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In fall 2015, Ithaka S+R invited a select group of higher education administrators and experts to join a panel of advisors. One activity of the panel, which consists of 110 members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, is to take part in semi-annual surveys on issues of national importance in higher education. The results of these surveys will help guide Ithaka S+R’s research agenda. In addition, we will publish the results to inform the broader higher education community about the panel’s…

Last year, Deanna Marcum’s issue brief on talent management in academic libraries reflected in part on some of the challenges that academic libraries face in their processes for selection of library staff. Shortly thereafter, Meredith Farkas argued against using “fit” – that ambiguously dangerous catch-all – in hiring and in the workplace. Interviewing as a tool or methodology in a selection process is…

Earlier this year, the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) updated its Data Center to include financial aid data for the 2013-14 academic year. Interested in how the percentage of undergraduate students who received Pell grants changed (or did not), I compared the 2013-14 data with that of previous years (2007-08 through 2012-13). The institutions included in the analysis are located in the United States and fall into one of nine sectors based on…

On January 13th the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) held a webinar exploring the landscape of retractions in scholarly communications. The webinar featured three experts on the subject: Ivan Oransky from Retraction Watch, Veronique Kiermer from PLOS, and Kirsty Meddings from CrossRef. The three of them painted a picture of that landscape (like many of the painted landscapes that stay with us) that was thoroughly bleak, but ultimately hopeful. Oransky opened with a comical yet troubling prank…

When Peter Berkerey was named executive director of the American Association of University Presses (AAUP), he undertook a listening tour of the membership. From this experience, he commented that he was struck most by the diversity of the membership and how that made it difficult to establish common programs for the organization. That diversity among university presses is clearly illustrated in The Cost of Publishing Monographs: Toward a Transparent Methodology, a report just concluded by Nancy Maron, Christine Mulhern,…

The lack of diversity in the tech industry has been well documented by the media. Some of the roots of this problem lie in the companies themselves: there’s broad consensus (see here, here, and here) that tech company culture, and perhaps unconscious bias towards underrepresented groups, contribute to low numbers of women, black, and Hispanic employees hired and retained in tech. Some see the lack of diversity as a “pipeline” problem, arguing that the K-12 and…

A growing number of America’s community colleges are redesigning their curricula, advising services, faculty development programs, and relationships with four-year institutions in order to help more students succeed. In most cases, reforms take place within existing operating structures, as gradual processes of cultural and institutional change. In contrast to institutions that reorganize existing operations around student success, Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, the newest of the City University of New York’s seven community colleges, started with a relatively blank…

Few would question whether colleges and universities should have administrative systems in place for measuring learning and course outcomes for all students, in ways that can be quantified and used to help institutions meet their goals. But not all outcomes are created equal, and deciding which outcomes schools should systematically measure for all students can be difficult and controversial. When thinking about colleges engaging in systematic quantitative measurement of student outcomes, three core questions come to mind: (1) Is promoting…

Developing leaders for academic libraries is an urgent need, especially at a moment when roles and responsibilities of these organizations are in such flux. One of the longest-running and successful programs, the UCLA Senior Fellows program, seemed to be at risk, only because it is totally dependent upon the extraordinary efforts of a single individual. After extensive discussions with Beverly Lynch, UCLA Professor and head of Senior Fellows, Ithaka S+R commissioned former Senior Fellows participant, Karen Calhoun, to carry out…

To our creators, partners and users Artstor and ITHAKA Join Forces We are writing to you as a valued member of our community to share the good news that Artstor, the nonprofit provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now operate under the umbrella of its fellow nonprofit ITHAKA, the organization that currently operates three other services: JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R.  As you may know, Artstor,…

Diversity and inclusion are of substantial importance across our society. In recent years, Ithaka S+R has had the opportunity to conduct research projects on these issues in our cultural communities. Last year, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation commissioned Ithaka S+R to conduct a large-scale study of the demographic diversity of art museum staff. Today, we release the findings from a similar study of New York City cultural organizations. In this project, funded by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation…

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…

The new year brings a new member—our fifth—to Ithaka S+R’s Educational Transformation team. It seems like a good opportunity to (re)introduce our program’s staff, which includes three new members since July 2015. In addition to me, the director of the program, we have two senior researchers and two analysts. Our team brings together a diverse and complementary set of skills and backgrounds, enabling us to take on a range of project work focused on research, policy, and practice…

In the summer of 2014, Yale University integrated eight separate units into a unified Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) that advises teachers, tutors students, leverages technology for teaching and learning, and fosters global teaching and learning partnerships. First an idea, then a plan on paper, and finally a new unit by administrative action, the new CTL became more of a reality when five of the eight constituent units moved into a temporary shared space in the summer of…

Dr. Robert Wachter, professor and interim chairman of the department of medicine, University of California, San Francisco, wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times on January 17 in which he argues that measurement in both the health care and education industries has failed us. He concludes by saying, “The secret of quality is love.” He worried that our efforts to measure and improve quality somehow block the altruism that motivates both doctors and teachers to do their…

My colleague Roger Schonfeld and I launched the religious studies project at Pitts Theology Library at Emory University on January 7 and 8 with the first of two methods training workshops for our institutional collaborators. With funding from lead sponsor the American Theological Library Association (ATLA), as well as the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the religious studies project brings together local research teams from eighteen higher education institutions to investigate the…

At ALA Midwinter in Boston, we attended several valuable sessions on assessment, evaluation, and data visualization. Here’s a roundup of what we heard. ARL Library Assessment Forum Kenning Arlitsch, dean of the library at Montana State University, reported on his grant project, Measuring Up: Assessing Accuracy of Reported Use and Impact of Digital Repositories. While at Marriott Library at the University of Utah, Arlitsch observed that the reported use of the digital collections at the university’s three libraries was…

At this point, any frequent consumer of higher education news is well aware of the controversial remarks Justice Antonin Scalia made during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Many are also likely familiar with the subsequent debates about affirmative action and “mismatched students” that these remarks provoked. In speculating whether black students preferentially admitted to UT Austin might be better off attending “a slower-track school where they do well,” Justice Scalia prompted numerous articles,…

When Paul LeBlanc arrived at Southern New Hampshire University in 2003, he realized that the small, private, tuition-dependent college on the banks of the Merrimack River was destined to decline right along with the downward projections for high school graduates in the state. “I studied the cards we were dealt and looked for the best ones,” he said. In one corner of campus, he found his ace in the hole: a small online operation. Over the next several years, by…

This fall, Ithaka S+R announced plans for a series of new projects to examine the research practices of scholars in three diverse fields. These projects are being conducted in close partnership with scholarly societies and libraries and will provide valuable insight for libraries and other service providers of research support services. I am writing today with an update of the strong progress we are making on the first…