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A diverse group of 85 higher education leaders and experts identified insufficient state funding of public institutions of higher education as the most significant obstacle to improving American students’ postsecondary outcomes. But aside from the shortfall in that critical public investment, respondents to the Spring 2016 Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights Survey flagged institutional policies, practices, and culture as the greatest impediments to improving student success. The most promising solutions to those obstacles, according to respondents, are greater incentives for…

After a busy planning year, Ithaka S+R and the 11 public universities that are a part of the University Innovation Alliance recently launched the Monitoring Advising Analytics to Promote Success (MAAPS) study. As my colleague Martin Kurzweil explained last fall when the project was just getting started, MAAPS consists of an intensive proactive and technology-enhanced advisement intervention for first-time low-income and/or first-generation freshmen. It is funded by a First in the World grant from the Department of Education,…

Among the growing number of ethnographic studies of college students, only a tiny number look at students on community college campuses, and even fewer look specifically at how these students do their academic work and use the library. But community college students constitute an enormous and important group. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, about 7.2 million of the 20.5 million undergraduates in the US are enrolled in community colleges. And it is important to understand their…

Earlier this week, I was invited by John Burger and Joni Blake to present recent research findings to a webinar hosted by ASERL and GWLA. I focused on the recent Ithaka S+R study on Organizing the Work of the Academic Library. My presentation and the resulting q&a are recorded and available for download. More than 100 librarians joined…

Academic librarians, seeing changes in teaching and learning at their institutions, seek to understand these changes and ensure that their spaces, services, and resources respond accordingly. They ask what is different about the work habits and library needs of students in “flipped” and other kinds of active learning classes. By gathering information on new teaching and learning patterns and practices, they will be better equipped to highlight relevant services, develop new ones that address emerging needs, and provide spaces within…

The Council of Independent Colleges, with funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, invited its 700 members to apply to be part of the Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction. Even though the hallmark of CIC member institutions is their personalized learning for their students in small classroom settings, many of them wanted to understand more about online learning as it was receiving so much press coverage at the time. Twenty-one institutions were selected from 100 applications in the spring of…

Earlier this week my Ithaka S+R colleagues and I published “Student Data in the Digital Era: An Overview of Current Practices,” in which we review how institutions of higher education are currently using student data, and some of the practical and ethical challenges they face in doing so. As we conducted research for this report, part of our Responsible Use of Student Data in Higher Education project with Stanford University, we heard recurring concerns about the growing role…

Newly available student data are making it possible to understand, improve, and represent student postsecondary learning and other outcomes in profoundly different ways. Yet the potential of these new uses remains under-realized. In addition to technical and coordination challenges, researchers, administrators, and instructors are facing complex questions about how to use these data responsibly. Ithaka S+R and Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Research through Online Learning (CAROL) have partnered on a new initiative to catalyze discussion, create resources, and begin…

During a time when the University of South Florida Libraries were exploring new service offerings, the Libraries turned to the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Survey to better understand the research and teaching needs of its faculty members. Matt Torrence, Associate Librarian and Principal Investigator, reports that “responses to the local survey have helped the Libraries make evidence-based decisions regarding the collections, programs, and services we provide to faculty members, as well as assist in benchmarking faculty perceptions and experiences against…

Last October, the federal Department of Education announced the launch of Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships (EQUIP), a pilot program inviting partnerships between non-traditional education providers and accredited institutions of higher education. A key component of the program is its target population: low- and moderate-income students. Under a provision of the Higher Education Act, accredited institutions are ineligible to receive federal financial aid for programs in which 50 percent or more of the content and instruction is provided by…

Does Pokémon Go deserve a place in our cultural institutions? The stops and gyms are already there and some institutions have already incorporated the game into their programs so it seems like a good time to pose the question. The new Pokémon Go game is based on the Pokémon Game Boy games that were originally released in 1996 and were followed by playing cards, movies, a variety of media productions, and even a theme park. Played on a smartphone, the…

Library leaders are faced with no shortage of imperatives. They are building new strategies to align the library in support of the research enterprise and student success. They are grappling with the challenges of stagnant budgets and rising costs. They are rethinking their tangible collections and renovating their facilities. In support of these types of efforts, library leaders are beginning to take on new approaches to management and organization. Especially at large research libraries whose employees…

Fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion is an issue of ever-growing importance in libraries and archives but to what extent can these principles be universally applied? At Ithaka S+R we recently fielded a study on representation in the New York cultural sector and are now working on a study on representation within the academic library community. I have also experienced the palpable interest in these issues in the library and archives sphere first hand through two conferences I recently…

Earlier this week, Carl Straumsheim wrote in Inside Higher Ed about how in an era of declining books sales university presses are looking for new definitions of success in a digital environment. The article used the University of Michigan Press as its key example. As one of those interviewed for the piece, I found myself emphasizing that university presses are not all the same as one another. I believe it is important that…

Last week, the Jefferson Education Accelerator, an ed-tech incubator at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, announced its plans to launch a large-scale project to research the “barriers that keep companies and their customers from conducting and using efficacy research when creating or buying ed-tech products.” In a Chronicle article announcing the project, Bart Epstein, CEO and managing director of Jefferson Education Accelerator, explains there exists little research that explores the efficacy of ed-tech tools in a…

Dear Friends, I am thrilled to share the news announced today that Catharine (Cappy) Bond Hill will be the new Managing Director of Ithaka S+R. Cappy, who has served as president of Vassar College for the past decade, is a passionate believer in high-quality education for students at every socioeconomic level. Having served on the ITHAKA Board for the past several years, she knows Ithaka S+R quite well already and her interests, research, and leadership align well with our…

This press release appeared today on the ITHAKA website. July 20, 2016 – New York, NY – ITHAKA, the not-for-profit leader in advancing and preserving knowledge and improving education worldwide, announced today that Vassar College President Catharine (Cappy) Bond Hill will join the organization as Managing Director of its research and consulting service, Ithaka S+R. Hill, one of higher education’s most impactful college presidents and an accomplished economist, will lead Ithaka S+R’s national work as a partner and trusted source…

As tuition and fees at public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions continue to rise, so does the role of financial assistance, particularly for low- and moderate-income students. Yet, recent reports show that the distribution of financial aid is far from equitable. Last month, an Atlantic article highlighted an array of college-affordability efforts–including private and employer grants, the federal work-study program, and federal tax credits–that often fail to provide financial assistance to those that need it most. For instance,…

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Jisc/CNI conference in Oxford, England, and share findings from our recent studies of academics in the US and in the UK. The conference focused on current issues and innovations in digital scholarship and allowed for international exchange on leading practices and policies. A number of themes emerged within and across the various sessions I attended. Open data Many speakers and attendees discussed the “openness” of research data, including discussion of…

Nearly any conversation about higher education includes the need for global engagement. Some universities have addressed this by building international campuses; others have recruited heavily to bring international students to their American campuses. All have focused on adding global perspectives to the curriculum. How are university libraries assisting in these globalization efforts? Anne Kenney and Xin Li of Cornell University Libraries in their issue brief “Rethinking Research Libraries in the Era of Global Universities” look at the kinds of services…