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This study synthesized the effect of performance-based funding (hereafter, PBF) through multi-stages of a systematic literature review based on 36 articles. In addition, this study analyzes how policy design relates to the effectiveness of PBF in individual states. Similar to other meta-analyses, this study found that PBF policy is not effective in improving completion and equity of higher education institutions in the US. Further, this study assumed that there might be some positive effects of PBF on institutional performance in the states that maintained it for more than seven consecutive years. Specifically, this study assumed that some policy details such as institutional types, funding method (baseline or bonus), share of funding linked to institutional performance, and funding metrics were related to policy effects. However, this systematic review found that a majority of evaluative studies arrived at inconclusive results across different types of policy designs. One notable finding is that 2-year institutions show more positive results than 4-year institutions. In addition, this study found that statistically significant effects are both positive and negative. Based on the findings of the selected evaluative studies, this review concluded that PBF policy is not very successful in improving institutional performance across different types of policy designs in each state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, educators and policy makers have decried low graduation rates at US colleges, advocating policies and making investments to improve graduation. We analyze a decade of Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data for four-year colleges to investigate how much institutions have improved their graduation rates from 2008 through 2018, once controlling for institutional and student-body characteristics. We find substantial improvement to graduation rates at public colleges, modest improvement at private not-for-profits, and a decline in graduation at the for-profit sector. We then investigate whether improvements to graduate rates are associated with variation in student-body composition, selectivity, and institutional expenditures, using pooled cross-sectional, Prais–Winsten, and college fixed-effect models. We find that most between-college variation in graduation rates over time reflects variation in the composition of a college's student body and in instructional expenditures. Our Bending the Curve metric utilizes the cross-sectional models to calculate predicted graduation rates for each college and determines how much they exceeded or failed to meet expectations. Unadjusted graduation measures, such as IPEDS' rates that fail to adjust for these compositional factors, are poor indicators of institutional effectiveness and can mislead stakeholders who use them as an indicator of college performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a global demand for construction managers, and an undergraduate degree in a construction-related field offers some of the best prospects for entry into the profession. However, despite demand, undergraduate construction education programs continue to lack racial-ethnic diversity. This longitudinal case study explores and compares 1990 through 2009 and 2010 through 2017 enrollment trends and academic success outcomes (e.g. GPA and graduation rates) among undergraduate Latino/Hispanic and racially minoritized students and their respective peers at a large construction management program in the western United States (n = 3373). Statistically significant differences in academic success outcome variables, shown in literature to indicate evidence of opportunity gaps, were observed between groups. Furthermore, it was noted that the magnitude of some of these mean differences were larger between 2010 and 2017 when compared to the mean differences between 1990 and 2009. Recommendations, future research, limitations, and interpretation of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]