About

Paul D. Umbach serves as a Professor in the Higher Education and Adult and Lifelong Education Programs within the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development at NC State University. His scholarly work focuses on studying policies and practices that influence college student access and success, as well as the careers of college faculty, with a particular emphasis on issues of equity and diversity. He employs advanced quantitative methods, including survey methods and multi-level modeling, to analyze organizational and policy impacts in higher education. He has received recognition for his research, including a Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar Award for the 2026-27 academic year, which involves studying how university mergers affect institutions, faculty, and students through case studies of Finnish universities. Additionally, he has held visiting appointments at Nagoya University and the University of Jyväskylä. His teaching portfolio includes courses on finance and higher education, organizational theory, policy analysis, survey methods, and multi-level modeling. He is also co-leading a national survey of US college faculty as part of an international collaboration involving 40 countries. His work aims to inform education policy, particularly related to access, attainment, and labor market outcomes, and he collaborates with students interested in these areas.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Mathematics education
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Pedagogy
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Medical education
• Demographic economics
• Economic growth
• Labour economics
• Economics
• Engineering
• Library science

Selected publications

• Correction to: Understanding ORCID adoption among academic researchers

  Scientometrics · 2025-06-30

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the outcomes of a university merger

  IIAI Letters on Institutional Research · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Policy makers and university leaders are increasingly relying on university mergers to increase efficiencies, reduce costs, and leverage strengths to be more competitive. While research on university mergers is increasing, few studies employ methods that permit drawing causal inferences about the effects of mergers. This study uses a difference-in-differences approach to examine the effects of the Tampere University merger on staffing and finances. We also examine the effect of the merger on Times Higher Education (THE) university ranking data, including measures of the teaching environment, research outputs and reputation, citations, international outlook, and industry income (knowledge transfer). We find that the merger does not create staffing or financial efficiencies but is positively associated with measures that make up THE rankings.   

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding Themes in Postsecondary Research Using Topic Modeling and Journal Abstracts

  Research in Higher Education · 2023 · 5 citations

  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Impact of Working on Undergraduate Students' Interactions with Faculty

  Routledge eBooks · 2023 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Mathematics education
  • Medical education
  • Psychology

  Three decades of research on college students indicates that faculty members play a central role in the development of undergraduate students. This chapter explores working students’ experiences with faculty. It explores the relationship between working while in college and students’ in- and out-of-class experiences with faculty members. The chapter examines whether working relates to growth in cognitive outcomes after the first year of college. It begins by describing the best practices in undergraduate education that are said to contribute to student learning and an exploration of studies that apply these best practices to students who work while in college. The Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education highlight the importance of recognizing the complicated interaction between content and pedagogy and serve as a guide for students who work.

  PublisherDOI

• Effects of the Pandemic on Faculty at Public Research Universities

  Teachers College Record The Voice of Scholarship in Education · 2023-10-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We provide results from the first national survey of research university faculty on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on research productivity and tenure and promotion plans. Our analytic sample consists of almost 4,000 tenured and tenure-line faculty from 31 research universities. A large majority of faculty report disruptions to research due to the pandemic, with time spent moving instruction online listed as the most common cause (80%), followed by travel restrictions (80%) and inability to focus attention (66%). Although the extent of research disruption varied across academic disciplines, the reasons for disruptions were remarkably similar across disciplines. Forty-two percent of junior faculty stated they were likely to extend their tenure clocks due to the pandemic.

  PublisherDOI

• Making It Free and Easy: Exploring the Effects of North Carolina College Application Week on College Access

  Review of higher education/˜The œreview of higher education · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This study uses a series of panel models to explore the effect of North Carolina (NC) College Application Week (CAW) and free college applications during that week on the number of applications colleges receive and number of low-income students who matriculate. Our models suggest that NC saw an increase in applications and low-income student enrollments after the implementation of CAW, but these increases largely occurred at private colleges, seemingly shifting numbers from public universities. We find that the private colleges offering free applications during CAW experienced increases in the total number of both college applications received.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding themes in postsecondary research using topic modeling and journal abstracts

  2020-09-01 · 1 citations

  article

  We use topic modeling to determine the main areas of research in the literature on postsecondary education during the past 25 years, by analyzing journal article abstracts from three top postsecondary journals. Our approach requires the development of custom stopword and lemmatization lists. We illustrate the use of graphs to help understand the meaning of topics.

  PublisherDOI

• Developmental Education's Effect on Graduation and Labor Market Outcomes

  Journal of developmental education · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Labour economics
  • Medical education
  Publisher

• Should We Be Concerned About Nonresponse Bias in College Student Surveys? Evidence of Bias from a Validation Study

  Research in Higher Education · 2018-09-21 · 23 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Transfer Student Success: Exploring Community College, University, and Individual Predictors

  Community College Journal of Research and Practice · 2018-10-05 · 52 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper investigates community college transfer success by exploring the relationship between individual and institutional-level characteristics at students’ two- and four-year institutions. Using statewide administrative data from North Carolina, this study employs a cross-classified multilevel model to investigate the impact that a student’s community college and four-year transfer institution have on post-transfer success. Our findings offer important and compelling insights into the relationship between transfer students, the community college they attended, the four-year transfer institution, and educational outcomes. While individual effects were small, we find several institutional factors associated with student success. Attendance at a large community college or having a public university in the same county as their community college is positively associated with student success, whereas size of the university is negatively related to grades during the first year and persistence to the second year. While the four-year institution’s selectivity is negatively related to many of our outcomes, transferring to a Historically Black College or University is positively associated with GPA, college persistence, and degree completion.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen R. Porter

  University of the Witwatersrand

  11 shared

• George D. Kuh

  9 shared

• Ernest T. Pascarella

  7 shared

• Ashley B. Clayton

  4 shared

• Jeffrey F. Milem

  4 shared

• David English

  4 shared

• Megan M. Palmer

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  4 shared

• John C. Smart

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar Award (2026-27)