Education Policy Commons^™

At What Cost? The Ethics Of Student Debt, Kevin D. Gecowets

The Siegel Institute Journal of Applied Ethics

This paper summarizes recent research into the cost of higher education, and specifically the effects of growing student debt loads. It explores the utility of debt related to access to degree programs, entry into the job market, and economic impact in later life. It is not an economic analysis of higher education financing, but a consideration of the costs and benefits of education financing today. The central ethical consideration of “who benefits” applied to the current state of play in higher education financing leads to the questions: With constantly rising debt loads for individual students and the general population, is ...

School Vouchers: A Vehicle To Induce Greater Competition Among Public Schools, Julianne Bozzo

Hatfield Graduate Journal of Public Affairs

This article argues that current research on school voucher programs misses a crucial point about the variability of vouchers’ effectiveness across school districts. Most research on school vouchers analyzes the effect of voucher programs on student achievement without engaging in a more fine-grained analysis to assess which districts see student success and which do not. This article seeks to correct course by synthesizing various strands of the leading research studies to conclude that vouchers have the strongest impact on the lowest- and highest-performing public-school students and in the most competitive school districts. Analyses of this sort—which avoid one-size-fits-all conclusions ...

Open Source Micro Diplomas: New Credentials For New Learning, Jack F. Powers

All Graduate Works by Year: Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The standard model for college in America—a four-year bachelor’s degree that teaches critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and written communication skills—is unaffordable and unattainable for most Americans. Only about a third of citizens aged 25 and over have achieved a baccalaureate degree or better. Two-thirds are left behind in precarious jobs that pay substantially less and that are losing ground. Everyone from politicians to parents repeats the mantra of “college for all”, but the reality is more like “college for the socio-economically gifted.”

At the same time, the modern world of work is evolving into a more complex ...

An Updated Look At Student Loan Debt Repayment And Default, Laura W. Perna, James Kvaal, Roman Ruiz

Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative

Over 41 million Americans now owe more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding federal student loan debt. Policymakers are considering a number of amendments related to federal student aid programs in the context of the Higher Education Act reauthorization. In addition to providing a snapshot of key data related to student loan debt that all policymakers should consider, this brief discusses recommendations for facilitating repayment and curbing defaults on student loans, including: protecting students from low-performing institutions; encouraging use of forbearance and deferment mechanisms; and strengthening income-driven repayment options.

Globalization, Internationalization, Marketing, And College Choice: Key Factors Affecting International Students’ Mobility, Eyad Alfattal

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

While globalization, internationalization, and marketing in higher education were intensifying with an inexorable veracity, little was known about the strength of factors and the dynamics by which those factors that affect international students’ mobility operated. Previous studies used different and overlapping theoretical models, and findings were inconsistent and, in some cases, contradictory. The objective of the present study was to investigate what influenced international students’ choices to study at a comprehensive college in southern California, as well as, explore and propose a new combined conceptual model that could explain international students’ cross-national mobility. A two-phase explanatory sequential mixed methods design ...

Academic Capitalism And The Public Good In Public And Private U.S. Higher Education: A Grounded Theory Study Of Internationalization, Asabe W. Poloma

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Within the context of U.S. higher education, market forces inform institutional strategies at public and private universities alike (Rhoades & Slaughter, 2006). Despite existing studies on market-driven forces in the internationalization and transnationalization of U.S. higher education (Knight, 2004; Marginson, 2012; Rhoades, Lee and Maldonado-Maldonado, 2005; Stromquist, 2007), there is a relative lack of theoretical or methodological engagement with how the theory of academic capitalism informs our understanding of the dominance of market-driven strategies in internationalization and how those strategies and practices blur the boundaries between the market and the public good. Furthermore, no studies have explored how the intersection and coexistence of the public good and academic capitalism shapes universities’ internationalization strategies and approaches.

Using social constructivist grounded ...

Introduction: Queering Education, Darla Linville

Occasional Paper Series

What might it mean to make education more queer? Queerness is not a unitary identity (as is no identity) and queer is not a single way of thinking or being. Sometimes queer is opposition to outness, or resistance to acceptance, and exists in order to disrupt and discomfit. This, too, is queer. How might educators work to make schools more welcoming of queer bodies and identifications, queer the binary categories that define social life, and disrupt the differential privileging of those who claim normative identities?

The Louisiana Granting Resources And Autonomies For Diplomas Act: Exploring The Impact Of A Performance-Based Funding Policy On Higher Education Effectiveness, Bridget S. Peters

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In 2010 the Louisiana legislature adopted the Louisiana Granting Resources and Autonomies for Diplomas (GRAD) Act, a statewide performance-based funding policy designed to improve performance among public colleges. This study, utilizing data collected from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) on 15 two-year public colleges over eight years, applied Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression to retention rates, graduation rates, and degree productivity. Results suggest that the introduction of the policy had little immediate effect on overall institutional performance; however, there were some modest increases in long-term certificate productivity. Additionally, there were significant improvements in data quality throughout higher education ...

A State-By-State Policy Analysis Of Stem Education For K-12 Public Schools, Courtney C. Carmichael

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

For practitioners and policy makers across the nation, STEM education has a vague definition. This study looks at how all 50 states define STEM education in policy, using four models: (a) Disciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics); (b) Integrated STEM focusing on combining two or more disciplines to produce critical thinking, real world application, and creative problem solving; (c) the Disciplinary and Integrated STEM model that acknowledges both to summarize programs at the state policy level; (d) the model with no definition of STEM education. The final results include 10 percent of states use the first model, 42 percent use ...

Financial Literacy In Local At-Risk Appalachia, Elijah R. Osborne

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Unfortunately, rural Appalachia is perennially one of the poorest areas of the United States. Many scholars have offered opinions as to why this trend of poverty continues in this region, but one potential cause has not been the subject of much research: do residents in Appalachia have a functional knowledge of the financial system, or even a simple understanding of basic savings, which is necessary for achieving certain levels of financial security?

We conduct a survey modeled after a national study which measures basic financial literacy in local Appalachia, expecting to find that at-risk Appalachians would have less financial literacy ...

Reconstruction Of The Destroyed Sinjali Secondary School, Isabella Kaganowski

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

This practitioner paper chronicles my involvement of the grant writing proposal that was designed on behalf of a non-for-profit organization, the Association of Dalit Women’s Advancement of Nepal (ADWAN), in order to secure funding and donations for the reconstruction of the destroyed Sinjali Secondary School in Gorkha district, Taklung village, after a 2015 earthquake struck Nepal. The proposal was guided by and collaborated with Professor Jude Fernando of Clark University, as Professor Fernando was able to visit Taklung village and gather information about the needs in the educational sector damaged by the earthquake. Literature review and research was gathered ...

Education Policy Factors Contributing To Special Education Identification, Sivan Tuchman

Theses and Dissertations

Vital to the discussion around special education is the topic of identification and de-identification as having a disability that impacts one’s education. Variation in special education enrollment across geographic locations, racial groups, and schooling sectors causes researchers to question the process and incentives involved in identification and de-identification. The studies that comprise this dissertation aim to analyze the effects that educational policies have on special education identification and subsequent enrollment. Specifically, the studies cover the special education finance, school accountability, and school choice policies.

The special education finance reform effort of switching from a prospective to a capitation funding ...

An Evaluation Of Arkansas’ Developmental Coursework Policy At Postsecondary Institutions, Evan Thomas Rhinesmith

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an evaluation of the impacts of assignment to and enrollment in postsecondary remedial coursework in the state of Arkansas. In this study, I evaluate the impacts of the policy on students’ academic achievement and attainment as measured by graduation rates and persistence. I include subgroup analyses of these outcomes to determine whether there are heterogeneous effects for students enrolling at two-year or four-year institutions, institutions with the highest remediation rates, and students of different races, genders, and baseline achievement. Like previous evaluations of remediation in other settings, the results here point to negative impacts of remediation on ...

Review Of Years 9 To 12 Tasmania : Final Report, Geoff N. Masters, Kathryn Moyle, Sheldon Rothman, Hilary Hollingsworth, Bill Perrett, Paul R. Weldon, Kate Perkins, Justin Brown, Ali Radloff, Patricia Freeman, Sofi Damianidis

Ali Radloff

The Tasmanian Government is currently implementing significant reforms to improve students’ retention and attainment in Tasmania’s schools. There is a concern in the Tasmanian community however, that their students’ performances are among the lowest in the nation. Reasons nominated for these results include weak literacy and numeracy levels; low attendance rates; high anxiety around transitions between Year 10 and Year 11 by some students, especially among those living outside of the larger cities; students seeking alternative education options; and family, financial, health and carer based issues. It is against this backdrop that the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER ...

Review Of Years 9 To 12 Tasmania : Final Report, Geoff N. Masters, Kathryn Moyle, Sheldon Rothman, Hilary Hollingsworth, Bill Perrett, Paul R. Weldon, Kate Perkins, Justin Brown, Ali Radloff, Patricia Freeman, Sofi Damianidis

Dr Paul Weldon

The Tasmanian Government is currently implementing significant reforms to improve students’ retention and attainment in Tasmania’s schools. There is a concern in the Tasmanian community however, that their students’ performances are among the lowest in the nation. Reasons nominated for these results include weak literacy and numeracy levels; low attendance rates; high anxiety around transitions between Year 10 and Year 11 by some students, especially among those living outside of the larger cities; students seeking alternative education options; and family, financial, health and carer based issues. It is against this backdrop that the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER ...

No Puffs: Penguins Go Smoke-Free, Monica Sciamanna

Scholarly & Creative Works Conference 2017

In partnership with the Department of Student Life, this project examines campus smoking behaviors among students, faculty, and staff. It will gather information regarding awareness and perceptions of current smoking policies at Dominican. Data may be used in the development of a new campus smoking policy.

Review Of Democracy , Deliberation And Education By Robert Asen (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), Stacie Molnar-Main

Journal of Public Deliberation

Review of Democracy , Deliberation and Education by Robert Asen (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015)

Institutionalizing An “Ethic Of Care” Into The Teaching Of Ethics For Pre-Service Teachers, Michelle Hawks, Thashika Pillay

Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis

This paper calls for the acknowledgement and institutionalization of an ethic of care into the education of decision-making processes for pre-service teachers. The impetus for this paper came from the author's experiences with teaching a mandatory ethics and law course for pre-service teachers. Over the course of their teaching and as expounded upon in this paper, the authors illustrate how the course goals, aims, objectives and readings ignore discussions on gender in the teaching profession. Using a critical feminist policy analysis, the authors analyse the ethical perspectives taught in the required textbooks. Findings suggest that the absence of the ...

Reveille (Spring 2017), Veterans Upward Bound Program, Western Kentucky University

Veterans Upward Bound Publications

Frequently Asked Questions.; Hot Rods Military Appreciation Day; VACBOC Clothing Drive; Million Veteran Program Update: Important Phone Numbers and Dates

The Trump Effect On Federal Education Policy: How Federal Actions On The Every Student Succeeds Act Affect Schools Nationally, In Texas, And In The El Paso Region, David S. Knight

Policy Briefs

This policy brief provides background on recent changes to federal education policy under the Trump Administration and reports the findings from a new study from the Center for Education Research and Policy Studies (CERPS). Following the passing of the Every Student Succeed Act (ESSA), the Education Department developed regulations that would govern the law’s implementation through a procedure known as the Rulemaking Process. One of the key provisions required school districts with large achievement gaps to equalize funding across schools. However, in March 2017, Congress moved to block all previously established regulations for implementing ESSA. Under Secretary DeVos, the ...