Topic: Educational Transformation
Blog Post
April 28, 2016
Increasing Retention Across the Spectrum
Florida State University Aims to Graduate Each Student It Enrolls
For the past twenty years, Florida State University (FSU) has focused relentlessly on retaining and supporting every student it enrolls. Its efforts have yielded one of the largest increases in six-year graduation rates in the nation—nearly 16 percentage points, from 63.2 percent in 1994 to 79.1 percent in 2014. In our latest case study, “Broad-Based and Targeted: Florida State University’s Efforts to Retain Every Student,” Daniel Rossman and I detail FSU’s two-pronged strategy for improvement. First, it has sought…
Case Study
April 28, 2016
Broad-Based and Targeted
Florida State University’s Efforts to Retain Every Student
Over the past twenty years, Florida State University (FSU) has recorded one of the largest increases in six-year graduation rates in the nation—increasing from 63.2 percent for the 1988 entering cohort to 79.1 percent for the 2008 entering cohort. This improvement in outcomes has occurred with only a modest increase in students’ entering credentials—for example, the average SAT score of entering students has slightly increased during the time period. Instead of selecting its way to better outcomes, FSU has focused…
Blog Post
April 20, 2016
Responsible Use of Student Data
For several months, my colleagues and I at Ithaka S+R have been working with Mitchell Stevens, a professor at Stanford, on a project addressing the uses, challenges and opportunities for colleges and universities undertaking new forms of research, application, and representation of student administrative and learning data. Students’ increasing interaction with learning management systems, instructional technology, and administrative platforms is creating reams of new data about their learning behaviors and outcomes, and other experiences in school. And rapidly developing…
Blog Post
April 13, 2016
Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities Facing Higher Education
New Issue Brief from William G. Bowen
Rutgers University is marking its 250th anniversary this year with, among other activities, a series of lectures on the future of higher education. Opening the series on April 7, William G. Bowen, president emeritus of Princeton University and president emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon foundation, and now valued advisor to ITHAKA, delivered a lecture on “Issues Facing Major Research Universities at a Time of Stress AND Opportunity.” Drawing from his recently published Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change…
Issue Brief
April 12, 2016
Issues Facing Major Research Universities at a Time of Stress AND Opportunity
This Issue Brief presents the lightly edited text of William G. Bowen’s keynote address at the Rutgers University 250th Anniversary Presidential Symposium on Higher Education, delivered in New Brunswick, NJ, on April 7, 2016. I would like to begin by acknowledging some of my many debts to Rutgers. My wife and I both have Rutgers degrees, hers an earned Master’s Degree and mine one of the “unearned” kind. Beyond that, as a close neighbor of Rutgers for many years, living…
Blog Post
April 7, 2016
Tools for Designing Learning Spaces
The UK Higher Education Learning Space Toolkit, produced through the collaboration of SCHOMS, AUDE and UCISA,[1] provides a robust set of tools for designing learning spaces for the 21st century and a conceptual framework for approaching design differently as well as designing different kinds of spaces. The toolkit is organized around a seven-step design process, the first step of which is mainly conceptual and the remainder technical and procedural. It is written primarily for members of professional…
Blog Post
April 4, 2016
Trends in College Net Price for Low-Income Students
Last week, New America’s Stephen Burd published a report showing that low-income students who receive Pell grants still face a substantial financial burden to attend college, especially at private not-for-profit institutions. Looking at the average net price—“the average amount of money that students and their families have to pay after all grant and scholarship aid is deducted from the listed price”—of low-income students attending 1,400 four-year institutions, Burd found that 94 percent of the private not-for-profit institutions he studied…
Blog Post
March 30, 2016
Yes, Higher Education Has Changed More Than We Think
At the recent annual meeting of the American Council on Education, I was asked to moderate a panel on the future of higher education. In preparing for the session, I read a myriad of reports and news articles about how slow higher education is to change at a time when the world around us is rapidly shifting. The truth is that if you step back from the headlines, it becomes obvious that much more has changed in the last…
Blog Post
March 24, 2016
Moving Beyond “Fit”: Industry Engagement in Competency-Based Education Design
Competency-based education (CBE) is an approach to higher education that is based on students mastering specific skills that are aligned to certain competencies. These competencies can be aligned to objective measures of student preparedness or aligned to labor market needs and defined in collaboration with employers. Rather than measuring students’ progress in terms of course completion and “seat time,” a competency-based system measures students’ progress in terms of tangible skills and allows students to progress at their own pace. From…
Blog Post
March 21, 2016
Higher Ed Themes of SXSWedu
Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend SXSWedu, an education conference in Austin, Texas, focused on cutting edge practices and technology. I spent most of my time in Austin attending higher education panels and exhibits, and came away feeling that three major themes dominated this gathering of those at the vanguard of the field. The continually advancing field of student data analytics Several well-attended panels focused on how digital information about students and their behaviors could be used…
Blog Post
March 14, 2016
The Problems of Accreditation of For-Profit Institutions
And a Step to Improve It
In my most recent blog post, I compared financial aid data for the 2013-14 academic year with that of previous years. One interesting finding was that the share of Pell enrollments at for-profit institutions has declined by 22 percent since it peaked in 2009-10. As explained in the blog, this decline coincides with the federal government’s efforts to crack down on students’ low-value use of Pell grants, specifically at for-profit institutions. For-profit programs, according to the federal Department of…
Blog Post
March 7, 2016
Helping Students Save Money With Open Educational Resources
Reducing the cost of a college education is a frequent topic in higher education circles, but often the focus is on capping the cost of tuition, or, occasionally, reducing the cost of tuition for students and their families. Some colleges and universities have been trying to find other ways to reduce costs, as well, such as offering online courses during the summer or a regular academic term, for a reduced fee, or using open educational resources (OERs) as an alternative…
Blog Post
February 29, 2016
Overcoming Institutional Barriers to Innovation
Lessons from Ithaka S+R’s Case Studies
Last week, Ithaka S+R released a report on the findings of its first Higher Ed Insights survey. The survey collected the opinions of 96 higher education experts on the state of undergraduate education, and ways to make it more effective and affordable. One of the most interesting findings was that a high percentage of respondents identified institutional culture or structures as the most substantial barriers to innovation. While this finding struck me as interesting, it did not surprise me.
Blog Post
February 23, 2016
Is Completion the Right Goal? The Public Wouldn’t Agree
The results of Ithaka S+R’s first Higher Ed Insights survey, released yesterday, provide a rich set of information about the views of a group of people deeply immersed in the sector. In full disclosure, I was one of the survey’s respondents, and the questions encouraged me to ponder and articulate my views on a number of important issues and trends, as I’m sure they did for others. One thing that struck me about the survey and its results was…
Blog Post
February 22, 2016
New Survey of Higher Ed Experts Finds Promise in Guided Pathways, Adaptive Learning
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…
Research Report
February 22, 2016
Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Fall 2015 Survey
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. Ithaka S+R will analyze and publish the results of these surveys to inform the broader higher education community about the panel’s views on current debates, initiatives, and challenges. The…
Blog Post
February 17, 2016
An Analysis of Pell Grant Data
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…
Blog Post
February 4, 2016
Creating Opportunity in the Tech Industry Pipeline
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…
Blog Post
February 4, 2016
Starting from Scratch: Lessons from Guttman Community College
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…
Case Study
February 4, 2016
Student Success by Design
CUNY’s Guttman Community College
A growing number of American 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. A response to dismal persistence and completion rates at community colleges, Guttman was designed, from its inception, to incorporate research-based practices for helping first-generation and low-income students at community colleges succeed. At Stella…