Publications
Research Report
December 19, 2024
Tailored Support for First-Year, First-Generation College Students
Findings from an Evaluation of the Kessler Scholars Program
Established and emerging Kessler Scholars Programs at 16 colleges and universities are embedded in and supported by the Kessler Scholars Collaborative, a nationwide network that guides program development and implementation, facilitates practice sharing across institutions, and provides students with opportunities to connect with other first-generation scholars across the country. Ithaka S+R’s multi-year mixed-methods evaluation aims to assess the long-term relationship between program participation and students’ college experiences and psychosocial and academic outcomes, in order to support program improvement and maximize…
Issue Brief
December 11, 2024
Building a Successful Credit Mobility Platform
Lessons from CUNY Transfer Explorer
Students now have more opportunities to earn college credit at more points in their educational journey than ever before. But moving that earned credit into and between institutions of higher education so that the earned credit applies to a program of study has proven a persistent and stubborn challenge for many students. Studies have concluded that students who lose significant amounts of earned college credit when moving to a new institution have lower chances of graduation and that students report…
Playbook
December 9, 2024
Technology Implementation for Higher Education in Prison
A Student-Centered Playbook for Planning, Preparing, and Assessing Implementation Readiness
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. However, there are very few resources designed to help correctional leaders determine what technologies are available, how they might benefit students in their facilities, and what drawbacks the new technology might pose. The tools and process outlined in this playbook are…
November 20, 2024
The Clark Kerr Lecture Series
The Political Economy of Cost Control on a University Campus by Lawrence S. Bacow and Towards Sustainable Financing of Higher Education by Richard C. Levin
The 2017 Clark Kerr Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, were delivered by two distinguished economists—Lawrence Bacow and Richard C. Levin. In addition to conducting research on the economics of higher education during their academic careers, these economists have served as presidents of colleges and universities (Tufts and Harvard Universities and Yale University respectively). They have therefore not just researched the issues facing higher education; they have experienced firsthand the major challenges facing their institutions.
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Research Report
November 7, 2024
Fostering College Fluency
Results from a National Survey of Community College Library and Campus Partners
To better understand the current landscape of college fluency, and the challenges faced by institutions, Ithaka S+R and the Borough of Manhattan Community College, with support from IMLS, fielded a national survey to gather insights from administrators, librarians, and faculty and staff from academic and student affairs departments across community colleges in the US. This survey aimed to explore the perceptions of college fluency and evaluate the effectiveness of existing support and resource referrals.
Research Report
October 30, 2024
A Third Transformation?
Generative AI and Scholarly Publishing
For this report, we interviewed leaders in stakeholder communities about the potential impact of generative AI on scholarly publishing . The consensus among the individuals with whom we spoke is that generative AI will enable efficiency gains across the publication process. Writing, reviewing, editing, and discovery will all become easier and faster. Both scholarly publishing and scientific discovery in turn will likely accelerate. From that shared premise, two distinct categories of change emerged from our interviews. In the first and…
Research Report
October 17, 2024
Adoption of Generative AI by Academic Biomedical Researchers
Preface Biomedical research has been at the forefront of generative AI-enhanced research. Generative AI’s contributions to drug development and protein design are among the most widely celebrated concrete examples of its transformative potential. Biomedicine has also been at the forefront of developing customized, domain-specific large language models (LLMs). It is also a field in which any accelerating effects enabled by generative AI would have immediate impacts on the health of individuals, and for the same reason, where errors created by generative…
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Research Report
October 16, 2024
Beyond Standards
A Critical Examination of the Relationship between NACIQI and Accreditors
The report begins with a primer on the system of higher education quality assurance as it currently exists to establish the necessary context for a closer focus on the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) and its relationships with accreditation organizations. The contextual overview will include a brief explanation of the three members of the quality assurance triad (state recognition boards, accreditors, and the Department of Education) followed by a deeper dive into NACIQI and its process…
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Case Study
October 15, 2024
College Fluency Capacity Building
Insights from a Northeastern Community College
The Borough of Manhattan Community College and Ithaka S+R, with support from IMLS, are publishing a series of case studies to understand how institutions are currently addressing college fluency needs. The second case study in this series looks at a small northeastern community college that has been developing college fluency programs with both their library and non-library faculty and staff.
Research Report
October 7, 2024
Uneven Terrain
Learning Spaces in Higher Education in Prison
How can prison education programs fulfill their obligation to provide their students with an educational experience that is as close as possible to the one of students on main campuses? Thus far, our research into equitable access has focused largely on instructional delivery and practices, and technological access and use. This report broadens our interrogation of that central question by exploring the role of space, architecture, and design in the context of higher education in prison.
Research Report
September 30, 2024
Exploring the Landscape of College and Community Reentry Partnerships
Now that federal Pell Grant funding has been reinstated for learners who are incarcerated, the field is in flux. Higher education in prison programs are adapting and developing their practices to meet new policy and regulation needs. Two major facets of the revised regulations for Pell funding are particularly critical for college in prison programs, namely the requirement to track and report student data, and the obligation to document how they or their partner organizations provide reentry services.
Issue Brief
September 10, 2024
Transfer Credit Information at Your Fingertips
Preliminary Findings on Use and Implementation of CUNY Transfer Explorer
CUNY Transfer Explorer (CUNY T-Rex) was developed to simplify the transfer of credits and represents an at-scale technology tool solution that provides transparent and up-to-date information about transfer credit equivalencies to students, faculty, and advisors. We undertook a mixed-methods evaluation to understand the process, conditions, and business requirements that were involved in the launch and proliferation of CUNY T-Rex, as well as to understand the behaviors, uses, and implementation of CUNY T-Rex at individual institutions and system wide.
Research Report
August 22, 2024
US Instructor Survey 2024
Findings from a National Survey
As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, the landscape of higher education continues to evolve. Ithaka S+R's 2024 US Instructor Survey sheds light on how college instructors are adapting, with a renewed focus on diverse teaching and learning modalities. Adapted from the US Faculty Survey we have fielded regularly since 2000, this iteration offers a valuable snapshot of the shifting dynamics in college teaching.
Research Report
August 1, 2024
Governance and Business Models for Collaborative Collection Development
To be effective, library collaborations focused on collection development need to be responsive to the changing landscape of scholarly resources as well as the evolving nature of research, teaching, and learning. The purpose of this report is to further increase our understanding of the governance and business characteristics of collaborative collection development initiatives, and how the attributes of different business models can affect the outcomes of collaborations.
Research Report
July 25, 2024
Perceptions of Academic Freedom in Teaching
Findings from a National Survey of Instructors
Since 2021, people across the political spectrum have become preoccupied with questions of free speech and censorship on college campuses, and state legislators have driven the proliferation of new policies that limit spending and programming related to DEI and alter academic autonomy or shared governance arrangements. Against this backdrop, we included a short block of questions centered on academic freedom in a national survey of US instructors at four-year colleges and universities.
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Research Report
July 16, 2024
Exploring Basic Needs Support Across Public and Community College Libraries
Opportunities for Collaboration
There are many intersections between public and community college libraries, both in the populations they serve and their functions within their local communities. Both types of libraries play a crucial role in supporting the diverse needs of their communities, serving as hubs for education, information, and essential services. Maximizing partnerships between public and community college libraries therefore presents a significant opportunity.
Issue Brief
July 11, 2024
Evaluating the Kessler Scholars Program
Findings from the Academic Year 2022-23
Ithaka S+R has served as the external evaluation partner for the Kessler Scholars Collaborative since 2022 when the network expanded to 16 institutions. The evaluation is a five-year, mixed-methods, formative assessment, which aims to support implementation and maximize impact across the entire network and at each of the 16 participating institutions. This Ithaka S+R evaluation builds on an evaluation of the program's initial years gathered by the Center for Education Design, Evaluation, and Research (CEDER) at the University of Michigan.
Issue Brief
July 9, 2024
Leveraging Digital Innovation in College Admissions and Dual Enrollment
Many selective colleges and universities are considering alternate strategies to enroll diverse student bodies following the 2023 US Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious admissions. Developing high-quality online courses for college credit, and offering them to students at lower-income high schools in a hybrid format, has the potential to both increase the pool of well-prepared, diverse high school graduates and create a direct recruitment pipeline for these institutions, and others.
Research Report
June 20, 2024
Generative AI and Postsecondary Instructional Practices
Findings from a National Survey of Instructors
Understanding how instructors are (or are not) using generative AI in their classrooms is vital because most college and university guidelines leave decision making about how, when, and if generative AI use is permitted to the discretion of individual instructors. To gain insight into evolving instructional practices, we included a short four-question section dedicated specifically to generative AI as part of a national survey of instructors.
Research Report
June 4, 2024
Assessing the Civic Campus
The Link Between Higher Education and Democracy
This landscape review focuses on the link between higher education, civic engagement, and democratic attitudes and behaviors. We explore three research questions: 1) What is the impact of postsecondary education on civic engagement and democratic attitudes and behaviors? 2) How have researchers defined, operationalized, and measured civic engagement in the context of higher education? 3) How are postsecondary institutions and key stakeholders institutionalizing civic engagement as part of their curricular and co-curricular programming?…
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