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In his recent book “The Graduate School Mess” and a series of online articles, Leonard Cassuto of Fordham University eloquently describes how graduate schools fail to prepare PhD students for the undergraduate teaching positions they will most likely hold in the future. And lack of preparation is the least of it: many graduate programs at least implicitly teach students to disrespect teaching-intensive jobs, although they now significantly outnumber research-centered jobs. In the context of growing concern over the quality of student…

In late July I posted on the different markets that exist for technology enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. To summarize the assertion from that post: there are substantial differences between the activities and impact of courses delivered by online learning platforms directly to individuals and those delivered through institutions to students. The latter represents a “business-to-business” case that must overcome different obstacles for success than “direct-to-consumer” offerings like MOOCs. I promised in that post to highlight a…

During a time of rapid, evolutionary change at Virginia Commonwealth University, John Ulmschneider, University Librarian, turned to the Ithaka S+R Local Faculty Study in spring 2014 to inform decision-making and strategic planning for the VCU Libraries. VCU had recently developed a new university-wide strategic plan and the Libraries were focused on working within this framework to understand and support faculty and their research. As Ulmschneider explained, “We needed good data to help us understand our current faculty even as we expect their…

Many MLS programs have in recent years been organized as parts of schools that also offer degrees in information, communication, or education. This week brought news of the proposal that the Graduate School of Library and Informations Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign be revamped as the School of Information Sciences. In many cases, the programs are not blended strategically but rather managed largely separately. Library education programs typically offer a program of study that is designed for all…

With 58 schools that enroll more than 800,000 students annually, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) is the third largest system of higher education in the nation. The prospect of getting such a large and complex system to align on anything would strike many as unrealistic. Yet, NCCCS’ efforts to establish a strategic focus on access, excellence, and success has permeated the priorities of both the System Office and institutions throughout the state. NCCCS has achieved more than mission-alignment,…

The majority of college students are now what are considered “non-traditional,” meaning, they are over the age of 24, commute to campus, work part-time or full-time, are financially dependent, and/or have children. As a previous Ithaka S+R blog post by Jessie Brown highlights, this demographic trend necessitates policy shifts that better reflect that non-traditional students are now the “typical” students in higher education. Academic libraries are one such area of higher education where policies must shift to better accommodate non-traditional…

Last week, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article that profiled “Ball State Achievements,” a mobile application by the university that incentivizes participation among low-income students in campus activities, such as attending an organization’s event or going to the campus gym, by rewarding points to students (which can later be redeemed for campus currency), like you would to a player in a game. The underlying idea is that students who participate in activities outside the classroom are more…

What does it take to attract, develop, and retain employees who can adapt, grow, and thrive in the fast-changing world of academic libraries? In our latest issue brief, Deanna Marcum explores why libraries should consider a “talent management” approach as they seek to fill new positions and leverage the skills of their current staff. It’s a change that calls for a new mindset not only in the human resources department, but truly across the organization. Interested? Download…

Before the financial crisis of 2008, the typical answer to differentiating yourself in a job market crowded with bachelor’s degrees was to get yet more college by earning a master’s degree. But since the recession, enrollment in graduate school has been essentially flat as fewer students seem to want to take on the debt of going back to school or question the return on investment in a tough job market. A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this…

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the International Federation of Library Associations and Agencies annual conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Such gatherings make starkly apparent the wide variations in the resources available to libraries in different parts of the world, but they also give reason for optimism about libraries, generally. The theme of this year’s conference was “Dynamic Libraries: Access, Development and Transformation,” signaling the strong connection between development of a democratic society, economic development, and the…

The world of online learning presents some unpleasant surprises when it comes to sharing materials. Recently, a university librarian from a selective private institution told me a story that put a nice point on this issue. One of the university’s schools had recently launched a collaborative online degree with peer institutions. Faculty members teaching in the program contacted the library to ask for help with making course materials available to the online students. When the librarians explained to them that…

In 2008, John Immerwahr described an “iron triangle” constraining colleges and universities, in which cost, quality, and access exist in an “unbreakable reciprocal relationship, such that any change in one will inevitably impact the others.” According to this logic, making a college or university more accessible or trying to increase the quality of instruction would necessarily drive up institutional costs. Conversely, reducing expenditures would inevitably make an institution less accessible and undermine the quality of the education that a…

Since 2000, Ithaka S+R has run the US Faculty Survey, which tracks the evolution of faculty members’ research and teaching practices against the backdrop of increasing digital resources and other systemic changes in higher education. Starting in 2012, Ithaka S+R has offered colleges and universities the opportunity to field the faculty survey, and a newly added student survey, at their individual institutions to gain better insight into the perceptions of their faculty members and students. More than 70…

Over the past eight years, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has undergone a remarkable transition, from a tired campus that housed an unsung technical institute to a major presence in Australia’s largest city where learning and research draw the attention of students, the higher education community, industry, and the public. In our latest case study, “Making a Place for Curricular Transformation at the University of Technology Sydney,” authors Nancy Fried Foster and Christine Mulhern unpack the process through…

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times’ Education Life section published a series of articles dedicated solely to incoming college freshmen. With advice on how to navigate the dining hall, when to move into one’s dorm, and how to manage helicopter parents, the articles imagined the typical college student as an 18-year-old who was entering a four year institution straight from high school, living on campus, and whose primary concerns centered just as much on making friends…

Ithaka S+R is launching a new research project to examine how organizational structure affects the academic library’s capacity for effective decision-making on major strategic issues. My interest in this topic draws from Ithaka S+R’s experiences helping more than 75 academic libraries survey their own faculty members and students as well as our other library consultations. Through these projects, it is clear that some libraries are better positioned to act on the research they conduct and the evidence they gather…

There is an unstated subtext to the growing calls for colleges and universities to lower their costs. When colleges and universities are asked to lower their costs, what they are really being asked to do is lower their costs without decreasing quality. There is no other way to square cost concerns with the other major demand on higher education: to increase completion rates. When we talk about costs, what we’re actually talking about is productivity—increasing output for the same or…

Alisa Rod and I had the pleasure of attending the 11th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services, a biennial meeting held this year in Edinburgh, Scotland. Many people think of the Northumbria Conference as the British complement to the ARL Library Assessment Conference held in the US. The conference venue, Our Dynamic Earth, put us in the middle of excited children exploring oceans and rainforests on the one side and a spectacular view…

The discussion about MOOCs and their impact on higher education has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. The fear and foreboding that accompanied MOOCs’ explosive debut has dissipated. It seems that the MOOC storm has passed. Much of that hype was predicated on the expectation that these new free courses were going to replace traditionally delivered higher education and reduce the price of pursuing degrees. There was also a belief that these courses would undermine or “unbundle” the…

Over the past  year, Liam Sweeney, Deanna Marcum, and I have been working on a project with Mariët Westermann of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to examine the diversity of the staff of America’s art museums. Today, Mellon has published an introduction and overview of the diversity findings of the members of the Association of Art Museum Directors. In this project, we worked closely with the Association and its members to develop a questionnaire about staff diversity.