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tag: Higher Ed Insights

Blog Post
November 20, 2017

Will Devoting Funds to Excelsior Help Students?

Free tuition at all public institutions in a state sounds great. Such a message could encourage students to attend college who would otherwise think it unaffordable, and/or could help students to stay in college.  However, given the particular policies associated with New York’s Excelsior Scholarship, what the future holds for Excelsior Scholarship recipients may not be all positive. Due to these potential negative consequences, New York State’s funds for this program could be better spent expanding existing services…
Blog Post
November 20, 2017

Re-Thinking the Case for Free College

I’m all about college opportunity and success and love the idea of swinging the doors wide open. At first I was taken aback, to put it mildly, by the notion of “free college,” but my thoughts are evolving. The idea may be worthwhile for what it’s doing to galvanize public attention to higher education finance. Whether it is viable public policy, from a practical political standpoint or a social equity perspective, however, depends on our willingness to look at the…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017

How Research Can Fuel Action to Address Food and Housing Insecurity on American College Campuses

Editor’s note: We asked Sara Goldrick-Rab, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. It’s been nearly a decade since my team first started studying food and housing insecurity among college students.  To be honest, it wasn’t part of the plan.  We were in the midst of a study on the impacts of a private financial aid program in Wisconsin. We expected to learn…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017

How Policymakers Can Help Institutions Support Financially Insecure Students

Editor’s note: We asked Rachel Dykstra Boon, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. Ask any teacher (pre-school through graduate school) for an example of a student with food, housing or financial struggles affecting the learning experience and heart-breaking stories will follow. Quantitative and qualitative research over the past several years has pointed to the growth in this demographic of college students as the country…
Blog Post
November 10, 2017

For-Profit Colleges – What Went Wrong?

Mention the phrase “for-profit college” and I can’t help but immediately picture a single parent working two jobs while attending college at night, after the kids are asleep, saddled with debt and no prospects for improving their employment conditions or earnings despite their best efforts. Vivid in my mind are the painful stories of young low-income mothers I interviewed during my graduate studies, whose economic, family, and personal decisions (and opportunities) were often dictated by their (relatively exorbitant) loan repayments…
Blog Post
November 6, 2017

The Tax Status of Colleges: Who Cares?

Across several survey items, the respondents to Ithaka S+R’s Higher Ed Insights Spring 2017 Survey rated Obama administration policies and enforcement actions against for-profit institutions as having a high and positive impact. In my view, policies such as the gainful employment rule and actions such as revoking the accreditation authority of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) for revoking Title IV eligibility for students attending ITT Tech were understandable, on the whole, but had serious shortcomings.
Blog Post
September 29, 2016

How Should We Interpret the Survey?

Taking a Closer Look at Higher Ed Insights

The Spring 2016 Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights survey on obstacles to innovation that would promote student success identifies four top roadblocks:  Insufficient funding for public institutions; faculty incentives not aligned to teaching and learning; administrative silos; and faculty resistance to change. The top solutions, in turn, are rewarding faculty for innovating in teaching and learning, acquiring better evidence on how to bring initiatives to scale, nurturing better collaboration among PreK-12 systems, community colleges, and universities, and establishing a…
Blog Post
February 29, 2016

Overcoming Institutional Barriers to Innovation

Lessons from Ithaka S+R’s Case Studies

Last week, Ithaka S+R released a report on the findings of its first Higher Ed Insights survey. The survey collected the opinions of 96 higher education experts on the state of undergraduate education, and ways to make it more effective and affordable. One of the most interesting findings was that a high percentage of respondents identified institutional culture or structures as the most substantial barriers to innovation. While this finding struck me as interesting, it did not surprise me.
Blog Post
February 23, 2016

Is Completion the Right Goal? The Public Wouldn’t Agree

The results of Ithaka S+R’s first Higher Ed Insights survey, released yesterday, provide a rich set of information about the views of a group of people deeply immersed in the sector.  In full disclosure, I was one of the survey’s respondents, and the questions encouraged me to ponder and articulate my views on a number of important issues and trends, as I’m sure they did for others. One thing that struck me about the survey and its results was…