Topic: Higher education costs
Blog Post
November 20, 2017
Re-Thinking the Case for Free College
I’m all about college opportunity and success and love the idea of swinging the doors wide open. At first I was taken aback, to put it mildly, by the notion of “free college,” but my thoughts are evolving. The idea may be worthwhile for what it’s doing to galvanize public attention to higher education finance. Whether it is viable public policy, from a practical political standpoint or a social equity perspective, however, depends on our willingness to look at the…
Blog Post
November 15, 2017
The American Talent Initiative’s Fall 2017 Data Working Group Meeting
In early October, the American Talent Initiative hosted main points of contact from member institutions in Washington, DC, for a Strategic Support Meeting, sharing research and connecting members around promising strategies for enhancing access and success for lower-income students. Later in the month, the American Talent Initiative held another convening, also in Washington DC, for the institutional research contacts of ATI member institutions. The meeting, run by Ithaka S+R and The Aspen Institute, had three primary…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017
How Research Can Fuel Action to Address Food and Housing Insecurity on American College Campuses
Editor’s note: We asked Sara Goldrick-Rab, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. It’s been nearly a decade since my team first started studying food and housing insecurity among college students. To be honest, it wasn’t part of the plan. We were in the midst of a study on the impacts of a private financial aid program in Wisconsin. We expected to learn…
Blog Post
November 13, 2017
How Policymakers Can Help Institutions Support Financially Insecure Students
Editor’s note: We asked Rachel Dykstra Boon, a panelist for our Higher Ed Insights Survey, to contribute this blog post based on her open-ended comments on the 2017 survey. Ask any teacher (pre-school through graduate school) for an example of a student with food, housing or financial struggles affecting the learning experience and heart-breaking stories will follow. Quantitative and qualitative research over the past several years has pointed to the growth in this demographic of college students as the country…
Blog Post
November 10, 2017
For-Profit Colleges – What Went Wrong?
Mention the phrase “for-profit college” and I can’t help but immediately picture a single parent working two jobs while attending college at night, after the kids are asleep, saddled with debt and no prospects for improving their employment conditions or earnings despite their best efforts. Vivid in my mind are the painful stories of young low-income mothers I interviewed during my graduate studies, whose economic, family, and personal decisions (and opportunities) were often dictated by their (relatively exorbitant) loan repayments…
Blog Post
October 31, 2017
In New Survey, Higher Ed Insiders Share Concerns about Impact of Federal Policy Changes under President Trump
In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. (You can learn more about our Higher Ed Insights Project here.) Today, in “Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey,” Rayane Alamuddin, Daniel Rossman, and I report the findings of that survey. While respondents…
Research Report
October 31, 2017
Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2017 Survey
In May and June of 2017, we surveyed the Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights panel—164 senior leaders and experts at colleges and universities, associations, research groups, and philanthropies—about the state of higher education and the likely impact of recent events and trends. While respondents were generally positive about the state of undergraduate education in the United States, they expressed urgency about the need to improve degree completion rates, the quality of student learning, and affordability for students. Respondents’ reactions to…
Blog Post
August 17, 2017
Open Educational Resources
Sharing Lessons Learned from K-12 Education
Open educational resources (OERs), which are licensed as freely available for people to use and repurpose, have become a driving force as the education sector looks to reduce costs. OERs are associated with numerous benefits for students, including savings of an average of $128 per course, higher course grades, and greater likelihood of course completion. As a recent Ithaka S+R case study highlighted, the University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) implemented an OER program that saved students…
Blog Post
July 19, 2017
Alternative Postsecondary Pathways
Millions of Americans receive postsecondary training through programs that don’t lead to an associate’s or bachelor’s degree. What do these programs offer? Who enrolls in them? How do the students who complete these programs fare? These are some of the questions Jessie Brown and I sought to answer when we embarked on a research project for the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The resulting paper, “The Complex Universe…
Blog Post
June 8, 2017
How to Assure Quality in Higher Education?
Focus on Innovation, Minimum Standards, and Continuous Improvement
The U.S. quality assurance system—focused mainly on accreditation as a threshold for federal financial aid eligibility—has done a poor job of assuring quality. Barely 60 percent of first-time students complete a bachelor’s degree and 40 percent complete an associate’s degree at the institution where they started. These overall results mask a wide range of outcomes across institutions. As a result, many students, parents, and policymakers question the value of their massive investment in postsecondary education. Can the accreditation process be…
Research Report
June 8, 2017
Quality Assurance in U.S. Higher Education
The Current Landscape and Principles for Reform
The American higher education sector is diverse and creative. In 2014-15, the sector produced over 1 million associate’s degrees, nearly 1.9 million bachelor’s degrees, over 758,000 master’s degrees, and over 178,000 doctoral degrees.[1] The world leader in innovation for decades, the sector continues to produce cutting edge research and contributes mightily to the American economy. Recent estimates concluded that the United States spends a larger percentage of GDP on higher education than any other country.[2] But…
Blog Post
March 13, 2017
Can an Investment in Instruction Improve a College’s Bottom Line?
Colleges and universities are under increasing pressure to simultaneously cut costs and improve student learning outcomes. There is a perceived tension between these goals: the conventional wisdom is that increasing instructional quality is not possible without increasing expenditures, but colleges and universities have limited resources to spend on improving instructional quality. But what if the relationship between institutional finances and instructional quality were more complex than that? In Instructional Quality, Student Outcomes, and Institutional Finances, a new white paper…
Blog Post
January 12, 2017
Diverging Application, Admission, and Enrollment Trends between Not-For-Profit and For-Profit Institutions
Whether due to the Common Application, improved marketing efforts on the part of colleges and universities, or greater pressure on high school students, there has been a well-documented increase in the number of college applicants and applications, particularly to the most selective institutions. This phenomenon has increased those colleges’ selectivity, at the same time it has made yield less predictable—leading a number of colleges to lean more heavily on practices such as early decision, demonstrated interest, and legacy…
Blog Post
December 13, 2016
Joining Together to Expand Access and Opportunity
Introducing the American Talent Initiative
Thirty of the nation’s most respected colleges and universities today announced a new venture to substantially expand the number of talented low- and moderate-income students at America’s undergraduate institutions with the highest graduation rates. Coordinated by Ithaka S+R and the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program and supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the American Talent Initiative (ATI) brings together a diverse set of public and private institutions to ensure that talented young people from every zip code…
Blog Post
September 29, 2016
The Three Greatest Obstacles to Improving Student Success?
Higher Ed Insiders Cite State Funding, Faculty Incentives, and Administrative Silos
A diverse group of 85 higher education leaders and experts identified insufficient state funding of public institutions of higher education as the most significant obstacle to improving American students’ postsecondary outcomes. But aside from the shortfall in that critical public investment, respondents to the Spring 2016 Ithaka S+R Higher Ed Insights Survey flagged institutional policies, practices, and culture as the greatest impediments to improving student success. The most promising solutions to those obstacles, according to respondents, are greater incentives for…
Research Report
September 29, 2016
Higher Ed Insights: Results of the Spring 2016 Survey
Introduction 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 currently consists of 111 members with diverse backgrounds and perspectives, is to take part in semi-annual surveys on issues of national importance in higher education. The first of these surveys was administered in the fall of 2015.[1] Ithaka S+R analyzes and publishes the results of these surveys to inform…
Blog Post
July 14, 2016
Does Financial Aid Help Those Who Need it Most?
As tuition and fees at public and private not-for-profit four-year institutions continue to rise, so does the role of financial assistance, particularly for low- and moderate-income students. Yet, recent reports show that the distribution of financial aid is far from equitable. Last month, an Atlantic article highlighted an array of college-affordability efforts–including private and employer grants, the federal work-study program, and federal tax credits–that often fail to provide financial assistance to those that need it most. For instance,…
Blog Post
June 9, 2016
Optimizing for the Adult Learner
Roughly 70 percent of today’s college students are “nontraditional students,” meaning that they are over the age of 24, commute to campus, work part or full-time, are financially independent, or have children. Some enter college with only a GED, while others are reentry students with previously earned credits from multiple institutions. Many of these students are low-income, the first in their families to attend college, or come from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Despite this new majority, most institutions…
Case Study
June 9, 2016
Serving the Adult Student at University of Maryland University College
Conventional conceptualizations of the “typical” college student as an eighteen-year old, full-time, residential student poorly match reality. Roughly 70 percent of today’s college students are “nontraditional students,” meaning that they are over the age of 24, commute to campus, work part or full-time, are financially independent, or have children. Some enter college with only a GED, while others are reentry students with an assemblage of credits from various institutions. Many of these students are low-income, the first in their families…
Blog Post
May 18, 2016
Will Easing the Financial Burden of Dual Enrollment Improve College Outcomes for Low-Income Students?
As I’ve noted previously, the percentage of low-income (family income in the bottom 20 percent) high school graduates that have enrolled in two- and four-year institutions declined from 55.9 percent in 2008 to 45.5 percent in 2013. Studies examining dual enrollment programs—in which students take courses for college credit while still in high school—have found that participating in such programs increases the likelihood of college degree attainment, especially for low-income students. Yet low-income students tend to have…