Blog

This October, we embarked on a blog series focusing on the experiences of student veterans in higher education, sharing takeaways from our conversations with eight campus-based programs and non-profit organizations that support student veterans’ college success alongside the latest enrollment data. Those conversations provided insights into many best practices that institutions can employ to recruit, enroll, and graduate veteran students, while also introducing new questions and ideas for future work. In this installment, we identify…

If, as is widely expected, the US Supreme Court issues a decision in 2023 that significantly limits, if not completely prohibits, the use of race in college and university admissions, it would come at exactly the wrong moment in the ongoing struggle to address our racial history. To further socioeconomic mobility and racial equity in the United States, selective colleges and universities must create more opportunities for high-achieving students from racially minoritized backgrounds, not fewer. But even if the Court…

Effective July 1, 2023, incarcerated people will once again be eligible to receive Pell grants to support their education, ending a 29 year ban. Below we publish Ithaka S+R’s letter to the Department of Education, outlining our concerns and providing recommendations that would help ensure that people who are incarcerated in the United States are provided the opportunity to participate in and benefit from a quality education.

We are so terribly sad about the passing of our beloved colleague Deanna Marcum on August 16, 2022. Deanna was a humble and private person, so she would not want a lot of attention focused on her, but her impact on me and us here at ITHAKA is so profound that we must recognize and share it.  I first met Deanna in 1996, when she was the president of the Council of Library…

The similarities between the helicopters that left Saigon and the scenes last month at the Kabul airport are painful. For whatever reasons, we have not learned to retreat safely for our citizens and allies. We have failed in our obligations and commitments to those Afghans who most importantly assisted and protected our young men and women who we sent in harm’s way.  There is another lesson from Vietnam that I hope we have learned, even if…

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has led to many colleges and universities moving to remote courses for an indefinite period, including in many cases for the rest of the spring semester. Many residential colleges are sending students home, advising them to assume classes on campus will not resume this spring, but instead will continue online. Colleges and universities with more commuter students have also moved to remote learning.  CUNY and SUNY college students were informed by New York State Governor…

Both houses of Congress are debating a set of bills to update portions of the Higher Education Act, the key federal postsecondary education law. The long-overdue refresh has been held up by disagreements over levels of funding, accountability, and how to handle sex discrimination under Title IX, among other issues.  Whenever the HEA finally does come up for reauthorization, the move to restore Pell grants to the incarcerated is expected to make the final draft. Legislators who care about improving…

Last week, the US Department of Education announced an expansion of its 2015 experimental initiative that provides federal Pell Funding to eligible incarcerated students. The announcement builds off other 2019 bipartisan policy initiatives — at both the federal and state levels — that aim to increase postsecondary access for the 1.5 million of adults currently held in American prisons. Given that reentry statistics suggest more than 95 percent of incarcerated adults will eventually be released, and…

In January 2017 researchers at the Equality of Opportunity Project—now called Opportunity Insights—released detailed data on the financial circumstances of undergraduate students at each of the vast majority of American colleges and universities. Covering students born between 1980 and 1991, and relying on tax records held by the Internal Revenue Service, the publicly available Opportunity Insights data provided a nuanced look at the family income distribution as well as subsequent earnings of a generation of college-goers. The Opportunity Insights dataset…