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We examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of university STEM degrees by shifting the margin of initial enrollment between community colleges and 4-year universities. Our analysis is based on statewide administrative microdata from the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development covering enrollees in all public postsecondary institutions statewide. We find that the potential for shifting the enrollment margin to expand degree production in STEM fields is modest, even at an upper bound, because most community college students are not academically prepared for bachelor's degree programs in STEM fields. We also find that shifting the enrollment margin is unlikely to improve racial/ethnic diversity among university STEM degree recipients. This is because community college students at the enrollment margin are less diverse than their peers who enter universities directly.

This study examines the extent to which students obtain postsecondary credentials in the career technical education (CTE) fields of focus they choose in high school. Using school fixed effects models, we find that focusing on a particular CTE field in high school is associated with an increased probability of enrolling and obtaining a postsecondary credential in that field. The secondary-postsecondary relationship varies across focus areas, and it is strongest in health (increase of 12.5 percentage points), which is disproportionately chosen by females. Across all fields of focus, however, most students enroll and obtain a postsecondary credential in fields that are different from what they focused on in high school.

While the Pell Grant covers a substantial proportion of college tuition for low-income students, it has covered only two full-time semesters per year and has not included any support for summer courses through most of its history. As research has shown that continuous enrollment throughout the year increases college persistence and completion, the summer Pell (SP) program was added during the summer of 2009 and allowed eligible low-income students to receive an additional grant for summer tuition and eligible costs. The SP was eliminated in 2011 and then restored in 2017. Using administrative data on community college students in New York City, our difference-indifferences analysis results from both periods show that SP-eligible students had a higher retention rate in the fall of the second year, had higher associate and bachelor's degree attainment rates, and had higher earnings gains up to nine years from college entry compared to SP-ineligible students. Heterogeneous analysis indicates that the SP benefits were driven by Black students and older students.

Transnational joint education provision -- education jointly developed and delivered by two or more institutions in different countries -- has emerged as a desired experience for many students, a key priority of several institutions, and a site of innovation. The strategic importance of this topic on a European level is one of the reasons it was selected for the 2023 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group entitled "Challenges and enablers in designing transnational joint education provision". The group's findings are compiled in this report, which outlines the group's conceptual understanding of the term, benefits and challenges of engaging in transnational joint education provision, and recommendations geared towards higher education leadership, staff members, as well as national and regional-level governments.

European higher education institutions (HEIs) are facing increasing demands for more flexible learning and flexibility in learning paths. This report from a 2023 European University Association Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on "Flexible learning and teaching" explores the complexity of implementing flexible learning at HEIs, starting by defining what it means and entails for the institution, and its members and entities (staff, students, leadership, faculties). With the view that the development of flexible learning is an essential condition for the future of learning at universities, the group identified challenges and examples of practice, and offered recommendations for institutions to reflect on their strategy and build capacity for flexible learning.

The paper introduces the history and politics of value formation at historically Black colleges/universities (HBCUs) and focuses on how cultural-institutional values associated with Black and minority servingness--such as Black empowerment, ethics of care, and community service--impact the work of educators to coordinate internship opportunities for students. Drawing on interviews with educators at six HBCUs (n=27), this paper documents how such cultural-institutional values impact educational labor by being manifested in institutional discourse, supported through provision of institutional resources, embodied through institutional practices, and measured and assessed though institutional regimes of accountability. Educators work to expand students' access to the market by courting employers to establish networks for internships, and at the same time, work to promote the good reputation of the HBCU by selecting and triaging students who will represent the institution well, by socializing particular social skills, work norms, and dispositions of respectability, and by sociocultural matching of student and employer. This approach creates and expands the internship market for HBCU students; provides students with extra care, advice, and anticipatory socialization for the internship; and matches the student with an employer who may be particularly amenable to supporting the student's development. The paper proposes a value theory of educational labor that highlights and clarifies how cultural-institutional values constitute a specific context that motivates educators' work to serve their students in particular culturally informed ways.

In 2020, the federal government implemented the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) to provide financial support to employees, self-employed individuals and students directly affected by COVID-19. The CERB was available for individuals who stopped working or were working reduced hours because of COVID-19, and who met various other eligibility criteria. CERB applicants received $2,000 for an initial four-week period and could reapply for additional periods, eventually extending to 28 weeks, for a maximum benefit of $14,000. The benefit covered the period from March 15 to September 26, 2020. The CESB was available to students enrolled in a postsecondary educational program leading to a degree, diploma, or certificate, who were ineligible for the CERB or EI benefits, but met various other eligibility criteria. The benefit was active between May 10 and August 29, 2020. The CESB addressed a gap left by the CERB, which excluded students who were not employed at the start of the pandemic but would typically be looking for work during the summer of 2020. This paper provides insights into the differences in the rate of receipt of CERB and CESB of postsecondary students who received emergency benefit payments in 2020. Emergency benefit receipt is examined along various educational and socio-demographic characteristics to highlight some of the key differences. The analysis is limited to Canadian citizens and permanent residents who were enrolled full-time or part-time in a public postsecondary institution in the fall of 2019 in a program leading to a degree, diploma, or certificate.

We study whether female students benefit from being taught by female professors, and whether such gender match effects differ by class size. We use administrative records of a German public university, covering all programs and courses between 2006 and 2018. We find that gender match effects on student performance are sizable in smaller classes, but do not exist in larger classes. This difference suggests that direct and frequent interactions between students and professors are important for the emergence of gender match effects. Instead, the mere fact that one's professor is female is not sufficient to increase performance of female students.

Dual enrollment (DE) is one of the fastest growing programs that support the high school-to-college transition. Yet, there is limited empirical evidence about its impact on either students' college application choices or admission outcomes. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity approach and data from two cohorts of ninth-grade students in one anonymous state, we found that taking DE credits increased the total number of colleges students applied to and the likelihood of applying to any moderately or highly selective in-state four-year institution. Attempting DE credits also increased the total number of in-state four-year colleges a student got admitted to and the probability of being admitted to a highly selective in-state four-year college. Heterogeneous analysis further indicates that the gains were primarily driven by Black students.

With the dramatic increase of college students who self-disclose a disability, sustainable infrastructure for disability resource offices (DROs) is necessary to meet compliance requirements, reduce institutional risk, and promote overall accessibility on campuses. Because disability accessibility is a campus community responsibility, DROs must have the ability to collaborate effectively with a broad range of campus stakeholders. Appropriate staffing resources leads to better support for disabled students, which can improve persistence, retention, and graduation rates for this demographic as well as reduce staff burnout and the potential for staff turnover. The goal of this white paper is to provide DROs with information for disability resource professionals (DRPs) to consider when analyzing the infrastructure and number of staff within a DRO. This paper includes guidance on: (1) Examining time demands in critical DRO workload responsibilities; (2) Exploring operational efficiencies and workload balance; (3) Assessing the need for increased staff; (4) Finding and using benchmark data; and (5) Putting together a request for DRO resources.

Although part-time faculty have long contributed specialized expertise to colleges and universities, their role has shifted away from specialized expertise as they have shouldered an increasing share of day-to-day teaching operations at colleges and universities. Today, part-time faculty provide higher education institutions a flexible workforce and a less expensive workforce alternative. Despite their significant impact, the research literature lacks an up-to-date integrative synthesis of the part-time faculty workplace on its own terms, an object of study unto itself instead of a less-than version of the full-time faculty workplace. In this paper, we summarize key themes from the existing research literature most relevant to the part-time faculty workplace, with attention to both the technical components of the workplace and the socio-cultural dimensions of part-time faculty members' daily work experiences.

This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-state. The geographic dispersion of alumni is more than twice as great for highly selective 4-year institutions as for 2-year institutions. However, more than one-quarter of 2-year institutions disperse alumni more diversely than the average public 4-year institution. In one application of these data, we find that the average strength of the labor market to which a college sends its graduates predicts college-specific intergenerational economic mobility. In a second application, we quantify the extent of "brain drain" across areas and illustrate the importance of considering migration patterns of college graduates when estimating the social return on public investment in higher education.

Module A of the OECD Higher Education Policy Survey (HEPS) 2022 elicited information on policies to promote digitalisation of higher education in OECD member and accession countries. In total, 30 jurisdictions responded, providing comparative information on various areas of digitalisation policy, from regulation and governance to financial and human resources. The survey results provide insight into the role of public authorities in guiding, coordinating and resourcing the digital transformation of higher education institutions. The analysis and comparative tables in this working paper provide insights that can support the development of strategic digitalisation policies.

India has the second largest higher education system in terms of institutions worldwide, despite having only 26.3% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), including vocational education. It aspires to achieve a target of 50% GER by 2035. It means it would require a larger number of higher education institutions (HEIs), public and private, in addition to huge fiscal resources. At present about 75% of the HEIs are privately managed with about 66% of student enrolment. Though there is no provision of for-profit higher education institutions in India, many non-profit private HEIs are actually working as for-profit. They are growing fast and are visible too. Therefore, it is high time now to think seriously about the pros and cons, causes and consequences of for-profit and nonprofit private HEIs in India. India provides a big market for non-profit and for-profit higher education to domestic and foreign stakeholders. Already 160 foreign universities are working in collaboration with public or private limited companies in India. This essay provides an analysis of issues related to for-profit and nonprofit HEIs, including desirability, size, funding, transparency, accountability, quality, feasibility and sustainability, government policies, regulation, foreign collaborations, private investments, and incentives. The methodology adopted is analytical, comparative, and empirical.

Prepared for the Boston Foundation and signed onto by nearly two dozen representatives from across the political spectrum, "Unlocking College: Strengthening Massachusetts' Commitment to College in Prison" explores the landscape of educational opportunities in Massachusetts prisons. The report finds that despite evidence that educational opportunities improve racial equity and reduce recidivism, Massachusetts program face systemic challenges that have prevented program expansion. Addressing these issues is a moral and economic imperative - and it is a path a number of other states with both liberal and conservative leaders have already taken. The second half of the report explores lessons Massachusetts could take from these other states to create a broader system that complements the state's notable efforts to reduce the overall prison population statewide. Allowing college-in-prison programs to grow within the Massachusetts Department of Corrections would be the first, best step in the process, saving money and unlocking greater opportunities for thousands of people in the state.

We examine how different measures of teacher quality are related to students' long-run trajectories. Comparing teachers' "test-based" value-added to "nontest" value-added -- based on contributions to student absences and grades -- we find that test and nontest value-added have similar effects on the average quality of colleges that students attend. However, test-based teacher quality measures have more explanatory power for outcomes relevant for students at the top of the achievement distribution such as attending a more selective college, while nontest measures have more explanatory power for whether students graduate from high school and enroll in college at all.

In this HEPI Report, Nick Petford, Robert Griggs and Terry Neville explore the rationale and development of the University of Northampton's Waterside Campus, one of the UK's most ambitious university relocation projects. They conclude with a series of lessons learned.

This HEPI Report includes two contrasting views on recent higher education policies and alternatives to the status quo. In Part One, Roger Brown argues neoliberal policies have damaged English higher education in recent decades -- and continue to do so. He says neoliberalism has many adverse effects, including 'increased stratification, the commodification of learning and (for some groups) reduced participation'. In Part Two, Nick Hillman questions if it actually makes sense to paint recent reforms as neoliberal and suggests a wholly different approach might not bring the benefits that many people expect to see. Furthermore, he argues that supply-side reform has not yet gone far enough. [Foreword by Chris Husbands.]

This paper examines how international education (IE) as a tool of government foreign policy is challenged in an era of new geopolitics, where China's growing ambitions have increased rivalry with the West. It compares U.S. and Canada as cases first, by examining rationales and approaches to IE in both countries, second, IE relations with China before conflict and third, current controversies and government policy responses to IE relations with China. The paper concludes identifying contextual factors that shape each country's engagement with IE, but suggests that moving forward, the future of IE in a world of new geopolitics is likely to be far more complex and conflictual.

This paper analyzes how employers use discourse to ideologize the value of college internships--a historically emergent form of contingent, temporary, educational labor which has rapidly become a major feature of both higher education and labor relations in the United States (Frenette, 2015). The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with employers (n=38) in firms and organizations across a range of sectors who supervise and coordinate the work of college student interns from two public universities and two technical colleges located in different economic regions within the same U.S. Midwestern state. Using the anthropological theory of value (Graeber, 2001), we develop an analysis of how employers use discourse to ideologize and coordinate internship labor. Employers use three discourses of value to ideologize 1) the individual intern as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("entrepreneurial discourse of value"); 2) the organization or firm as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("corporate efficiency discourse of value"); and 3) the community, industry, or society in general as the primary beneficiary of the internship ("community service discourse of value"). The article develops the concept of a "discourse token of value"--discursive forms that (like cash) mediate value--as a central concept of the analysis of emergent forms of education and labor.

Approximately 450 community colleges nationally are part of formal statewide or national initiatives to implement guided pathways reforms to improve student success, and many other colleges are implementing guided pathways practices on their own. Because guided pathways is a whole-college reform--and because it takes several years to fully implement--it is challenging to evaluate. This paper presents a methodology for assessing the scale of adoption and estimating the causal effects of guided pathways within states and across colleges that have adopted the approach. To measure the scale of adoption of guided pathways practices, we will conduct institutional surveys and phone interviews with college leaders and examine the websites of every community college in Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington (70 institutions total). We plan to use these data to estimate each college's scale of adoption using a rubric with indicators for scale and timing. Drawing on strategies used in K-12 whole-school reform evaluations, we propose to examine pre-reform adoption trends and apply a single interrupted time series design to project what students' early outcomes would have been in the absence of guided pathways. We then propose to use a comparative interrupted time series design (which closely resembles a difference-in-differences approach) to exploit variation in the intensity of guided pathways practices and the timing of their adoption across colleges by comparing early student outcomes in colleges that have adopted guided pathways practices at scale and those that have not or those with a low scale of adoption. [This report was written with Hana Lahr.]

In this descriptive study, we use longitudinal student-level administrative records from 4 cohorts of high school graduates in Kentucky to examine the extent to which students persist and attain post-secondary credentials in the CTE fields of concentration they choose in high school. To our knowledge, this is the first paper to use student-level administrative data to examine how different fields of concentration in high school CTE are related to future postsecondary outcomes. We find that concentrating in a particular CTE field in high school is associated with both continuing on with that same field in college and obtaining a postsecondary credential in that field; this relationship is especially strong in health fields and especially for women in health. The secondary-postsecondary connection is the weakest among students concentrating in occupational fields in high school, who are also the most disadvantaged socioeconomically and academically before high school. Despite the existence of secondary-postsecondary pipelines of career interests, most students enroll and obtain credentials in fields that are "different" from the field of concentration in high school. In addition, relative to students with similar pre-high-school achievement as measured by grades and test scores, we find that CTE concentration in high school is strongly associated with being more likely to enroll in a two-year college and less likely to enroll in a four-year college.

We examine the role of universities in knowledge production and industrial change using historical evidence. Political shocks led to a profound pro-science shift in German universities around 1800. To study the consequences, we construct novel microdata. We find that invention and manufacturing developed similarly in cities closer to and farther from universities in the 1700s and shifted towards universities and accelerated in the early 1800s. The shift in manufacturing was strongest in new and high knowledge industries. After 1800, the adoption of mechanized technology and the number and share of firms winning international awards for innovation were higher near universities. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Growth Programme.]

This fact sheet explores the association between parental income and the pathways of young adults in postsecondary education for students who began their studies in the 2012/2013 academic year. Students from low-income families have previously been shown to have lower rates of educational access and attainment. This fact sheet focuses on persistence and graduation indicators, which are now released annually, and furthers the analysis of these indicators by adding a parental income quartile dimension. Overall, the findings provide the following insights: (1) Students in the highest parental income quartile remained enrolled (persisted) and graduated at higher rates than students from the lowest parental income quartile for all selected educational qualifications and groupings. The differences in indicators by the level of parental income were more notable for the graduation rates than for the persistence rates; and (2) For students who graduated, those in the highest parental income quartile graduated as fast or faster than students in the lowest parental income quartile for all selected educational qualifications and groupings, though these differences were generally small. These findings are consistent with similar studies regarding postsecondary experiences of students by socioeconomic status.

The critical role of communication is usually overlooked by higher education institutions. Here we argue that higher education institutions must consider an effective communication as one of their top priorities. This communication must go well beyond promoting the university's opportunities to potential new students, the pursuit of potential donors and outreach to policymakers: it must engage all aspects of internal academic life and seek the engagement of the larger society. Increasingly, higher education has to defend its purpose, integrity and legitimacy in a climate of growing neo-nationalist and populist movements. A comprehensive communication plan includes a deep revision of the University core values and practices, better teaching and learning strategies, as well as modern internal and external communication tools, including all sorts of social media.

International partnerships have become increasingly important for the mission and goals of universities and colleges globally. Understanding the nature of these partnerships and the perspectives of their senior leaders is critical. Senior international officers (SIOs) at 59 US public and private universities and colleges and 4 non-US universities completed surveys regarding: goals and criteria for developing the partnerships; number and country of their partners; types of existing partnerships; ways the university/college promotes/rewards international partnerships; challenges faced and important considerations for developing partnerships; and recommendations to enhance successful international partnerships. The SIOs' insights and recommendations were reviewed and analyzed. The most frequently identified major goals were "enhancing the quality of research and scholarship" and "strengthening students' education and preparation for life in a multicultural world and global economy." Conclusions included the recognition that successful strategic international partnerships and effective policy will likely: need to expand in scale, scope, diversity, and complexity; require strong, committed leadership; draw on the research and pedagogical knowledge worldwide; and carefully consider the wide, unique opportunities and challenges of these partnerships for practice and policy.

The rapid rise of online enrollments in public universities has been fueled by a reliance on for-profit, third-party providers--especially online program managers. However, scholars know very little about the potential problems with this arrangement. We conduct a mixed methods analysis of 229 contracts between third-party providers and 117 two-year and four-year public universities in the US, data on the financing structure of third-party providers, and university online education webpages. We ask: What are the mechanisms through which third-party relationships with universities may be exploitative of students or the public universities that serve them? To what extent are potentially predatory processes linked to the private equity and venture capital financing structure of third-party providers? We highlight specific mechanisms that lead to five predatory processes: the targeting of marginalized students, extraction of revenue, privatization by obfuscation, for-profit creep, and university captivity. We demonstrate that contracts with private equity and venture capital financed third-party providers are more likely to include potentially problematic contract stipulations. We ground our findings in a growing body of work on "platform capitalism" and include recommendations for state universities, accreditors, and federal policy.

A college credential can expand the range of career opportunities available to young adults. However, existing barriers to enrollment for prospective students pose equity gaps in college access and success, particularly for Black college aspirants. In Florida, racial and ethnic disparities in college enrollment contribute to disparities in educational attainment. Only 31% of Black Floridians hold a college degree. This report examines the attainment gap by exploring various factors contributing to Florida college applicants' decisions to enroll. This paper uses survey and enrollment information from two Florida community colleges (Hillsborough Community College and Miami Dade College) to identify factors related to college applicants' enrollment decisions. In the summer of 2021, nearly 15,000 applicants to the two colleges were surveyed about their pre-college experiences, and roughly 1,200 responded, resulting in a response rate of 8%. Of the respondents, 997 applicants identified as Black (i.e., African American, Black Hispanic, African, or West Indian/Caribbean).

Policy makers frequently use education as a welfare policy instrument. We examine one such case, where students from large and financially constrained families, were given the opportunity to be transferred to university departments in their hometown as part of the social policy of the Ministry of Education in Greece. Multiple law changes meant that there was a large and quasi-random variability in the number of transferred students over time, which was orthogonal to the quality of receiving students. We construct a novel dataset by linking students' characteristics and pre-university academic performance with their university academic record until graduation for the top economics department. We present consistent evidence showing how a social policy that is meant to help poor families and to alleviate inequalities has gone bad educationally, by lowering the academic performance of receiving students. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education & Skills Programme. Financial support was provided by Drasi II (2019/2020) AUEB.]

This paper provides new evidence on educational inequality and reviews the literature on the causes and consequences of unequal education. We document large achievement gaps between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, show how patterns of educational inequality vary across countries, time, and generations, and establish a link between educational inequality and social mobility. We interpret this evidence from the perspective of economic models of skill acquisition and investment in human capital. The models account for different channels underlying unequal education and highlight how endogenous responses in parents' and children's educational investments generate a close link between economic inequality and educational inequality. Given concerns over the extended school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also summarize early evidence on the impact of the pandemic on children's education and on possible long-run repercussions for educational inequality.

This occasional paper presents national demographic subgroup data for the 1975-2021 Monitoring the Future (MTF) national survey results on 8th, 10th, and 12th graders' use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. The study covers all major classes of illicit and licit psychoactive drugs for an array of population subgroups. The 2020 subgroup data presented here accompany the "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use: 1975-2021: Overview, Key Findings on Adolescent Drug Use" (see ED618240) and the "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2021, forthcoming: Volume I, Secondary School Students." The trends offered here in tabular and graphic forms cover demographic subgroups based on: (1) Gender; (2) College plans; (3) Region of the country; (4) Population density; (5) Education level of the parents (a proxy for socioeconomic level); and (6) Racial/ethnic identification. Detailed descriptions of the demographic categories are provided in the section starting on page 469 of this paper. The graphs and tables in this occasional paper present trend data for 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade respondents separately. Data for 12th grade begins with 1975, the first year in which a nationally representative sample of high school seniors was surveyed. Data for 8th and 10th grades begin with 1991, when the study's nationally representative annual surveys were expanded to include surveys of those lower grade levels.