Publications
Research Report
March 19, 2025
Meeting the Climate Emergency
University Information Infrastructure for Researching Wicked Problems
Contemporary societies face a range of urgent threats to the well-being of individuals, nations, and the natural world. These high stakes “wicked problems,” as Don Waters calls them in this report, present challenges that are simultaneously scientific, technological, social, and creative. They require expertise from across the disciplines to understand, and equally complex public and political engagement, to overcome. Waters makes the case that America’s research universities are exceptionally well-equipped to address these wicked problems. The human expertise and creativity…
Research Report
March 19, 2025
Balancing Access and Accountability
Assessing the Implications of the New Federal Transcript-Hold Regulation for Higher Education - Part 3
This report is the third in a three-part series examining how institutions of higher education have responded to state and federal policies limiting the use of transcript holds for unpaid balances, produced in partnership between Ithaka S+R and AACRAO. Part 1 explored the anticipated impacts of the July 2024 federal regulation limiting transcript holds on higher education institutions in states that did not have existing laws related to the practice. Part 2 examined the actual impacts of state-level limitations on…
Playbook
March 5, 2025
Playbook for Transfer Pathways to the Liberal Arts
How to Design and Implement Statewide Pathways from Community Colleges to Independent Colleges
One way to achieve bachelor's degree attainment for community college transfer students at scale is through state- and region-level initiatives dedicated to supporting transfer from community colleges to independent colleges and universities. The Teagle Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations’ Transfer Pathways to the Liberal Arts initiative aimed to create such pathways. This playbook draws on the experiences of grantees building pathways in 14 states.
Case Study
February 27, 2025
Holistic Credit Mobility Strategies in Action
A Case Study Report on State, System, and Institutional Efforts to Smooth the Path to a College Degree for Mobile Students
To understand the complex nature of learning recognition and credit transfer in American postsecondary education and examine the systemic barriers to entry many students face as they navigate its institutions, Ithaka S+R conducted a series of qualitative interviews in fall 2024 with state and system-level leaders in Idaho, Illinois, Ohio, and the University of North Carolina System, and representatives from Charter Oak State College and Florida International University.
Research Report
February 26, 2025
Magnitude and Bond
A Field Study on Black Literary Arts Organizations
Black literary arts organizations nurture literary talent, establish living literary canons, and generate thriving communities of artists and readers, cultivating Black spaces for sharing the vulnerable processes necessary to invent new ways of saying important things. This report, which explores the sustainability of Black literary arts organizations, grew out of a research process undertaken through a collaboration between Cave Canem and Ithaka S+R. It explores the characteristics of Black literary arts organizations and the adaptive strategies they employ.
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Research Report
January 22, 2025
Charting the Course
Case Studies in OER Sustainability
Over the past several years, OERs have gained significant traction across higher education, driven by a combination of grassroots campus efforts and state agencies of higher education or system-wide initiatives. The rationale behind these efforts has been clear: to alleviate the financial burden on students by reducing the cost of course materials. But OERs offer other advantages as well, serving as a catalyst for instructional innovation and helping to create a more inclusive learning environment. However, the question of sustainability…
Case Study
January 16, 2025
Empowering Students to Navigate College
Insights from the College Fluency Initiatives at Austin Community College
The third case study in this series looks at how Austin Community College in Texas has been developing college fluency programs with both their library and non-library faculty and staff. The college libraries play a critical role in promoting college fluency across 11 campuses. Other non-library initiatives at this college that also contribute to supporting students to navigate college underscore just how much of a college-wide effort it takes to promote greater college fluency.
Research Report
January 13, 2025
Preserving Their Stories
Making (and Sharing) Art Under Mass Incarceration
While a handful of initiatives have recently begun to systematically collect materials created by people impacted by incarceration, anecdotal evidence suggests that most incarcerated artists and writers entrust their work to grassroots and volunteer-led organizations. Thus, if we are to begin to address archival silences around people who have experienced incarceration, it will be critical to understand the role community organizations can play in creating more inclusive and holistic collections and supporting humanistic inquiry.
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.