"Getting Prepared 2018" examines Minnesota public high school graduates from the classes of 2009-2017 who enrolled in postsecondary education and those enrolled in developmental education. This report provides insight into the academic readiness of Minnesota public high school graduates. Developmental education adds to the overall cost…

What features lead a student to choose sport science, chemistry, physics, computer science or musicology as their subject of study and the Saarland University Saarbrücken as their place of study? Empirical analysis shows that study conditions for students of chemistry, physics and music do not play an important role in selecting the place of…

We investigate the relationship between teacher licensure test scores and student test achievement and high school course-taking. We focus on three subject/grade combinations--middle school math, ninth-grade algebra and geometry, and ninth-grade biology--and find evidence that a teacher's basic skills test scores are modestly predictive of student…

The recent introduction of new accountability measures in English schools, such as Progress 8, may have had an impact on the qualifications and subjects taken by students and offered by schools in England. The main headline measure by which schools are judged has been changed from the proportion of students achieving 5 or more GCSE grades A* to C…

Liberal arts colleges produce a disproportionate number of PhDs in the sciences (National Science Foundation 2008), and knowledgeable observers praise the "cross-training" of these colleges' science majors (Cech 1999; Connell 2004; Ekman 2007; Pascarella et al. 2004; Steitz 2001; Tilghman 2010). While many of the positive outcomes of…

This study examines the impact of merit-aid programs on secondary course taking patterns. Specifically, this study uses difference-in-differences to analyze state-level Advanced Placement (AP) participation and examination data pre and post merit-aid adoption. Results indicate increases in AP participation and number of total examinations after…

The reasons why students from lower socio-economic groups are under-represented at high status universities are not yet entirely understood, but evidence suggests that part of the gap may be a consequence of differential choice of A-levels by social background. The Russell Group of universities has since 2011 published guidance on A-level subject…

Research utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior to understand behavior should first elicit beliefs about the phenomenon from the target population. In order to understand the reasons why students choose to major or not major in Management Information Systems (MIS), we elicited beliefs from 136 students attending university in the United States…

The paper deals with professional training of future foreign language teachers in the USA based on the experience of Lewis University. As evidenced by research findings, the scope of foreign language education in the USA is rather broad, since they attempt to promote both traditional and critical languages in the context of developing translingual…

Unrelenting increases in the price of college textbooks have prompted the development and adoption of open textbooks, educational resources that are openly licensed and available to students free of cost. Although several studies have investigated U.S. students' perceptions and use of open textbooks, there are no published studies of this kind in…

In this article, the authors use the national High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) dataset to explore (a) if repeating algebra in the eighth grade was associated with overall mathematics grades and course-taking patterns by twelfth grade, (b) if repeating algebra in the eighth grade was associated with students' final grade in algebra,…

This Statistics in Brief provides information about the occupational expectations of high school freshmen in 2009 and how their expectations changed (or did not) by the spring of 2012. The focus is on expectations for a career in a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) field, defined in this report as science, technology,…

Parents and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds value differently school characteristics, but the reasons behind this preference heterogeneity are not well understood. In the context of the centralized school assignment system in Mexico City, this study analyzes how a large household income shock affects choices over high school…

In the spring semester of 2015, Morgan Ebbs made the bold decision to take a class called "The Rhetoric of Gaming." Having only really played games during childhood, Ebbs now thinks that choice was a bit naive. He is not ashamed to admit that he was the definition of what some like to refer to as "casual," "plebe," or…

This dissertation comprises a sequential explanatory mixed methods study seeking to understand persistence in engineering based on a student's initial mathematics course and the experience of a student who began in the lowest level mathematics course and completed an engineering degree despite struggling in mathematics courses. The first phase of…