Since 1979 more than thirty states have adopted "performance funding" for public institutions of higher education. Under performance funding, a portion of the state appropriations for each institution is determined by the institution's achievement of performance goals on such metrics as retention and graduation. We argue that several…

This study examines patterns of state financing in public community colleges. The focus of the study is to not only show the disparities that exist across the 50 states in terms of fiscal capacity to provide funding for community colleges, but also in the effort that is exerted to fund community colleges. The study combines the Bureau of Economic…

This paper examines the graduation rates between 2000 and 2015 of United States colleges and universities at the national, state, and institutional levels. This research focuses on two-year and four-year programs. Rates are investigated longitudinally along with variables that distinguish between public/private institutions, percentages of…

Community colleges in the United States and Canada operate within postsecondary environments that are being reshaped by neoliberal policymaking. As community colleges in both countries respond to the pressures of neoliberalism, their capacity to serve students already marginalized by their "nontraditional" status may be affected in…

The current study proposes a taxonomy to organize existing knowledge on cybercrimes against critical infrastructure such as power plants, water treatment facilities, dams, and nuclear facilities. Routine Activity Theory is used to inform a three-dimensional taxonomy with the following dimensions: hacker motivation (likely offender), cyber,…

The American Graduation Initiative stands as the cornerstone of the Obama administration's higher education agenda. To investigate the state of the politics of education in the Age of Obama, this article employs critical discourse analysis to unveil the hidden meanings and ideological commitments inherent in Obama's policy discourse. Read within…

This article is concerned with teachers' engagement with educational research. It presents a subset of data from a larger study, which explored teachers' responses to educational research published in a peer-reviewed journal. In this article, I discuss four ways of reading that the participants employed while addressing the validity and usability…

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the perceptions of underprepared college students who had participated in a first-year learning community at an urban, culturally diverse, commuter campus in the southeastern United States. Perceptions of graduates and those who earned at least 30 college-level credit hours were compared to…

While South African higher education has, in many respects, achieved remarkable achievements since 1994, a series of serious problems continue to beset the system, and a low internal (high attrition rate) and external (alignment with the employment market) efficiency. There also exist the problems of large scale youth unemployment and the policy…

This article describes Realistic Mathematics Education (RME), a design theory for mathematics education proposed by Hans Freudenthal and developed over 40 years of developmental research at the Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education in the Netherlands. Activities from a unit to develop student understanding of logarithms are…

This qualitative study examines current community college library practices in developmental education. Based on semistructured telephone interviews with 27 librarians across the United States, analysis of the results shows that there are librarians who proactively integrate basic library skills into developmental education and academic success…

US community colleges play various roles in American higher education. Because of their wide-ranging diversity and open enrollment policies, they are frequently referred to as "democracy's colleges". They are vital today in assisting Americans in better understanding the global realities of a post-September 11 world. Programmatic…

A recent study focused on workplace learning in the UK, USA and Canada; 14 universities, two community colleges and 15 host organisations were included. Interviews were conducted with directors of professional peak associations, academic supervisors, placement officers, managers and/or field supervisors and students. This paper reports on the ways…

This qualitative comparative case study examines the workforce training programs offered in a US community college and the vocational and technical programs offered in a comparable Chinese postsecondary institution. The study sought to identify transferable qualities and characteristics that could contribute to improving the workforce training…

The purpose of conducting this study was to understand how neoliberal discourses manifest within the local context of a short-term, job-training program offered at a two-year college in the USA. Ethnographic data were collected at the local site through interviews, observations and document analysis. We then situated these data within a global…