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Graduation rates are commonly used to assess the quality of higher educational institutions. While universities strive to produce as many graduates as possible, maintaining the right balance between the number of new students enrolled and the number who graduate each year has become a challenge in the past few decades. Timely graduation is often disregarded because a large majority of the students do not graduate within the stipulated time. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors associated with timely degree attainment.

The data for this study were obtained from records maintained by Registrar Office, Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus, Thailand. The final sample comprised 1,330 undergraduate students enrolled at four major faculties in 2009. A multivariate logistic regression model was applied to explain the effects of independent variables on timely graduation.

About 81.0 percent had completed their degree program within the stipulated time. The results indicated that faculty, first-semester grade point average, gender and place of residence were significantly associated with timely graduation.

Findings from this study may serve as a guide to higher educational institutions in identifying the underlying factors, and accordingly develop programs to enhance on time degree completion rates.

Faced with declining government funding support and rising student loan debt, recently timely graduation in higher education has become a focal point of discussion at many institutions, particularly public universities. Timely graduation requires a student to successfully enroll in and complete a set of required and elective courses, the relationship of which is bound by the courses’ prerequisite requirements. However, due to the fact that class capacity is oftentimes limited and wrongly timed, many students find it challenging to stay on track. A well-structured degree roadmap that takes all factors into consideration and specifies the right courses to take by semester will better guide students’ course selection and thus increase their chance of earning their degrees within the four-year time window. Additionally, it will also allow administrators to do better capacity planning, and hence increase course accessibility to students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this research, some operational techniques such as line balancing and simulation are applied to restructure and improve degree roadmaps, and assess the resulting outcomes. Some innovative methods are proposed to improve the processes on which students proceed to degree.

The results based on historical data that contains millions of student records spanning over eight-year time window demonstrate that the improved degree roadmaps can substantially increase students’ chance of completing the degree in a four-year time window. The research findings provide university administrators with cost-effective solutions.

This research breaks a new ground in literature due to its unique approach and focus. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first attempts to systematically study the impact of degree roadmap on timely graduation. This research focuses on finding solutions that are within the institution’s control, hence the proposed solutions are implementable and will provide university administrators with new tools and perspectives to enhance student success.

The prediction of graduation rates of college students has become increasingly important to colleges and universities across the USA and the world. Graduation rates, also referred to as completion rates, directly impact university rankings and represent a measurement of institutional performance and student success. In recent years, there has been a concerted effort by federal and state governments to increase the transparency and accountability of institutions, making “graduation rates” an important and challenging university goal. In line with this, the main purpose of this paper is to propose a hybrid data analytic approach which can be flexibly implemented not only in the USA but also at various colleges across the world which would help predict the graduation status of undergraduate students due to its generic nature. It is also aimed at providing a means of determining and ranking the critical factors of graduation status.

This study focuses on developing a novel hybrid data analytic approach to predict the degree completion of undergraduate students at a four-year public university in the USA. Via the deployment of the proposed methodology, the data were analyzed using three popular data mining classifications methods (i.e. decision trees, artificial neural networks, and support vector machines) to develop predictive degree completion models. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the relative importance of each predictor factor driving the graduation.

The sensitivity analysis of the most critical factors in predicting graduation rates is determined to be fall-term grade-point average, housing status (on campus or commuter), and which high school the student attended. The least influential factors of graduation status are ethnicity, whether or not a student had work study, and whether or not a student applied for financial aid. All three data analytic models yielded high accuracies ranging from 71.56 to 77.61 percent, which validates the proposed model.

This study presents uniqueness in that it presents an unbiased means of determining the driving factors of college graduation status with a flexible and powerful hybrid methodology to be implemented at other similar decision-making settings.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001) has led to widespread use of high-stakes assessment in determining graduation options for all students, including those with disabilities. In this chapter, we examine graduation trends in the state of Florida before and after the implementation of a high-stakes test used as a means to meet NCLB requirements and further examine specific trends in rates of graduation with a standard diploma attained by students with disabilities. As trends for students with disabilities reveal a reduction in standard diploma attainment, we discuss research related to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) provisions for individualized education program (IEP) and transition planning for students with disabilities that are designed to improve students’ graduation and post-school outcomes. We discuss ways in which schools might improve student graduation rates within the context of both NCLB and IDEA. Specifically, we report findings from a study conducted in a school district in Florida that demonstrates a positive relationship between student perceptions of school's efforts to facilitate student involvement in planning (as outlined by IDEA requirements) and the likelihood of graduation with a standard diploma (based on “passing” a high-stakes test) for students both with and without disabilities. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

This paper uses data from the 1979 and 1997 National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth to estimate the changing returns to cognitive and non-cognitive skills with respect to college completion, and quantifies the extent to which gender differences in these skills are driving the college gender gap. The use of two distinct college graduation cohorts allows a dynamic analysis of the widening female advantage in college graduation. I decompose the increase in the college gender gap into three pertinent categories of measurable attributes: family background, cognitive skills, and non-cognitive skills (captured by school suspensions, behavioral problems, and legal infractions). A second decomposition is applied to the change in the gap between the two periods. The results show that roughly half of the observed college graduation gender gap in the NLSY97 is due to female advantages in observable characteristics, and roughly half is “unexplained”: due to gender differences in the coefficients. With respect to the change in the gap, approximately 29% of the difference in differences is the “explained” component, attributed to changes in the relative characteristics of men and women. In particular, declining non-cognitive skills in men are associated with about 14% of the increase in the gender gap.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established during an era of legal segregation in the United States and, by providing access to higher education, added considerably to the progress of millions of Black Americans. Moreover, to the benefit of their students, faculties, staffs, alumni, and local communities, most HBCUs sponsor intercollegiate athletic teams. No doubt on these campuses, student-athletes are under pressure to meet academic and athletic demands. In this chapter, the central narrative is on the academic and athletic experiences of Black male student-athletes matriculating at HBCUs with National Collegiate Athletic Association affiliation. This chapter adds to the extant literature on the athletic status and academic plight of Black male student-athletes at HBCUs.

This research examine participation in a dual enrollment program and a student's race and socioeconomic status. In addition to examining the college retention and graduation rates (student success) of dual and non-dual enrolled students, this study looked at potential race and socioeconomic disparities.

A quantitative ex post facto research design using logistic regression was used to analyze data from the University System of Georgia (N = 28,664) to determine the relationships between participation in a dual enrollment program, students' race and socioeconomic status and their retention and graduation.

Findings from this quantitative study indicated that the predictor variables dual enrollment participation, race and socioeconomic status were significant in predicting retention and graduation outcomes.

This study adds to existing research indicating that students from different races and socioeconomic statuses, who participated in a high school dual enrollment program, are being retained beyond the first year in college and graduating at higher rates than non-dual enrolled students.

In this chapter, we present our ongoing efforts in developing and sustaining interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate programs at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T) – a state-supported HBCU and National Science Foundation (NSF) Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) Institutional Implementation Project grantee. Through three rounds of NSF HBCU-UP implementation grants, a concerted effort has been made in developing interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs in geophysical and environmental science (in round 1), geospatial, computational, and information science (in round 2), and mathematical and computational biology (in round 3) on NCA&T campus. We first present a brief history and background information about the interdisciplinary STEM undergraduate research programs developed and sustained at NCA&T, giving rationales on how these programs had been conceived, and summarizing what have been achieved. Next we give a detailed description on the development of undergraduate research infrastructure including building research facilities through multiple and leveraged funding sources, and engaging a core of committed faculty mentors and research collaborators. We then present, as case studies, some sample interdisciplinary research projects in which STEM undergraduate students were engaged and project outcomes. Successes associated to our endeavor in developing undergraduate research programs as well as challenges and opportunities on implementing and sustaining these efforts are discussed. Finally, we discuss the impact of well-structured undergraduate research training on student success in terms of academic performance, graduation rate and continuing graduate study, and summarize many of the learnings we have gained from implementation and delivery of undergraduate research experiences at HBCUs.

During the latter half of the 20th century many states began to use the lottery as an alternative method to increasing the amount of revenue within their general funds. Apparently, this method was a lot more palatable than increasing taxes. Passing lottery legislation was easier in states where the funds were partially or wholly designated for primary, secondary, or higher education. The main purpose of this paper is to determine if the presence of a lottery impacts educational outcomes (high school graduations rates, bachelor degrees awarded, ACT, and SAT scores). Using state level data for the period 1985-2000 in a pooled time series regression model, the analysis indicates that the presence of a lottery is useful in models explaining educational outcomes.

Some degree programs in colleges and universities utilize entrance exams to ensure that students pursuing a given degree have mastered foundational concepts needed for that program. However, often these exams become a barrier to student success. The purpose of this study is to discuss the impact of policies governing an undergraduate Computer Science (CS) entry/qualifying exam at a large public university in the United States on overall student success in the program. This case study focuses on whether reforming program policies impacts students' time-to-degree, graduation and mastery in CS core skills.

This case study describes how the CS student success was improved by updating program policies based on institutional data and the input of course instructors. The policy changes include introducing a maximum limit to attempt the exam, changing the exam requirements as well as the structure of the exam itself.

The pass rates of students taking this qualifying exam were significantly and consistently low over the years. Students who were potentially a better fit for programs other than CS delayed their start in those other programs by taking and failing to pass the CS qualifying exam multiple times. As a result of implementing new CS program policies, many more students attempted the exam at an appropriate time. Also, they graduated on time in the years 2016–2018.

This paper presents a case study in which the graduation rates and time to degree of a CS program with a qualifying exam were improved after a policy intervention. The results demonstrate that simple policy changes can improve student success. Findings from this study may guide other programs with similar characteristics to improve their student success.