How Generalizable are Institutional Characteristics in CSET Studies to U.S. Higher Education? A Statistical Study

This study uses distribution-to-distribution statistical tests to determine the level of similarity between the CSET offering institutions and the entire population of higher education institutions in the United States, as listed in the Carnegie data. These results show that the institutional context in which U.S. CSET education occurs is sufficiently different from higher education in the U.S. as a whole that CSET education research needs to continue as a stand-alone discipline. In particular, the large number of classifications in which the sample and population data are significantly different indicates that CSET education is a special case from higher education as a whole and thus needs its own studies.