Blog

The first year of college can be an exciting but difficult transition period for many students, marked by new academic demands, administrative processes, and social experiences. Many first-year students experience feelings of imposter syndrome, isolation, and financial strain and have difficulty balancing coursework with other responsibilities, all of which can contribute to attrition. These challenges are even more pronounced for students from underrepresented backgrounds. First-generation students, in particular, face additional obstacles compared to their peers with college-educated parents. They often…

In May 2024, we announced a new project to study the costs and benefits of emerging models in the monographs publishing landscape. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the study looks to analyze the market fit of various models within the academic e-book sector to understand how these models are functioning for libraries and authors. As part of this project we are interviewing publishers and content aggregators as well as librarians. In our initial conversations with the first group, we…

Defining and implementing AI literacy is complicated by rapidly evolving technologies and the difficulty of foreseeing the magnitude and variety of AI’s effects on teaching and learning, career readiness, and civic life. Creating institutionally specific frameworks for AI literacy and building the programming and resources necessary to integrate it into undergraduate education will require contributions from across the university. Libraries are well positioned to be campus and even national leaders in these efforts.

With funding from ECMC Foundation, Ithaka S+R launched the Maximizing Public-Academic Library Partnerships initiative to explore the ways academic and public libraries can collaborate to support students and their broader community’s basic needs. As we investigate how these partnerships manifest in real-world settings through case studies, we’ve had the opportunity to engage with two librarians at Bakersfield College on a collaboration that revitalized the Shafter Library.

Open Source Software (OSS) has great potential to benefit higher education and is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. The community that supports OSS for teaching and administrative purposes, such as Moodle and MIT Mathlets, has made great progress in seeding, scaling, and sustaining their projects within the academy and has built a robust and sustainable infrastructure. However, academic silos have made it difficult for this community to share knowledge with those developing OSS for research purposes.

In December 2024, Ithaka S+R, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, launched the Adult Learner Re-Engagement Community of Practice. Already, institutions across Pennsylvania are demonstrating their commitment to developing innovative solutions for re-enrolling adult learners. A total of 93 representatives from 51 institutions, including public and private colleges, occupational training providers, community colleges, and universities, have joined this year-long engagement. The group encompasses a wide variety of offices and roles, from academic affairs and admissions to adult…

Understanding the various manifestations of work-based learning is important to maximizing its potential impact on students’ academic and post-graduation experiences. Each type requires different resources and stakeholder support to be implemented properly. In this blog post, we share a taxonomy of work-based learning experiences to help instructors and academic administrators select among the many options when adding or integrating these activities into curricula.

With support from the Joyce Foundation and Strada Education Foundation, Ithaka S+R is launching a new research project to understand how the creation of NC-SARA has affected student enrollment in online programs and the extent to which credentials for online learners are valued in the labor market. This project builds on prior Ithaka S+R research that used institution-level data to explore the relationship between NC-SARA and online enrollments.

On Thursday January 16th, 2025, we hosted a webinar that explored the importance of art creation in carceral settings, the challenges incarcerated artists face, and the ways different organizations are collaborating with these artists to help disseminate their work to a wider audience and preserve it for the long term. These are issues we also covered in our recent report, Preserving Their Stories: Making (and Sharing) Art Under Mass Incarceration, that was funded through the NEH. We include a…

In the fall of 2023 we announced the launch of a new research project, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, designed to assess the impact and implementation of open educational resource (OER) initiatives at public institutions of higher education. Today, we are publishing the resulting report, based on an initial literature review and interviews with OER leaders in four US states. In Charting the Course: Case Studies in OER Sustainability, we identify five key takeaways: There…

In 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act imposed a 1.4 percent excise tax on net investment earnings of a set of private colleges and universities that meet certain conditions. Currently, the excise tax applies to private colleges and universities that have at least 500 students and assets per student greater than $500,000, in practice reaching highly selective, high-endowment schools.[1] In 2023, 56 institutions were subject to the tax and paid a total of $380 million.[2] The stated…

Challenges in reproducible research The ability to reproduce results is a cornerstone of scientific integrity in academic research. Reproducibility in research ensures that results can be independently verified, thereby enhancing the credibility and reliability of findings. However, achieving reproducibility is not without its challenges. Researchers often grapple with organizing their analyses, learning new computational tools, and diligently documenting their data and methodologies. These were some of the challenges raised during interviews with faculty at the University of Victoria (UVic) conducted…

Ithaka S+R is excited to announce a collaboration with the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) to better understand the challenges faced by Tennesseans with some college but no credential who have been prevented from continuing their education due to administrative holds and past due balances, often called stranded credits. TBR governs the College System of Tennessee, the state’s public community and technical colleges. As a leader in state strategies to promote…

The July 2023 restoration of Pell grants for incarcerated students was a watershed moment for increasing access to higher education in prison. But with this change came a complex set of administrative and regulatory issues confronting both prison education programs and students. Return to Title IV (R2T4) rules create risks for all Title IV Federal Student Aid recipients, not just incarcerated learners. If a student receives Title IV funding and withdraws during the semester, the college or university may have…

This blog post is based on reports prepared for the TIAA Institute by George Spencer, Alex Monday, and Renni Turpin,[1] as well as an article in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.[2] Dual enrollment programs, which allow high school students to take college-level courses, have rapidly expanded in the United States over the past two decades. These programs are praised for increasing access to higher education, reducing costs, and accelerating degree completion (found in prior…

Complete College America’s (CCA) 2024 Annual Convening, hosted in Indianapolis this past month and framed around going “All In” on college attainment, brought together an array of postsecondary practitioners, leaders, and researchers focusing on student mobility and outcomes. At the conference, Martin Kurzweil and I led a strategy showcase focused on the Holistic Credit Mobility project, a cornerstone of our continuing efforts to support increasingly mobile students. In collaboration with CCA, Ithaka S+R is in the final stages of…

Many college students face challenges that extend beyond the classroom, requiring holistic support that addresses both academic and non-academic needs. “College fluency,” which is the knowledge and a corresponding set of abilities that enable students and staff to effectively locate and use relevant college services, programs, and resources, can help students successfully engage with and self-advocate within the culture and bureaucracy of higher education institutions to achieve their goals. Through our College Fluency Capacity Building research initiative, undertaken with…

As both the owner and operator of correctional facilities and the official oversight entity for higher education in prison programming, it is up to departments of correction to determine what technology to make available for education on the inside. This means that correctional leaders are responsible for considering security and safety as well as educational best practices. There is little research on how to negotiate these, at times differing, value sets. As a result, there are very few…

In October, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) hosted their second annual Future of Museums Summit, hosted by Elizabeth Merritt, AAM’s vice president of strategic foresight and founding director of the Center for the Future of Museums. The summit focused on four themes that emerged from this year’s TrendsWatch report: Culture Wars 2.0 What role can museums play in bridging the gaps that divide the communities they serve? This theme featured presentations relating to attacks on DEAI,…

What are the challenges faced by first-generation BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) professionals in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field? How do biases, policies, and practices impact their workplace experiences and career advancement? These are critical questions we aim to address through focus groups as part of a new, IMLS-funded research project, and we are now seeking participants to share their valuable insights.  This study, conducted by Africa Hands, assistant professor in…