Resource Archive

Americans have much more confidence in public colleges and universities than in private ones, accorindg to a new survey by Vanderbilt University’s Project on Unity and American Democracy.

An analysis reveals the rapid growth of state investments in short-term credential pathways. Total investments now exceed $5.6 billion across 70 initiatives in 32 states.

Getting a head start on college coursework in high school has become an even more important goal for high school students in recent years, due in part to the rising costs of obtaining traditional four-year college degrees coupled with the disruptions in learning for high school and college students because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One out of every five undergraduate students are caring for one or more children while enrolled in college. That amounts to just over three million undergraduate students, along with nearly a million graduate students with children. Many students, especially those with children, grapple with housing insecurity and homelessness.

Latino students in Texas make informed, pragmatic choices to afford college, often shaped by state policy and institutional practice, says a new brief from Excelencia in Education.

What happens when student parents receive the financial, institutional, and emotional support they need to excel in college? They don’t just earn degrees—they lead, innovate, and uplift their communities.

Private, nonprofit colleges and universities continue to significantly discount their published prices for undergraduates, according to a new study from the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

The urgent need to build a strong pipeline of career-ready high school graduates is growing rapidly, just as more parents, students, and employers are questioning the value of traditional higher education.

For years, experts have predicted that the number of 18-year-olds entering college will begin a long period of decline due to lower birthrates after the 2008 recession. Now, that period—the “enrollment cliff”—is here.

A new survey from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that more than half of student loan borrowers consider themselves financially insecure, with an overwhelming majority (74 percent) of borrowers saying they had experienced at least one negative financial event in the last 12 months—such as not being able to pay the full amount due on…

College students today often face a variety of challenges academic pressures, social and family stresses, financial/ economic hardship stresses, a rapidly shifting technological environment, an increasingly polarized political environment, and more.

The United States is facing shortages of middle-skills credentials (certificates and associate degrees) that provide pathways for early-career workers to secure jobs in occupations that are high-paying for workers without a bachelor’s degree.

Transferring credits from a community college to a four-year institution remains a crucial strategy many students must use to obtain a bachelor’s degree. However, effectively implementing this strategy can be difficult. Despite state policies intended to streamline credit transfer, students face significant barriers to having their credits accepted and, more importantly, applied to degree requirements…

The four million student parents who make up the postsecondary education population in the United States face unique barriers to success that reach far beyond the high cost of tuition. Of these four million students, 43 percent are single mothers, nearly 10 percent of the undergraduate population. Single mothers with only a high school diploma…

A growing body of evidence suggests that financial instability is one of the most common barriers to college completion and that, in many cases, students drop out due to relatively small, unexpected expenses. These findings have sparked interest in a promising solution: emergency aid programs. These micro-grants or short-term financial interventions are designed to help…

Across the United States, millions of students are derailed from completing their college degree not by academic challenges, but by unexpected financial emergencies and the overwhelming costs of balancing education with basic needs. This is especially student parents. More than one in five undergraduates are student parents, with single mothers representing 43 percent of this…

This report shows the “some college, no credential” (SCNC) population—former students who stopped out without earning a credential—is up 3.6 percent from a year earlier while fewer SCNC students returned and completed a credential. This suggests there’s an increasingly missed opportunity for states and institutions to reengage SCNC students.

The House reconciliation bill outlines a new risk-sharing formula that would have colleges pay back a portion of their students’ unpaid student loan bills. The share of unpaid debt varies primarily based on program graduates’ earnings, relative to tuition paid, and on the program or institution graduation rate.

A recent survey found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans believe that a 4-year college education is not worth the cost. In addition, skills-based hiring—that is, recruiting and screening job candidates based on skills, rather than academic degrees—is becoming more common. At the same time, the U.S. Congress has been considering legislative…

MDRC researchers share practices likely to support part-time student success.