In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges and universities across the country are grappling with many challenges, including moving instruction online, ensuring that students are supported holistically, and beginning to forecast retention. To provide the real-time information needed by institutional leaders, Ithaka S+R is launching a new survey of students to enable institutions to swiftly address these crucial issues.

In an effort to be as responsive as possible to community needs, we are prepared to begin survey fieldwork as soon as next week. To help institutions streamline participation, we are able to cover the costs of the survey for 20 institutions. 

The Ithaka S+R COVID-19 Student Survey builds on our extensive work surveying campus communities both through national and institution-specific surveys. The survey takes roughly 10 minutes to complete and will cover the effectiveness of course formats, resources utilized, institutional communications, general wellness, and retention. Given the nature of the survey coverage, we expect that provosts and deans, as well as chief officers of student affairs, enrollment management, and institutional research, will find the survey results especially valuable. 

Each institution that participates will receive three live dashboards of results: one of aggregate findings and two of stratified findings based on selected demographic groups. Once the survey closes, we will provide the final reports as well as the underlying dataset.

If you are a college or university leader interested in fielding this survey in April, please review the survey instrument and learn more about implementation steps. If you are committed to moving forward, you can sign up to participate. We are sensitive to the many challenges college and university leaders are facing at this juncture, and have tried to reduce the administrative work to participate in this survey as much as possible. This includes a click-through participation agreement, a simplified implementation process, and templates for the invitation and reminder emails we will send to your students.

While we have the staffing and infrastructure in place to cover the costs for 20 US academic institutions, if demand for this survey is significantly greater, we will need to charge a nominal fee to additional institutions. If your college or university is based outside the US and are interested in working with us on student surveying, please contact us directly. 

If you have any questions, please be in touch via email (christine.wolff-eisenberg@ithaka.org) or phone (212-500-2369). We look forward to working with you in the coming weeks.