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Job Corps is the United State’s largest and most comprehensive training program for disadvantaged youth aged 16–24 years old. A randomized social experiment concluded that, on average, individuals benefited from the program in the form of higher weekly earnings and employment prospects. At the same time, “young adults” (ages 20–24) realized much higher impacts relative to “adolescents” (ages 16–19). Employing recent nonparametric bounds for causal mediation, we investigate whether these two groups’ disparate effects correspond to them benefiting differentially from distinct aspects of Job Corps, with a particular focus on the attainment of a degree (GED, high school, or vocational). We find that, for young adults, the part of the total effect of Job Corps on earnings (employment) that is due to attaining a degree within the program is at most 41% (32%) of the total effect, whereas for adolescents that part can account for up to 87% (100%) of the total effect. We also find evidence that the magnitude of the part of the effect of Job Corps on the outcomes that works through components of Job Corps other than degree attainment (e.g., social skills, job placement, residential services) is likely higher for young adults than for adolescents. That those other components likely play a more important role for young adults has policy implications for more effectively servicing participants. More generally, our results illustrate how researchers can learn about particular mechanisms of an intervention.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to better understand the connection between religious affiliation and educational attainment and how this connection has changed over time.

Methodology/Approach – We utilize the cumulative 1972–2008 General Social Surveys to examine the relationships between childhood religious affiliation, college degree attainment, and religious switching across three birth cohorts.

Findings – We find in early cohorts that traditions such as Conservative Protestantism and Catholicism are negatively associated with college degree attainment. However, switching out of those traditions is positively associated with obtaining a college degree. In later cohorts, these effects disappear.

Social implications – The finding that the relationships between religious affiliation and educational attainment are dramatically changing over time means that scholars, educators, and religious groups might need to revise their current thinking concerning the topic of religion and education.

Originality/Value of chapter – This research helps us better understand the complexities involved when thinking about the role of religion in education and vice versa. By explicitly considering the different causal and temporal factors involved, this analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the connection between religious affiliation and educational attainment.

The study compares the demographics and degree attainment in Washington University’s (the University) Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship Program (CGFP) in the pre- and post-Grutter era. The fellowship program’s aims included bolstering African American graduate degree completion and preparing African American faculty members. The 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger affirmative action case serves as a break point to compare the 1991–2003 cohorts and the 2004–2008 cohorts. Interviews of key leaders give a historical perspective on the program’s mission. Institutional data organized to form two cohorts, pre- and post-Grutter comparison groups, provide insight into demographic trends and degree attainment. The CGFP realized its original mission to diversify the professoriate by supporting underrepresented graduate students. The vast majority of alumni in both cohorts earned a graduate degree and earned their intended degrees. The two cohorts achieved high doctoral degree attainment. Time-to-degree findings and placement within the academy demonstrated a positive outcome. However, the program post-Grutter has generated fewer African American participants. In the post-Grutter era, the University needs to develop new strategies to increase the racial diversity of graduate education. As a complementary resource, the CGFP, as part of a broader portfolio of programmatic and policy tools designed to diversify, merits continued investment. Only a fraction of programs focused on African American doctoral attainment publish evaluation data. The study captures the programmatic effects of the Grutter decision at an elite American university.

This chapter uses a dynamic structural model of household choices on savings, consumption, fertility, and education spending to perform policy experiments examining the impact of tax-free education savings accounts on parental contributions toward education and the resulting increase in the education attainment of children. The model is estimated via maximum simulated likelihood using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. Unlike many similarly estimated dynamic choice models, the estimation procedure incorporates a continuous variable probability distribution function. The results indicate that the accounts increase the amount of parental support, the percent contributing and education attainment. The policy impact compares favorably to the impact of other policies such as universal grants and general tax credits, for which the model gives results in line with those from other investigations.

The impact of academic and school-related factors on college readiness, aspirations, and access has been examined frequently within the literature (Barber & Torney-Purta, 2008; Polite, 1994; Taliaferro & DeCuir-Gunby, 2008; Uwah, McMahon, & Furlow, 2008; Wimberly, 2002; Yun & Kurlaender, 2004). Several factors related to school racial composition and perceived school support (Yun & Kurlaender, 2004), school relationships (Wimberly, 2002), gaps in exposure to college preparatory and advanced placement curriculums (Taliaferro & DeCuir-Gunby, 2008), teacher perceptions (Barber & Torney-Purta, 2008), and structural inequalities (Polite, 1994) have been identified as variables that significantly impact the opportunities for African-American children to be exposed to the types of interpersonal relationships and educational experiences necessary for preparing them to succeed in postsecondary education.

Morgan State University (Morgan) is a leading undergraduate institution for black science and engineering doctoral degree recipients. Morgan also is a leader in the production of black engineering degree recipients in the United States. This chapter provides a historic overview of the major programs with a tie to the impact on the institutional metrics, a discussion of the process for developing researchers in science and engineering, and alumni perspectives. The undergraduate research development models used in engineering at Morgan are compared and contrasted with the life sciences and physical sciences. The programs focus on developing communities of engineering practice and communities of science, thereby enhancing students’ self-efficacy and resilience, shaping disciplinary identity, and creating learning communities. These approaches are critical for the success of minority students and are supported by the social science literature. Best practices have been adopted at varying levels by the School of Engineering, the School of Computer Mathematics and Natural Science and the Behavioral Science departments that have netted these Ph.D. outcomes including multiyear mentored research, research training courses, and participation in professional meetings. Multiple approaches to student development, when matched with the disciplinary culture, are shown to result in national impact.

There has been much discussion, but little research about why African American males do not attend and or complete a college education. We examine the alternatives that might reduce or compete with the decision to complete a college education. We analyze the number of men incarcerated, trends in labor force participation, and occupation and wages by educational attainment. We find that even when the number of 18–24-year-old African American males incarcerated increased, the number of 18–24-year-old African American males enrolled in college had a larger increase suggesting that incarceration is not a plausible explanation for the growth rate in degree attainment for African American males. We find that the decrease in the overall percentage and in the percentage of 18–24-year-old African American males reporting employed as their labor force status and the increase in the percentage for these groups reporting not in the labor force and unemployed may have an impact on the college degree completion. Additionally, an increasing percentage of African American males have an associate's or bachelor's degree, but there was a larger percentage change in the percent of African American males with some college. African American males with some college earn significantly less than those with an associate's or bachelor's degree, but earn significantly more than African American women with some college or an associate's degree. This supports Dunn's (1988) finding that African American males do not invest in college because they desire “quick money.” The earnings differential between African American males and females may also explain the degree attainment gap, as it is the African American females with a bachelor's degree that earn significantly more than African American males with some college.

This chapter examines the relationship between community educational attainment and Fourth Amendment legal principles being implemented in public schools. Using education attainment data obtained from the U.S. Census, this study examined the influence of educational attainment on how searches of students were conducted and the relative legal and judicial outcomes. The results of this study offer insight on issues related to forms of discipline in public schools and contribute to knowledge bases in the fields of economics, law, social theory, and educational leadership and administration.

Prior studies regarding the Fourth Amendment in schools focused largely on administrative decisions, judgments, and practices, but the aspect of educational attainment has been minimally investigated. Findings suggest community educational attainment has little to no predictive influence on aspects related to student searches examined in the study, which include the intrusiveness level of the search and the number of searches occurring during a single search event. Implications for future research and leadership are discussed.

Using the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System Completion Survey by Race (1980–2009), we seek to redirect the conversation about African-American females as single mothers, welfare recipients, and victims of the AIDS epidemic to one that highlights their exceptional school enrollment levels and postsecondary degree attainment. We examine separately the educational trends for black women by citizenship status and identify institutions that have been successful at conferring degrees to each group of black women. We find that the percentage of black women enrolled as first-time freshmen was greater than the percentage of any other non-white group, the growth in the total number of black women enrolled at for-profit institutions as first-time freshmen more than double and HBCUs were institutions most successful at conferring degrees to black women.