as a change in organizational name (e.g., Aurora College becomes Aurora University), symbolizes the transition from a liberal arts mission to a comprehensive university mission. Mission drift is conceptualized as a form of "divergent…

Nationally, a majority of community college students require remedial assistance with mathematics, but comparatively few students who begin the remedial math sequence ultimately complete it and achieve college-level math competency. The academic outcomes of students who begin the sequence but do not complete it are disproportionately unfavorable:…

Article one of this dissertation utilizes a comprehensive literature review to depict the many cultural and social differences that are inherent to military personnel and how it may be translated into an online learning environment. In recent years, the military began the transition from an organizational and collaborative learning model to an…

The world of PETE doctoral education is changing rapidly given the current climate in U.S. universities. This article will introduce the reader to the issues facing higher education and set the stage for a series of articles to follow in this special issue of "Quest."

Changes in the education system following Hurricane Katrina have received considerable attention from scholars in recent years. However, the role of Catholic schools is often overlooked in such discussions of school reform, which most often concentrate on the dramatic changes in the public school sector. This oversight is significant given that…

For years, the St. Louis school district has experienced the convergence of two trend lines school superintendents hope never to see: rising employee-pension costs and falling student enrollment. Despite years of fully funding its share of the teacher-pension plan, the proportion of the St. Louis district's budget tied up in paying benefits for…