Education Commons^™

The Relationship Between Teacher Training Institutions And Student Performance, Shelby King

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This study intends to contribute to the literature by seeking evidence of a relationship between teacher characteristics and their high school students’ academic success in college. In this study, average college success is defined by six outcomes. The outcomes consist of the average first-year college GPA, average hours completed, percentage of students returning for a second year, percent of students receiving a GPA above a 3.0, percent of students completing 30 plus hours in their first year, and the average college math GPA. The analysis uses aggregated data at the school level from both the 2013 Kentucky High School Feedback …

Does Kentucky’S Merit-Based Scholarship Program, Kees, Improve College Completion?, Alex E. Combs

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

College completion is a complex process involving numerous socioeconomic factors at the individual, institutional, and governmental levels. One important factor is the way in which financial aid is disbursed so that affordability does not serve as a barrier to completion. Awarding scholarships on the basis of merit is one aspect of financial aid structure that has grown in popularity over recent decades, in turn, receiving considerable attention from policy researchers with the intent to assess how they affect an array of postsecondary education outcomes. To date, research of merit-based aid’s effect on college completion has been relatively sparse, yielding contradictory …

Determining Undergraduate Factors That Predict Academic Success In Pharmacy School, Stephen Polley

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Admission into pharmacy school is a very competitive process, and as a result multiple authors have looked at a variety of factors in an effort to create a systematic process that admissions committees can use to identify candidates who are likely to succeed in the rigorous pharmacy curriculum. One of the issues with this approach is that these analyses tend to be very institution-specific. In this paper I hope to identify a mechanism that the University of Kentucky (UK) College of Pharmacy admissions committee can use to efficiently and thoroughly evaluate candidates using scientifically validated factors.

This study uses a …

Do College Presidents Matter? An Analysis Of The Effects Of College Presidents On Retention And Graduation Rates, Wesley Whistle

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Higher education is going through a transformative time. Effective leadership of these institutions is increasingly important. Public institutions are losing more government support from both the state and federal level. Colleges and universities are also facing higher standards from the federal government. When presidential search committees are looking for candidates for their college or university, they are seeking a leader who addresses these issues, as well as many others.

Addressing falling financial support requires increased attention to fundraising. Some accept that presidents are hired primarily for fundraising for the colleges and do not expect them to play a role in …