Student participation and performance in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) have been an education concern in the United States for years. In 2013, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 5 (HB5) to support increases in STEM awareness, particularly among ethnic minority and female students. To date, no studies have been conducted on the…

Academic choice and exploration are essential aspects of undergraduate education in the United States, allowing students to select courses with minimal restrictions. However, students often face challenges in navigating the complex academic landscape, hindered by limited information, insufficient guidance, and an overwhelming number of choices.…

Background/Context: Access to rigorous courses in high school is essential for college success (ACT, 2005), but low-income students and students of color take fewer demanding courses than their white and Asian counterparts (Cowan Pitre, 2014; Theokas & Saaris, 2013). The issue of inequitable access to more advanced courses requires a deeper…

During course selection, students have to consider many criteria to arrive at the best course to study at the institution that provides the best fit for their aspirations. However, a central issue that reduces the clarity of course consideration and results in suboptimal decisions is the failure of introspection. While people can usually describe…

The author of this article summarizes which, when, where, and how students take introductory economics. Among students who began college in 2012, 74 percent never took economics, up from 62 percent in 2004. Fifteen percent of beginning college students in 2012 took "some economics," and 12 percent were "one-and-done" students.…

In this paper, we present an extended evaluation of a course recommender system designed to support students who struggle in the first semesters of their studies and are at risk of dropping out. The system, which was developed in earlier work using a student-centered design, is based on the explainable k-nearest neighbor algorithm and recommends a…

University graduates have invested significant time, money, and effort into completing their studies, with many discovering that their chosen discipline is not what they were expecting, nor the right fit for their individual values or goals. Transition between disciplines is particularly common in the helping professions, but little is known about…

Recent research on curricular analytics suggests that the structure of a college major may impact major persistence and degree completion. Contributing to this line of research, we propose and test a new measure of the "lived curriculum" that captures the extent to which cohorts within a major take the same exact course-taking path as…

How does postsecondary human capital investment respond to changes in labor market skill demand? We quantify the magnitude and nature of this response in the U.S. 4-year sector. To do so, we develop a new measure of institution-major-specific labor demand, and corresponding shift-share instrument, that combines job ads with alumni locations. We…

Gendered field-of-study choice is a lively topic of discussion. The explanation usually given for the fact that women are still an exception in typically 'male' fields--particularly STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)--employs domain-specific stereotypes regarding men's and women's 'natural' abilities in different fields. The…

In this study, we built a personalized hybrid course recommendation system (PHCRS) that considers students' interests, abilities and career development. To meet students' individual needs, we adopted the five most widely used algorithms, including content-based filtering, popularity-based methods, item-based collaborative filtering, user-based…

Research exploring a student's "path to purchase" when considering course selection has revealed a number of influential factors including course content, reputation, and professor style. To date, little is known about the direct (or indirect) influence that course titles and course descriptions have on student interest and enrollment in…

This comparative study aims to determine the differences between the curricula of the first cycle degree programmes in business in Turkey in terms of the number of course units and the student workloads. In this context: (1) the courses included in the Bologna course information packages of business schools on their web sites have been examined;…

This article investigates the impact that information has on subject selection, if the information available to students during subject selection was considered adequate and if this was related to the increasing number of students taking an academic shopping approach to selection. Applying the theory of asymmetric information to a survey of 413…

Career and technical education (CTE) has dramatically changed over the last 50 years. Because of this major shift of understanding in purpose and benefits, the role of the education system is vitally important in raising awareness and reshaping the perception of CTE. This research focused on the influence of high school stakeholders, specifically…