This marks the ninth hearing that the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee has convened in advance of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the unique challenges facing minority serving institutions (MSIs) and to learn about programs and support to help facilitate student success.…

Disparities exist among Latinos in educational attainment. These disparities are magnified when comparing their access, persistence, and degree attainment to their Caucasian and Asian American counterparts. The purpose of this quantitative study is to discover the impact of cultural competence among academic advising professionals as it relates to…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a significant relationship between repeated test taking on the SAT and several demographic measures. These measures included ethnicity (American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Mexican/Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Other…

When the U.S. Census Bureau began releasing population reports from the 2010 count, the findings reaffirmed demographers' projections about the nation's rapidly changing racial, ethnic, and economic makeup. African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American populations grew about 30 percent since 2000 and will account for a majority of the…

The study explores the potential relationship between personality and perceptions of serendipitous influence on academic and career decision-making. The study was conducted with 107 participants who were enrolled full-time at a rural, church affiliated private college in eastern North Carolina. The participants represented an accurate…

This study examines the impact of a "natural experiment" that gave students the choice to place into or out of developmental math because of an unintended mistake made by a community college. During self-placement, more students chose to enroll in gateway college- and transfer-level math courses, however, greater proportions of female,…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the highest unemployment that the U.S. has seen since the Great Depression, with particularly heavy job losses for Black, Hispanic, and Native American workers. In this set of studies commissioned by Lumina Foundation, the authors examine actions that states and community colleges can take to address the needs of…

We use data from 2015-2016 to document faculty representation and wage gaps by race-ethnicity and gender in six fields at selective public universities. Consistent with widely available information, Black, Hispanic, and female professors are underrepresented and White and Asian professors are overrepresented in our data. Disadvantaged minority and…

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) provide significant STEM degrees to African Americans. Initiatives toward increasing diversity in STEM fields have been implemented by government and industry leaders. HBCUs annually award over 20% of all African American baccalaureate chemical engineering degrees. This speaks volume to the…

This paper examines sorting into interracial friendships at selective universities. We show significant friendship segregation, particularly for blacks. Indeed, black friendships are no more diverse in college than in high school despite the colleges blacks attend having substantially smaller black populations. We show that part of the reason for…

By 2025, 22 percent of the U.S. college-age population will be Latino, a level already exceeded in four states: California, Florida, New York, and Texas. However, today, only seven percent of Latinos ages 18 to 24 have an associate's degree or higher compared to 9 percent of African Americans, 16 percent of white, and 25 percent of Asians of the…

The majority of Southern states performed below the national average and the average of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries in terms of the percent of young adults in 2015 who attained an associate degree or higher. This regional profile presents a synthesis of trends in the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB)…

As policymakers endeavor to address the teacher shortage as a whole, they should also consider the research around teacher diversity and explore policies that aim to increase the achievement of minority students. This issue of "coNCepts" examines the diversity gap in North Carolina and highlights the need for a strategic solution that…

We argue that Latino/a students are more likely to major in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in college if they were educated in high schools where they studied with satisfied teachers who worked in collaborative professional communities. Quantitative results demonstrate that collaborative professional communities in high school…

In the fall of 2014, students took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) to help determine their level of readiness for college. The PSAT/NMSQT 2014 State Summary Reports summarize the characteristics, scores and educational plans of the Class of 2016 and Class of 2017.