Blog
August 30, 2021
Higher Ed Consolidation and Equity
Across American higher education, institutional consolidations are on the rise. In particular, multiple state systems have proposed or completed mergers of regional universities and/or community colleges with the stated goal of increasing efficiency. The conditions prompting these consolidations have been mounting for years—among them a long-term downward trend in state support for higher education and demographic shifts away from traditional-aged college students, especially in rural areas where numerous public institutions are located. With the COVID-19 pandemic contributing to…
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August 26, 2021
Staying Connected Through the Power of Technology
Centering Student Experiences
At the onset of the pandemic, higher education institutions across the country rushed to bolster digital infrastructure, to maintain both instructional continuity as well as academic and financial advising, so that students could stay enrolled and graduate. Many institutions also rapidly developed new services to accommodate student technology needs through device loaning programs and Wi-Fi partnerships, typically led by the library as gleaned through a series of roundtables conducted with library directors earlier this spring. While the initial investments…
August 19, 2021
Questions for Ithaka S+R’s Summer 2021 Fellow Cohort
This summer, we welcomed four fellows to our team. In this interview, they reflect on what brought them to Ithaka S+R, what they accomplished, and their experiences this summer. From left to right: Raul Armenta, Yuzhou Bai, Tangier Davis, and Jeremiah Perez-Torres What attracted you to Ithaka S+R? What current projects are you working on? Jeremiah Perez-Torres (PhD Candidate, CUNY) Ithaka S+R works towards improving higher education in a variety of ways and ensures that all…
August 17, 2021
Advancing Strategy through Staffing
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Library Leadership Roles
Following the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, we have seen a notable rise in academic libraries’ public commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and even more so following the social justice protests of summer 2020. These include drafting statements positioning the library in opposition to hate crimes and police violence and shifting resources towards new programs and services that address the needs of a wider variety of patrons. Overseeing these initiatives—and…
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August 17, 2021
“It pushes you down even further”
Documenting the Burden of Stranded Credits Through the Voices of Those Affected
In October 2020, Ithaka S+R estimated that 6.6 million people in the US owe a debt to a college or university they previously attended, and because of that, cannot access their transcripts or credentials. This insidious and understudied form of student debt not only saddles individuals with collections, credit rating issues, and other typical consequences of debt, but also prevents them from using credits and credentials they’ve earned to continue their education or…
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August 16, 2021
Building Community During the Pandemic and Beyond
Centering Student Experiences
The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystem initiative began in 2019 as part of the Ithaka S+R research portfolio focused on understanding, measuring, and increasing student success at community colleges through a variety of departments and service providers. We have had the great fortune to work with a group of outstanding student advisors from across the country who contribute unique and vital perspectives as we shape recommendations…
August 5, 2021
Deadline Extended: Call for Proposals on Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science
Ithaka S+R is currently accepting applications from researchers interested in participating in Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science, an NSF-funded workshop developed in partnership with the Data Curation Network. Participants will receive funding to attend a two-day incubation workshop in 2022, as well as expert guidance from information professionals about how to create sustainable infrastructures to support voluntary data sharing across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Applications are due October 1, 2021. Please see the following CFP for full…
August 4, 2021
New Questionnaire for the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2021 Now Available
We’re excited to announce that we have now finalized updates for the 2021 edition of the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey, which we will be fielding nationally and with a number of college and university partners this fall. As with previous cycles of the survey, the instrument will explore the research, teaching, and publishing practices and perspectives of scholars at four-year colleges and universities. We have also expanded several areas of coverage within the questionnaire to cover instructional support services,…
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August 2, 2021
Leading Community College Libraries During the Pandemic
Library Directors Share Their Experiences
Community colleges and their students have faced enormous challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two-year colleges serve especially diverse student populations, including a high percentage of students of color, first-generation students, working students, and student parents, many of whom have been disproportionately impacted by the social, economic, and public health effects of the pandemic. Community colleges have made considerable efforts to meet student needs, despite having fewer resources than most four-year colleges and universities…
July 26, 2021
SAA 2021 Annual Meeting
What to Watch For
Next month, archivists from across the country will convene virtually to discuss emerging and ongoing issues in the field at the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Annual Meeting, ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2021: Together/Apart. This year’s meeting will take place from August 4 to 6 (with some pre-conference activities earlier in the week) and will showcase 10 live sessions and 20 pre-recorded sessions with live Q&As. The conference will feature keynote speakers, general sessions, networking opportunities,…
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July 20, 2021
Making Streaming Media Sustainable for Academic Libraries
Launching a New Cohort-Based Collaborative Project
There has been an explosion of interest in streaming media marketed for educational purposes in recent years, and the shift to remote instruction during the pandemic has further accelerated that interest. This growing significance is also reflected in its overall share of library collections budgets: recent Ithaka S+R research found that streaming media currently represents about five percent of those budgets and that academic library directors across a diverse array of institutions project that this…
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July 16, 2021
Participate in Advancing Higher Education in Prison Research
Visit Ithaka S+R’s New Online Forum
Higher education in prison programming has entered a period of great opportunity and promise. In December 2020, the nation lifted a 26-year ban on need-based Pell Grants to incarcerated undergraduates. Over the next several years, the restoration of this federal funding stream will propel the expansion of college programming to many of the estimated half million Pell-eligible incarcerated adult learners. However, nuts-and-bolts questions persist, such as how best to scale high-quality educational programming…
July 14, 2021
Why Survey Testing is Essential
Preparing to Field the US Faculty Survey 2021
Ithaka S+R is gearing up for our eighth launch of the US Faculty Survey this fall. This national survey has yielded longitudinal data on scholarly research and teaching behaviors across a variety of institutional and disciplinary contexts on a triennial basis since 2000. To maximize the value of this initiative for higher education leaders, scholarly societies, academic libraries, and publishers who have come to rely on these data, especially in light of the…
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July 8, 2021
Provocative, Productive, and Collaborative: The 2021 Academic Equity Summer Institute
We gratefully acknowledge the many individuals who devoted their time, energy, and expertise to the 2021 summer institute and the insights shared below, including Randall Bass, Heidi Elmendorf, Mark Joy, Susannah McGowan, and Brittany Toscano Gore of Georgetown University, Katie Brock and Ulili Emore of the University of Texas at Austin, and Nathaniel Holmes and Richard Peters of Xavier University of Louisiana. The ongoing work of the ATI academic equity community of practice would not be possible without them. Introduction…
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June 28, 2021
Evaluating Success in the Midst of a Protracted Pandemic
Four Guiding Principles
There was a “before” and there will be an “after,” but how do we evaluate success while at our current locus—somewhere in the nebulous middle of a prolonged pandemic? More than a year into the pandemic, many evaluations are being conducted using measures of success that were established in a radically different context. The environment has shifted, and the goals and definitions of success for items under evaluation—everything…
June 24, 2021
Four Years Later: Findings from a National Technology-Enhanced Advising Experiment
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and in many cases widened socioeconomic and other disparities in higher education, making evidence-based approaches that support underserved students more important than ever before. One project that aimed to promote equity and student success across a set of large, public universities is Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS). In 2016, the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) and its institutional members began testing the effectiveness of MAAPS, an intervention consisting of intensive, proactive, technology-enhanced…
June 22, 2021
New Report: What’s the Big Deal?
How Researchers Are Navigating Changes to Journal Access
Since 1996, the “Big Deal” has enabled academic libraries of all sizes to license bundled access to a publisher’s journal at a significant discount off the list prices. Over the years, as Big Deal spending has come to occupy a greater and greater share of materials budgets, libraries have come to question the value of their Big Deal subscriptions, with some opting to cancel or significantly alter their existing arrangements. Today we are thrilled to announce a…
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June 22, 2021
Cancelling the Big Deal Project Spotlight
An Interview with Freie Universität Berlin with contributions from Dominik Hagel, Franziska Harnisch, Mario Kowalak, and Cosima Wagner
As university budgets face considerable strain and new models for providing open access to scholarly communication proliferate, academic libraries are increasingly pursuing alternatives to the “Big Deal” journal subscription model, including cancellation. But how are these strategies affecting researchers and what do they make of them? Over the past year Ithaka S+R has been studying the impact of Big Deal cancellations on its users in partnership with 11 academic libraries. Previous research has focused primarily on…
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May 25, 2021
Using Data to Advance Equity in the Academic Experience
A New American Talent Initiative Case Study Series
We’re excited to announce the first publication in a new case study series from the American Talent Initiative’s Academic Equity Community of Practice, highlighting the ways in which colleges and universities have leveraged data and evidence-based research to enhance equity-related projects on their respective campuses. In Fall 2020, 37 members of the American Talent Initiative (ATI), an alliance of high-graduation-rate colleges and universities committed to expanding…
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May 20, 2021
Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science
New NSF-Funded Collaboration between Ithaka S+R and the Data Curation Network
We are excited to announce that Ithaka S+R has been awarded grant funding from the National Science Foundation to support the development of infrastructures for data sharing within data communities in collaboration with the Data Curation Network. “Leveraging Data Communities to Advance Open Science,” will bring together scientists and information technology professionals for focused discussions about initiating and sustaining data communities. A unique opportunity to leverage data communities…