Research in Higher Education最新文献

This study focuses on the potential academic benefit of virtual international exchange for community colleges and the students they enroll through a comparison of virtual exchange and study abroad. Using data from two community colleges in the US Southeast, this study draws upon the notion of socioacademic integration. Specifically, this study theorizes that both virtual exchange and study abroad have a positive relationship with students’ academic outcomes given their potential to foster socioacademic integrative moments. However, given the scalability of virtual international exchange, it was expected that these programs are associated with a greater relationship to students’ academic outcomes in the aggregate. This study’s results generally confirm these expectations, although findings for virtual exchange are less positive compared to study abroad. Results have implications for the establishment and success of both approaches to international education programming at community colleges. The potential for virtual international exchange to reach a larger group of students compared to study abroad, thus having a greater aggregate impact on students’ success and outcomes, has key policy implications particularly for community colleges, for which service to the community is an integral component of institutional mission.

Longstanding disparities in four-year transfer rates for Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic community college students, relative to their Asian and white peers, raise important equity questions about the vertical transfer function in the U.S. higher education system. Using data from one of the nation’s largest and most racially and ethnically diverse community college systems, we examined whether differences in early academic momentum (e.g., first-year cumulative GPA, summer enrollment, number of first-year credits attempted and earned) were a root cause of gaps in transfer outcomes between different racial and ethnic groups. Multi-group structural equation modeling (SEM) results revealed a strong relationship between early academic momentum and vertical transfer success for community college students. However, the results showed academic momentum did not operate in the same manner for all racial and ethnic groups and some indicators were particularly important for improving transfer outcomes for Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic students. These results have important implications for community college research and practice pertinent to vertical transfer outcomes.

Existing qualitative research in higher education on students’ work and family commitments already suggests that time as a resource for college is likely not distributed equitably by race/ethnicity or gender. However, the relationship between race/ethnicity, gender, and time as a resource for college has yet to be quantitatively measured in large-scale higher education research. This study explored whether gender or race/ethnicity correlated with differences in time as a resource for college; and further, the extent to which differences in time as a resource for college may be explained by other factors such as age, number of children, and access to childcare. Retrospective survey responses (n = 41,579) on self-reported time use were merged with institutional data records from students at the City University of New York (CUNY), a large diverse public university in the U.S. Women, Black, and Hispanic students were all significantly more time poor than male, White, or Asian students. Age accounted for significant portions of these differences, perhaps because it correlates with increased work and family responsibilities. Having children as well as a student’s access to childcare also explained a significant portion of inequitable distributions of time as a resource for college.

To challenge “objective” conventions in quantitative methodology, higher education scholars have increasingly employed critical lenses (e.g., quantitative criticalism, QuantCrit). Yet, specific approaches remain opaque. We use a multimethod design to examine researchers’ use of critical approaches and explore how authors discussed embedding strategies to disrupt dominant quantitative thinking. We draw data from a systematic scoping review of critical quantitative higher education research between 2007 and 2021 (N = 34) and semi-structured interviews with 18 manuscript authors. Findings illuminate (in)consistencies across scholars’ incorporation of critical approaches, including within study motivations, theoretical framing, and methodological choices. Additionally, interview data reveal complex layers to authors’ decision-making processes, indicating that decisions about embracing critical quantitative approaches must be asset-based and intentional. Lastly, we discuss findings in the context of their guiding frameworks (e.g., quantitative criticalism, QuantCrit) and offer implications for employing and conducting research about critical quantitative research.

During economic recessions, state funding for higher education contracts (Delaney & Doyle, 2011; Hovey, 1999; SHEEO, 2022). Despite this reality, public higher education officials need to offer insights and explanations to state legislators about the current status of their institutions and their needs when discussing their budget requests. We use a multiple case-study design, framed by the narrative policy framework, to examine how campus officials in California and Texas justify their budget requests to the state legislature during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 131 h of transcribed legislative budget meetings and 62 documents, our findings suggest that higher education leaders emphasize the economic functions of higher education and center their ability to successfully manage during these uncertain and difficult times by highlighting improved or stable accountability measures such as enrollment, persistence, graduation, and job placement rates. During these budget requests, there are commonalities between the states regarding the structure, justifications, and narrative strategies used. However, higher education leaders evoked different narrative objects depending on the perceived values, beliefs, and norms of their state legislators.

This study assesses the technical efficiency of higher education institutions in terms of labor market outcomes for recent graduates, employing a comparative analysis of three distinct methodological approaches. Using a sample of recent graduates of Colombian universities who earned their degrees between 2007 and 2011, we estimated the institutions' efficiency scores through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) model, and Cazals et al. (Journal of Econometrics 106:1-25, 2002) order-m estimator. Our results reveal that the estimation technique affects the results when super-efficient decision-making units are present, with the order-m technique demonstrating superiority over DEA and FDH. However, in the absence of super-efficient institutions, the efficiency rankings obtained from all three methodologies exhibit consistency. This paper contributes to the literature by highlighting the importance of methodological selection in evaluating the labor market performance efficiency of higher education institutions when recent graduates’ perspective is adopted.

Scholarship on nonresident enrollment by public research universities has developed in isolation from scholarship on linkages between private high schools and selective private universities. We argue that these literatures are part of a broader story about the competition for students from affluent schools and communities. This manuscript analyzes off-campus recruiting visits to private high schools made by a convenience sample of 15 public research universities and 14 selective private universities. An off-campus recruiting visit indicates a social relationship between a school and a university. Therefore, we utilize social network methods to examine the recruiting networks of public and private universities. With respect to scale (research question 1), universities in our sample made a disproportionate number of visits to private high schools. With respect to overlap (RQ2), simple network analyses and community detection methods reveal substantial overlap in the recruiting networks of public and private universities. RQ3 assesses the characteristics of visited schools. Both public and private universities tended to visit private schools in their home geographic region and also in the South, where private school enrollment growth has been strongest. Visited private schools enroll a much larger share of white students than visited public schools. Surprisingly, several public research universities visited sectarian private high schools at a rate similar to sectarian private universities.

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 they advance from matriculation to graduation (or institutional exit). First, we describe variation in path homogeneity across both STEM and non-STEM majors at one public research-intensive institution. Second, we show that a major’s level of path homogeneity is correlated with the percentage of “locked” requirements in its stated curriculum, but that the stated curriculum cannot account for all observed differences in path homogeneity. Third, we conduct a correlational analysis of early exposure to path homogeneity and graduation likelihood. Findings show that students with average levels of academic preparation are less likely to graduate if enrolled in path-homogeneous majors compared to more path-heterogeneous (i.e., flexible) majors, and that negative outcomes associated with a path-homogeneous major are exacerbated for students with below-average preparation. Supplemental analyses show that this relationship holds for STEM and non-STEM majors, cannot be explained away by the competitiveness of a major, and that students generally switched from more to less path-homogeneous majors over the course of their college careers. Taken together, these findings urge re-examination of the ways college majors can promote retention.

One issue that has received little attention is how students factor distance from home into their decisions about college. In this study, we used data from the Education Longitudinal Survey of 2002 (ELS:02) to examine the distances between a student’s home and the colleges to which they applied, and how far from home they enrolled. We focused on how demand- and supply-side factors were related to the distances applied and enrolled. We tested the sensitivity of our findings to alternative ways of measuring the supply of postsecondary education within commuting distance, and identified factors associated with differences between a student’s application and enrollment distances. Finally, we used quantile regression analysis to determine if the associations between demand- and supply-side factors and distances applied and enrolled varied along the distance distributions.

The assumption that honors programs are more academically challenging is rarely interrogated. Using multi-institutional, longitudinal quantitative data from a larger study, we use quasi-experimental methods to examine students’ experiences of course rigor, including workload and cognitive challenge, for honors participants compared to non-participants. Honors students perceive greater workload but not cognitive challenge in their first year, especially in terms of the amount of reading and writing they are asked to do. In their fourth year, honors participants experience less cognitive challenge than non-participants. Results of subgroup analyses suggest that these differences are likely driven by students who participate in centralized honors programs rather than departmental honors as well as those attending more selective institutions, with implications for honors program instructors and administrators.