tag: Veterans
Blog Post
October 31, 2024
Prospective Student Veterans Face Complex Choices on the Journey to a Bachelor’s Degree
As Veteran’s Day approaches, there is renewed attention paid to those individuals who have served in our nation’s military and to the ways our nation repays that service. The majority of military service members often cite education benefits as one of their primary motivations for joining the military. However, once they leave the service, many veterans are not making best use of those benefits due to undermatching, whereby students attend institutions where they…
Blog Post
October 31, 2024
From Service to Study
Exploring Barriers and Expanding Opportunities for Veterans in Higher Education
Introduction On Thursday, September 19, 2024 in New York City, The Teagle Foundation, Warrior Scholar Project (WSP), and Ithaka S+R convened a group of higher education and philanthropic leaders for an off-the-record, roundtable discussion focused on the unique value military veterans bring to college campuses, the barriers institutions face in recruiting and supporting them, and the role nonprofit partners and education funders could play in bolstering these efforts. Committed to the proposition that an expansion of postsecondary educational opportunities for…
Past Event
March 7, 2024
Serving Those Who’ve Served: Enrolling & Graduating Veterans
SXSW EDU 2024 Session
Veterans are significantly underrepresented at the colleges and universities with the highest graduation rates, despite being well-qualified to attend. The benefit of a bachelor’s degree for the student is clear, but for these institutions, enrolling veterans also provides numerous benefits, including the opportunity to increase diversity, expand the enrollment pipeline, and receive federal financial assistance from GI Bill funds. This session at SXSW EDU 2024 will highlight best practices, from both the administrator and student perspective, for enrolling, supporting,…
Blog Post
November 14, 2023
College Admissions After Affirmative Action
Catherine Bond Hill on “The Close”
Last week, Catharine Bond Hill, Ithaka S+R’s managing director, sat down with Bloomberg News’ Scarlet Fu on “The Close” to talk about the shifting landscape of college admissions at highly selective institutions in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. In the clip below, Cappy discusses strategies college and universities can take to increase diversity on campus, including increasing need-based aid, revisiting admissions policies that privilege high-income students, and recruiting veterans. Further reading Alternative Strategies to…
Blog Post
November 10, 2023
What’s Next? Ideas for Future Exploration in Student Veteran Access and Success
This October, we embarked on a blog series focusing on the experiences of student veterans in higher education, sharing takeaways from our conversations with eight campus-based programs and non-profit organizations that support student veterans’ college success alongside the latest enrollment data. Those conversations provided insights into many best practices that institutions can employ to recruit, enroll, and graduate veteran students, while also introducing new questions and ideas for future work. In this installment, we identify…
Blog Post
November 1, 2023
The Importance of Student Veteran Belonging
Over the past summer, we spoke with institutional and organizational leaders committed to supporting student veterans in higher education, and in every conversation, we heard about the importance of belonging to student veteran success. Many of these administrators and leaders observed that today’s student veterans are not who most faculty members, administrators, and other students think they are. For more than a decade, the image of the typical student veteran was shaped by the public image of combatants returning…
Blog Post
October 24, 2023
The Trouble with Transfer for Student Veterans
The US military affords servicemembers a variety of opportunities to engage in postsecondary education, taking courses and earning academic credit, during and following their service. Those opportunities are a prominent selling point for enlistment and remain a priority for those considering joining up. There is a bitter irony in the high value that many service members put on these benefits because they do not yet know how difficult it will be to use the credits they have earned to complete…
Blog Post
October 17, 2023
Best Practices at the Institutional Level
Enrolling and Supporting Student Veterans
Last month, my colleagues and I spoke with institutional representatives from five different institutions: Columbia University, Cornell University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M, and the University of Chicago. These institutions all have a strong commitment to student veteran enrollment, but are at different stages of the process. For example, Cornell and UChicago have been actively scaling up the enrollment of veterans over the last few years, while Texas A&M has long enrolled many hundreds of veterans each year. At Columbia and…
Blog Post
October 12, 2023
Veterans Enrollment: What Do the Data Show?
In 2019, Ithaka S+R published a paper discussing the underrepresentation of student veterans at high-graduation-rate institutions and outlining the various barriers—ranging from financial aid policies to transfer credit limitations—that prevent veterans from enrolling in such institutions. As we explained in that paper, these barriers partly explain why, as of 2015-16, only one in 10 veterans using GI Bill benefits were enrolling at institutions with graduation rates above 70 percent, while approximately one-third of veterans were using GI Bill benefits…
Blog Post
October 12, 2023
Student Veteran Blog Series
Introduction and Overview
The ending of the formal COVID-19 public health emergency offers an opportunity to reflect on how the upheaval of the past few years has impacted many facets of life and society, including higher education. At Ithaka S+R, we are taking this opportunity to revisit some of our previous work focused on the experiences of student veterans (see note on language below) that was completed just prior to the…
Blog Post
September 14, 2021
As War Ends, Let’s Ensure Veterans Have Access to Higher Education
The similarities between the helicopters that left Saigon and the scenes last month at the Kabul airport are painful. For whatever reasons, we have not learned to retreat safely for our citizens and allies. We have failed in our obligations and commitments to those Afghans who most importantly assisted and protected our young men and women who we sent in harm’s way. There is another lesson from Vietnam that I hope we have learned, even if…
Blog Post
October 28, 2020
Building Support for Student Veteran Enrollment
New Practice Brief from the American Talent Initiative
Today, we are excited to release Making the Case for Student Veterans: Building Support for Student Veteran Enrollment. This publication is the first brief in a series from the American Talent Initiative (ATI) focused on helping college and university leaders lay the groundwork for enrolling, supporting, and graduating more student veterans. Student veterans are significantly underrepresented at the colleges…
Issue Brief
October 28, 2020
Making the Case for Student Veterans
Building Support for Student Veteran Enrollment
A college degree is increasingly associated with greater economic opportunity for individuals and positive economic, social, and civic benefits for society. Yet, gaps in college access by income and race/ethnicity persist, especially at the most selective colleges and universities where students have the best chance to succeed due to greater resources and high graduation rates. These gaps perpetuate economic and social inequality, as access to high-quality education is essential for social mobility. Veterans and service members of the United States…
Blog Post
July 22, 2020
Addressing Challenges Faced by Institutions Supporting Student Veterans
ATI Veterans Community of Practice Comes Together Virtually
College students across the country have experienced the financial, social, and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the heightened national conversation on systemic racism. Student veterans are no exception. As we discussed in a previous blog post, the pandemic has exacerbated the complex challenges that student veterans face in completing their postsecondary education: they are now navigating the uncertainties of GI Bill funding and in many cases, balancing financial insecurity and family…
Blog Post
March 2, 2020
Second Convening on Improving College Opportunity for Veterans and Service Members
Hosted by The College Board and Ithaka S+R
Even though veterans are more likely to earn a certificate or degree than adult learners and have higher GPAs compared to traditional students, many do not attend institutions that would give them the greatest chance of succeeding. Currently, only 10 percent of veterans using GI bill benefits attend institutions with graduation rates above 70 percent, compared to 21 percent of the general student…
Keynote Address
March 2, 2020
Improving College Opportunity for Veterans
Robert Caslen, president of the University of South Carolina and former superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, delivered the following address at “Improving College Opportunity for Veterans and Service Members,” a convening hosted by The College Board and Ithaka S+R on February 10-11, 2020, at John Hopkins University. Only one in ten student veterans is enrolling in the colleges and universities with graduation rates of 70 percent or higher. But the evidence indicates that many more…
Past Event
February 10, 2020
Improving College Opportunity for Veterans and Service Members
Hosted by Ithaka S+R and College Board
On February 10-11, Ithaka S+R and the College Board are hosting a convening on Improving College Opportunity for Veterans and Service Members at John Hopkins University in Baltimore. The goals of this convening are to build and leverage community amongst organizations focused on improving opportunities for veteran students; share knowledge on effective practices that can improve recruitment, support, graduation, and opportunities for veteran students; and support and sustain commitments The convening will open on February 10 with keynote remarks from…
Blog Post
November 11, 2019
Flipping the Script From Obligation to Opportunity
The American Talent Initiative’s Inaugural Veterans Community of Practice Convening
United States military veterans are underrepresented at high-graduation rate colleges and universities, with only one in ten veterans attending institutions that graduate at least 70 percent of their students. And yet, we know that veterans who do attend these colleges and universities thrive. In fact, student veterans are 1.4 times more likely to earn a certificate or degree than adult learners overall, and student veterans have an average GPA of 3.34, compared to the average for traditional…
Blog Post
January 10, 2019
New Report: Enrolling More Veterans at High-Graduation-Rate Colleges and Universities
In November, Ithaka S+R and the College Board hosted “Improving Opportunities for Veterans.” This conference brought together leaders from higher education, the military, and veterans service organizations who share the goal of increasing the enrollment and graduation of veterans at colleges and universities with the highest graduation rates. In our new report with Catharine Bond Hill and Martin Kurzweil, we investigate the underrepresentation of United States military veterans at colleges that graduate at least 70 percent of their students.
Research Report
January 10, 2019
Enrolling More Veterans at High-Graduation-Rate Colleges and Universities
Higher education plays a vital role in raising income, moderating income inequality, and increasing economic growth and global competitiveness. But U.S. higher education attainment continues to lag for lower-income and underrepresented-minority students, particularly at the colleges and universities that have the most resources and the highest graduation rates. As a stark example, research by economist Raj Chetty and his team found that there are more students from the top one percent of the income distribution at the Ivy-Plus colleges than…