Topic: Educational Transformation
Blog Post
May 22, 2018
Taking a Closer Look at College and University Endowments: New Report
A new report from Sandy Baum, Cappy Hill, and myself, out today, provides an overview of college and university endowments. We seek to inform the public policy debate by exploring how endowments are structured and used, and discussing the extent to which the favorable tax policy for higher education institutions serves the public interest. We find that the distribution of endowment assets is highly skewed across institutions. The median endowment per student for all postsecondary institutions is $12,600, while…
Research Report
May 22, 2018
College and University Endowments
In the Public Interest?
The fact that a handful of colleges and universities control billions of dollars in endowment funds has captured the attention of Congress and the public. Is it in the public interest for these institutions to continue to receive the full exemption from income taxation for the donations to and income from endowments?[1] The passage of the recent federal tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which imposes an excise tax of 1.4 percent on the net investment…
Blog Post
May 8, 2018
Setting the Table: Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education
Martin Kurzweil and Mitchell Stevens in EDUCAUSE Review
Martin Kurzweil and Mitchell Stevens published “Setting the Table: Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education” in the May/June 2018 issue of EDUCAUSE Review. As they note, “Rapid movement at the cutting edge of edtech has far outpaced changes in the laws, institutional policies, and ethical frameworks that were crafted to inform responsible use of educational information in the twentieth century. This makes for a jarring recognition, but also an opportunity to revisit and rearticulate guiding ideals of…
Blog Post
May 8, 2018
Check out Catharine Bond Hill’s Opinion Piece in Inside Higher Ed
Can Higher Ed Change America’s Negative View?
In today’s Inside Higher Ed, Ithaka S+R’s managing director Catharine Bond Hill asks “Can Higher Ed Change America’s Negative View?” In the piece she explores why higher education institutions have lost the public’s trust and sketches out how colleges and universities can regain it. …
Blog Post
April 18, 2018
American Talent Initiative Reaches 100 Schools Committed to Expanding Opportunity for More High-Achieving, Low-and Moderate-Income Students
We’re happy to share the news that the American Talent Initiative now includes 100 institutions committed to expanding opportunity for more high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students. The full press release about reaching this milestone is below. In just over a year, ATI has grown from 30 to 100 institutions working to attract, enroll, and graduate high-achieving, low- and moderate-income college students The American Talent Initiative (ATI), a Bloomberg Philanthropies initiative led by the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence…
Blog Post
April 5, 2018
Preliminary Findings from National Advising Study
Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS)
Can changes to the advising process help less advantaged students persist and graduate? This is the question at the heart of an $8.9 million First in the World validation grant awarded to Georgia State University, on behalf of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA). The Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) project seeks to bring to scale and test the impacts of a proactive advising system for low-income and first-generation students. Ithaka S+R was brought on to the project as…
Research Report
April 4, 2018
Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS)
Evaluation Findings from the First Year of Implementation
In 2015, estimated bachelor’s degree attainment rates by age 24 were nearly five times greater for those from the highest family income quartile than for those from the lowest quartile (58 percent vs. 12 percent). Lower graduation rates of low-income students are not fully explained by lack of academic preparation, and a growing number of research studies attribute this achievement gap, at least in part, to low-income students’ lack of “institutional know-how”—their ability to navigate the complex bureaucracies that characterize…
Blog Post
March 2, 2018
Invest in Talent to Move the Dial on Socioeconomic Diversity on Nation’s College Campuses
Invest in talented young adults, and they will help us solve the world’s problems. That was the charge of Dan Porterfield, president of Franklin & Marshall College and incoming president of the Aspen Institute, to college and university presidents who gathered February 22-23 in New York City for the American Talent Initiative annual presidential summit. The effort, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and co-led by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and Ithaka S+R, has an ambitious goal: attract, enroll and…
Blog Post
February 28, 2018
Insights from the William G. Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership
Last November, we held the inaugural William G. Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership. Named for our late, founding board chair and president emeritus of Princeton University and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the event brought together 50 higher education leaders and experts to discuss several contemporary challenges including diversity and inclusiveness, free speech and student activism, and the role of technology in higher education. Today, Kevin Guthrie, Cappy Hill, and I are publishing three papers…
Research Report
February 28, 2018
Free Speech, Student Activism, and Social Media
Reflections from the Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership
“We don’t invite people here [to speak] because we agree with them. The right question, well phrased, can be far more effective than preventing people from speaking.” —William G. Bowen, quoted in Priscilla Van Tassel, “Bowen Reviews His Years at Princeton,” The New York Times, November 29, 1987…
Research Report
February 28, 2018
Technology in Higher Education
Reflections from the Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership
“Properly conceived, information technology will enhance, but not replace, traditional modes of teaching and learning. It will also permit the delivery of educational content to a wider variety of others interested in subjects that lend themselves to distance learning – at home and at odd hours.” —William G. Bowen, “At a Slight Angle to the Universe: The University in a Digitized, Commercialized Age,” Romanes Lecture, Oxford University, October 17, 2000.
Research Report
February 28, 2018
Postsecondary Access and Diversity
Reflections from the Bowen Colloquium on Higher Education Leadership
“[T]he twin problems before us are, first, an unacceptably stagnant level of overall educational attainment in spite of historically high returns to degree completion and, second, persistent disparities in BA completion rates by socio-economic status. The two are, as it were, linked at the hip because we can’t achieve significant increases in the overall level of educational attainment unless we do a better job of graduating students from poor families and from Hispanic and African American populations.” —William G. Bowen,…
Blog Post
February 14, 2018
How Are Two-Year Colleges Supporting their First-Year Students?
A Question Worth Answering
Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY) recently launched a research collaboration to expand our knowledge of institutional practices to support first year students in two-year degree programs across the country. We asked Brad Bostian, president of TYFY and director of first year experience at Central Piedmont Community College, to describe why he started TYFY and the importance of understanding the needs of first-year community college students. –Rayane Alamuddin People often asked those of us who started the…
Blog Post
January 29, 2018
Facing Declining Enrollment, Liberal Arts Colleges Turn to New Modes of Instruction
Lessons from a Teagle Grant Program
Over each of the past five years, the total number of undergraduate students in the United States has declined. There are multiple potential reasons for this trend: rising tuition, questions about the value of a postsecondary education, and shifting demographics have all likely contributed. While the impact of this trend has been felt across higher education institutions, private liberal arts colleges have been hit particularly hard, as have liberal arts programs offered at public institutions, marked by a…
Research Report
January 29, 2018
Faculty Collaboration and Technology in the Liberal Arts
Lessons from a Teagle Grant Program
In response to enrollment and revenue declines, residential liberal arts programs are seeking ways to contain costs and build institutional capacity, while maintaining the quality of a liberal arts education. Some institutions have banded together to form robust consortia to share resources and distribute burdens. And some of these consortia have focused their efforts on the creation and use of online teaching resources and courses, hypothesizing that doing so will increase institutional capacity to provide educational offerings at a fraction…
Blog Post
January 16, 2018
Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY) Launch National Study
Exploring Programming for First-Year Students in Two-Year Programs
To help incoming college students succeed, many institutions offer First-Year Experience (FYE) programs. But most of the research on the scope and effectiveness of these programs centers on four-year colleges and universities. This is a significant oversight given that 38 percent of all postsecondary students are enrolled at community colleges or other two-year programs. To begin to fill this research gap, Ithaka S+R and Two Year First Year (TYFY) recently launched a research collaboration focused…
Blog Post
December 20, 2017
Endowment Tax Provision: Counting Students Is No Easy Feat
After the House of Representatives and Senate passed two versions of a GOP bill to overhaul the tax code, a conference committee released a near-final version last Friday that was passed by the House on Tuesday. The Senate then passed a bill with slight tweaks on Wednesday, necessitating a House re-vote. The House is expected to pass the bill midday Wednesday and the President is expected to sign within the coming days. While some of the controversial measures…
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 15, 2017
The American Talent Initiative’s Fall 2017 Data Working Group Meeting
In early October, the American Talent Initiative hosted main points of contact from member institutions in Washington, DC, for a Strategic Support Meeting, sharing research and connecting members around promising strategies for enhancing access and success for lower-income students. Later in the month, the American Talent Initiative held another convening, also in Washington DC, for the institutional research contacts of ATI member institutions. The meeting, run by Ithaka S+R and The Aspen Institute, had three primary…