The study investigates a tension between affirmative action scholars who hypothesize that affirmative action bans would increase underrepresented minority students' STEM college completions and scholars who have empirically estimated declines. It also questions results that that find no existence of a STEM penalty (compared to non-STEM) caused by…

Guided by Critical Consciousness Theory and the Multicontextual Model for Diverse Learning Environments, this research explored whether a critical reflection of societal inequality and a hostile campus climate were associated with collective student efficacy and grade point average (GPA) among racially/ethnically diverse students. We examined…

Using large-scale longitudinal data, this study sought to examine factors influencing two important student development outcomes in students with disabilities attending 4-year colleges and universities. Informed by Astin's Input-Environment-Outcome model and the interactional model of disability, this study investigated the effect of student…

In 2010, the Obama Administration proposed new regulations designed to hold institutions of higher education (IHEs) accountable for student outcomes. I examine the effects of the regulatory uncertainty surrounding these "Gainful Employment" (GE) regulations on enrollment at for-profit IHEs. I utilize informational debt rates of GE…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of math placement policies for entering community college students on these students' academic success in math. We estimate the impact of placement decisions by using a discrete-time survival model within a regression discontinuity framework. The primary conclusion that emerges is that initial placement in a…

While there is general consensus that students are more or less participants in their educational experiences, the relationship between student participation and satisfaction has not been extensively examined in higher education literature. Looking to participation research in other literatures serves as a starting point for exploring this link.…

Using state administrative data for three cohorts of college enrollees from 1997 to 2008 and incorporating propensity score matching techniques, we examine the effects of attending a Minority-Serving Institution (MSI)--that is, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) or a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI)--on college-completion outcomes…

While the literature on postsecondary student success identifies important academic and social factors associated with student outcomes, one question that persists concerns the influence of financial aid. We use the National Student Clearinghouse's StudentTracker service to develop a more complete model of student success that accommodates…

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main determinants of time-to-degree in higher education. Our results use retrospective data on the full cohort of first-time entering students who embarked on short and long programs from one university in Spain and who were observed over an 8-year period ending in 2004. The descriptive analyses show…

We examine the extent to which readily available data at a large public university can be used to a priori identify at-risk students who may benefit from targeted retention efforts. Although it is possible to identify such students, there remains an inevitable tradeoff in any resource allocation between not treating the students who are likely to…

This study compares the explanatory power of the 2000 edition of Carnegie Classification, the 2005 revision of the classification, and selected variables underlying Carnegie's expanded 2005 classification system using data from the National Survey of Student Engagement's spring 2004 administration. Results indicate that the 2000 and 2005…

Pascarella (J Coll Stud Dev 47:508-520, 2006) has called for an increase in use of longitudinal data with pretest-posttest design when studying effects on college students. However, such designs that use multiple measures to document change are vulnerable to an important threat to internal validity, regression to the mean. Herein, we discuss a…

The purpose of this study is to identify student and institutional characteristics that influence the probability for graduation. The study delves further into the probability for graduation by examining how far the student deviates from the institutional mean with respect to academics and affordability; this concept is referred to as the "match."…

As institutions seek to promote student engagement on campus, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) is increasingly being used to chart progress and compare results using the Five Benchmark Scores. While recent research has begun to decompose the five benchmarks in a variety of ways; few research studies have sought to explore the…

Little work has been done on academic dishonesty in the Middle East. This research investigates the nature of the relationship between contextual factors and academic dishonesty using a sample from three private universities in Lebanon, and compares the results to a sample from seven large universities in the US. Using the basic model of McCabe et…