Probability Of Graduation Research Articles

Higher education and the life course: Exploring the interactive effects of age and employment status on university graduation

AbstractThe recent complexity of the university system, with diverse academic trajectories and varying socio‐demographic characteristics of students, has led to increased access for historically underrepresented students. This has resulted in a rising number of adult learners, students with external responsibilities and individuals returning to education. However, despite this enhanced access, it remains unclear whether it has improved graduation. This uncertainty stems from the fact that students' social circumstances and external responsibilities differ significantly based on when they enter university. From a life course perspective, the aim of this paper is to explore the interactive effects of age at university entrance and employment status on the probability of graduating of an entire cohort of new students who entered the Catalan Higher Education System in 2012 (N = 29,463). The results show an interaction effect between age and employment status on the probability of graduation where working decreases the probability of graduation among students younger than 42 years old. Conversely, the negative impact of employment on university graduation diminishes among students entering university at an older age. This underscores the importance of adopting a life course perspective to comprehend students' educational experiences and outcomes within higher education.

The effect of foreign students in higher education on native students’ outcomes

This paper offers new evidence of the role of immigration in shaping the educational and labour market outcomes of natives. We use administrative data on the entire English higher education system and exploit the idiosyncratic variation of foreign students within university-degree across four cohorts of undergraduate students. Foreign peers have zero to mild effects on natives’ educational outcomes, such as graduation probability and degree classification. Significant effects are found on displacement across universities and degree types after enrolment, although these outcomes are rare occurrences. In line with the mild effects on education outcomes, we also find little evidence of foreign peers affecting early labour market outcomes of native graduates.

Attainment Factors of Information Technology Students From Polytechnic University in Mexico

This study explores the relationship among student college attainment and the variables mathematical thinking, analytical thinking, language structure, reading comprehension, mathematics result, physics result, written language (Spanish), and English as a foreign language. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Method:</i> The participants were 130 students enrolled in an undergraduate 4-year program at a University who started in 2014. Mann–Whitney, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$t$</tex-math> </inline-formula>, and chi-square tests were used, to compare the attributes of the students in two groups: 1) completed students and 2) students who dropped out. Additionally, a logistic regression model was carried out to predict the probability of student academic success based on the variables measured by the admission exam EXANI-II of CENEVAL. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Results and Discussion:</i> The findings indicate that in all the variables analyzed there were differences in favor of the group formed by students who did graduate compared to those who did not. On the other hand, only the mathematics report (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p = 0.013$</tex-math> </inline-formula>) and the written language report (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p = 0.029$</tex-math> </inline-formula>) were significant to predict the probability of graduation of the students. The authors identified that mathematics and written language are variables that affect students’ academic attainment. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Conclusion:</i> It is necessary to recognize that there are inequalities in the conditions of students entering university. For this reason, consideration should be given to the creation of academic support and inclusion programs that stimulate the integral development of the student from before entering the first semester. It is also important to periodically quantify and analyze student progress to implement the necessary strategies and continually follow up their academic attainment.

Does student aid make a degree more likely? Evidence of the permanence scholarship program from survival models

The Permanence Scholarship Program (PSP) is one of the main Brazilian student assistance policies, aiming to prevent low-income students from dropping out of higher education, by providing them with financial aid. This article analyzes the effects of PSP for students from private higher education institutions on the time of completion and rate of degree obtention. Survival analysis associated with propensity score matching was used, based on data from the higher education census between 2010 and 2017. Students included in the program, from the 4th year onwards, are at lower risk of evasion, have greater probability of graduation, and complete the studies in less time than those not in the program, even if it does not happen within the regulatory deadline. Academic scholarship holders, older and female students are more likely to complete the course. Therefore, the PSP fulfills its role in reducing dropout and time to graduation.

The effect of dual vocational education and training on grades and graduation in Catalonia, Spain

ABSTRACT Dual vocational education and training (VET) has recently been introduced in Catalonia, as in the whole of Spain, and it should be the only VET system in the near future. However, Dual VET still coexists with traditional VET. The former has much more on-the-job training, companies are more involved in curricula design and training management, and trainees receive a salary or a scholarship. This study analysed the effect of Dual VET on students’ grades and degree completion. We use the whole population of Catalan students during four academic years (from 2015–2016 to 2018–2019) that completed their degree. We employ an instrumental variable approach to explain grades at completion. Results show that Dual VET had a positive effect on grades irrespective of the method and outcome used (standardised or non-standardised grades). In fact, our instrumental variables estimation showed a greater impact than the ordinary least squares results. In addition, Dual VET also increased the probability of graduation. Thus, the transformation of the Catalan VET into a Dual VET may have positive effects, since the latter improves course completion and grades.

Nevertheless She Persisted? Gender Peer Effects in Doctoral STEM Programs.

We study the effects of peer gender composition in STEM doctoral programs on persistence and degree completion. Leveraging unique new data and quasi-random variation in gender composition across cohorts within programs, we show that women entering cohorts with no female peers are 11.7pp less likely to graduate within 6 years than their male counterparts. A 1 sd increase in the percentage of female students differentially increases women's probability of on-time graduation by 4.4pp. These gender peer effects function primarily through changes in the probability of dropping out in the first year of a Ph.D. program.

University Students' Online Learning During COVID-19: The Role of Grit in Academic Performance.

The governmental restriction due to COVID-19 pandemic led to Italian Universities moving teaching from face-to-face, to online. This represented an unexpected transition from traditional learning to what can be considered “e-learning.” This, together with the psychological distress that may be associated with the experience of lockdown, might have affected students' performance. It was hypothesised that grit may be a protective factor in such situations. Indeed, compared to their less “gritty” peers, individuals with higher levels of grit are expected to exhibit greater persistence in the pursuit of goals despite setbacks. Within educational contexts, grit is portrayed as a potentially important influence on outcomes such as achievement level, retention and probability of graduation. A longitudinal study was conducted using an online survey in order to assess the moderated mediation effect of grit on students' achievement. One hundred seventy-six undergraduate students from two universities in the north of Italy participated in the survey. The results showed that grit affects students' grades in final exams; perceived self-efficacy in the management of complex problems had a mediation effect on grades, while psychological distress moderated the first part of the mediation process. These novel findings extended our knowledge regarding the role of grit in academic performance investigating for the first time the role of self-efficacy and psychological distress in a learning carried out entirely online.

Success rates for US and Canadian anticancer drug development efforts in pediatric oncology

AbstractBackgroundApproximately 5% of adult cancer interventions put into clinical testing attain regulatory approval. Little is known about corresponding rates for pediatric cancer.MethodsOur primary outcomes were the proportion of interventions graduating to the next trial phase, randomized trials, and/or clinical practice. We created a saturation sample of clinical trials by searching ClinicalTrials.gov for all pediatric anticancer trials in the United States or Canada. Trial characteristics were extracted automatically from ClinicalTrials.gov records, and cancer indication/drug class categorization, biomarker enrichment, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval status at time of recruitment were double‐extracted from each record. Regulatory approval status and labeling modifications for each intervention were determined by searching Drugs@FDA and the New Pediatric Labeling Information Database.ResultsFive hundred eighty‐nine pediatric trials launched between 1987 and 2019 were captured. The overall probability of graduation was 17.0%; 18.9% of interventions graduated from phase 1 to phase 2 trials, and 1.6% of interventions graduated from phase 2 to phase 3 trials. The proportion of interventions advancing from phase 1 to FDA approval was 3.6%, and 1.9% of interventions tested in phase 1 advanced to a randomized phase 2 trial. Only biomarker enrichment was significantly predictive of graduation from phase 1 to phase 2 trials (p = .011).ConclusionThe proportion of interventions advancing from phase 1 testing to FDA approval was similar to estimates for adult oncology. Our findings highlight the challenges for current paradigms of pediatric anticancer drug development.

Playing catch up: A term-level investigation of the racial gap in STEM retention

This paper examines differences in STEM retention between minority and non-minority students enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1980 through 2006. Using detailed administrative records of undergraduate students, we document that minority students and non-minority students take divergent pathways through the STEM major. Specifically, minority students take fewer lower division STEM courses in their early career, which delays their enrollment in upper division STEM courses and leads to lower graduation probability in STEM within four years and higher dropout rates. We investigate the potential reasons (and/or predictors) for this apparent discrepancy. To do so, we first identify a student’s major-specific Individual Performance Potential (IPP) from lower division course regressions. We find that once we control for the heterogeneity in the IPP’s and a rich set of term level controls, the differences in intermediate outcomes (declared major, STEM course load) between minority and non-minority students largely disappear, but that some of the gap in outcomes persist, with the exception being in graduation from STEM within five years, for which minority students are more likely after controlling for these factors. Our findings suggest that minority STEM majors would benefit from additional support such as early career course advising.

The short- and long-run impacts of secondary school absences

We provide novel evidence on the causal impacts of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that tracks the date and class period of each absence. We use two similar but distinct identification strategies that address potential endogeneity due to time-varying student-level shocks by exploiting within-student, between-subject variation in class-specific absences. We also leverage information on the timing of absences to show that absences that occur after the annual window for state standardized testing do not affect test scores, providing a further check of our identification strategy. Both approaches yield similar results. We find that absences in middle and high school harm contemporaneous student achievement and longer-term educational attainment: On average, missing 10 classes reduces math or English Language Arts test scores by 3–4% of a standard deviation and course grades by 17–18% of a standard deviation. 10 total absences across all subjects in 9th grade reduce both the probability of on-time graduation and ever enrolling in college by 2%. Learning loss due to school absences can have profound economic and social consequences.

Ranking high schools using university student performance in Italy

The Eduscopio project is the first attempt to build school performance indicators based on the university performance of high school leavers in Italy. It provides stakeholders (students and their families) with publicly available school performance indicators, and school rankings. A potential weakness of Eduscopio is that it relies on first-year student performance only. In this study, we extend its methodology to include longer-term academic outcomes, such as cumulative third-year performance and the probability of on-time graduation. Our results demonstrate that differences in university students’ performance across high schools are not temporary and limited to the first-year, but persist in the following academic years, and that the ranking of high schools based on longer-term indicators remains rather stable. Moreover, our analysis highlights non-negligible differences of between-school track dispersion in the Eduscopio index across cities, which hints on geographical differences in student selection mechanisms into school tracks or in the level of dispersion of school value added within tracks.

Labor Market Returns to Student Loans for University: Evidence from Chile

We study the labor market returns to a state-guaranteed loan used to finance university degrees in Chile. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that marginally eligible students forgo vocational education in favor of university education but reduce their probability of graduation. Even though university loan takers accumulate more student debt, their labor market outcomes are not different from those of ineligible students. We find suggestive evidence that the lower quality of the receiving institutions accounts for these results. Finally, we extrapolate the effects away from the eligibility cutoff and show that supramarginal students benefit from this policy.

Educational Data Mining for Tutoring Support in Higher Education: A Web-Based Tool Case Study in Engineering Degrees

This paper presents a web-based software tool for tutoring support of engineering students without any need of data scientist background for usage. This tool is focused on the analysis of students’ performance, in terms of the observable scores and of the completion of their studies. For that purpose, it uses a data set that only contains features typically gathered by university administrations about the students, degrees and subjects. The web-based tool provides access to results from different analyses. Clustering and visualization in a low-dimensional representation of students’ data help an analyst to discover patterns. The coordinated visualization of aggregated students’ performance into histograms, which are automatically updated subject to custom filters set interactively by an analyst, can be used to facilitate the validation of hypotheses about a set of students. Classification of students already graduated over three performance levels using exploratory variables and early performance information is used to understand the degree of course-dependency of students’ behavior at different degrees. The analysis of the impact of the student’s explanatory variables and early performance in the graduation probability can lead to a better understanding of the causes of dropout. Preliminary experiments on data of the engineering students from the 6 institutions associated to this project were used to define the final implementation of the web-based tool. Preliminary results for classification and drop-out were acceptable since accuracies were higher than 90% in some cases. The usefulness of the tool is discussed with respect to the stated goals, showing its potential for the support of early profiling of students. Real data from engineering degrees of EU Higher Education institutions show the potential of the tool for managing high education and validate its applicability on real scenarios.

Effects of the Shift to English-Only Instruction on College Outcomes: Evidence from Central Asia

English-only college education in non-English speaking countries is a rapidly growing phenomenon that has been dubbed as the most important trend in higher education internationalization. Despite worldwide popularity, there is little empirical evidence about how the transition to English-only instruction affects students’ academic outcomes. Using a natural experiment at a selective university in Central Asia and a difference-in-differences strategy, we estimate the causal effect of switching to English-only instruction on students’ college outcomes. We find that the introduction of English-only instruction led to a decrease of GPAs and probability of graduation and an increase in the number of failed course credits. Although negative, the effects were short-lived. The difference-in-differences estimates and the examination of potential mechanisms suggest that at least in selective universities in non-English speaking countries, the switch to English-only instruction may affect college outcomes negatively at the time of transition but may not necessarily imply longer-run negative effects.

Signaling or better human capital: Evidence from Colombia

We use data from the admissions process from a highly selective private university in Colombia to analyze the impact of prestigious university attendance on the education trajectory and labor market outcomes of individuals. The university´s selection process allows the use of a regression discontinuity design. We estimate both intent-to-treatment (offer admissions) and treatment-on-the-treated (enrollment) effects. The results show positive effects of offering admission to the prestigious university on the probability of enrollment, 13.8 percentage point (pp), 1.3 pp increase in academic credits a student need to repeat, and increment in 7 pp in probability of graduation. Despite no significant effects on the standardized university exit exam, we found positive effects on the probability of employment and earnings, 7.4 and 4.6 pp respectively. These results suggest that prestigious universities are more effective source of signaling in the labor market, but they are not more effective than other universities in developing human capital.

The Branch Effect: Understanding Multi-Campus Enrollment and Student Success

Higher education research pertaining to student descriptions and successes has classically been directed toward traditional four- and two-year institutions while those institutions referred to as “branch” campuses have been largely ignored. Our research used a cohort methodology to track a single group of students for six years to compare a branch to main campus of a large (>15,000 students) Midwestern university relative to demographic, academic, socioeconomic, and institutional variables. Overall, the branch campus was characterized by older students, a lower percentage of minorities, similar ratio of male to female, lower average high school GPA, a higher percentage of first-generation students, and a higher percentage of Pell-eligible students when compared with the main campus. Interestingly, both graduation rate as well as time to graduation of branch students was found to be less than main campus students—independent of all other factors in general linear modeling analysis that indicted both a 7% reduction in graduation probability but almost a one-year reduction in time to graduation tied to 100% enrollment at the branch campus. Variations observed in the effect of campus enrollment suggest additional work be conducted on this portion of the public higher education sector to better understand these relationships on a broader scale.

The Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Secondary School Absences

We provide novel evidence on the causal impact of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that includes the date and class period of each absence. Our identification strategy addresses potential endogeneity due to time-varying student-level shocks by exploiting the fact that in a given year, there exists within-student, between-class variation in absences. We also leverage information on the timing of absences to show that absences that occur after the annual window for state standardized testing do not appear to affect test scores, which provides a further check of our identification strategy. We find that absences in middle and high school harm contemporaneous student achievement and longer-term educational attainment: On average, missing 10 math classes reduces math test scores by 7% of a standard deviation, math course grades by 19% of a standard deviation, the probability of on-time graduation by 8%, and the probability of college enrollment by 7%. Similar results hold for absences in English Language Arts classes. These results suggest that absences in middle school and high school are just as harmful, if not more so, than absences in elementary school. Moreover, the timing of absences during the school year matters, as both the occurrence and the impact of absences are dynamic phenomena.

Quantifying Family, School, and Location Effects in the Presence of Complementarities and Sorting

We extend the control function approach of Altonji and Mansfield (2018) to allow for multiple group levels and complementarities. Our analysis provides a foundation for causal interpretation of multilevel mixed effects models in the presence of sorting. In our empirical application, we obtain lower bound estimates of the importance of school and commuting zone inputs for education and wages. A school/location combination at the 90th versus 10th percentile of the school/location quality distribution increases the high school graduation probability and college enrollment probability by at least .06 and .17, respectively. Treatment effects are heterogeneous across subgroups, primarily due to nonlinearity in the educational attainment model.

Estimating Group Effects Using Averages of Observables to Control for Sorting on Unobservables: School and Neighborhood Effects

We consider the classic problem of estimating group treatment effects when individuals sort based on observed and unobserved characteristics. Using a standard choice model, we show that controlling for group averages of observed individual characteristics potentially absorbs all the across-group variation in unobservable individual characteristics. We use this insight to bound the treatment effect variance of school systems and associated neighborhoods for various outcomes. Across multiple datasets, we find that a ninetieth versus tenth percentile school/neighborhood increases the high school graduation probability and college enrollment probability by at least 0.04 and 0.11 and permanent wages by 13.7 percent. (JEL C51, H75, I21, I26, J24, J31, R23)

Semantic Analysis of Learners’ Emotional Tendencies on Online MOOC Education

As a new education product in the information age, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) command momentous public attention for their unexpected rise and flexible application. However, the striking contrast between the high rate of registration and the low rate of completion has put their development into a bottleneck. In this paper, we present a semantic analysis model (SMA) to track the emotional tendencies of learners in order to analyze the acceptance of the courses based on big data from homework completion, comments, forums and other real-time update information on the MOOC platforms. Through emotional quantification and machine learning calculations, graduation probability can be predicted for different stages of learning in real time. Especially for learners with emotional tendencies, customized instruction could be made in order to improve completion and graduation rates. Furthermore, we classified the learners into four categories according to course participation time series and emotional states. In the experiments, we made a comprehensive evaluation of the students’ overall learning status by kinds of learners and emotional tendencies. Our proposed method can effectively recognize learners’ emotional tendencies by semantic analysis, providing an effective solution for MOOC personalized teaching, which can help achieve education for sustainable development.