Topic: Student learning and outcomes
Blog Post
May 6, 2025
College Literacy and Fluency
What We Learned From Our Latest Webinar
For many students, the hardest part of college isn’t the classes—it’s figuring out how college works. From navigating confusing admissions processes to registering for classes and understanding financial aid, higher education can often feel like a maze of unfamiliar terminology and siloed systems. The result? Too many students miss critical deadlines, misunderstand key processes, or struggle to advocate for themselves in an unfamiliar and bureaucratic environment. This challenge disproportionately affects students who are already navigating complex life circumstances: first-generation students,…
Blog Post
May 5, 2025
Examining the New Carnegie Student Access and Earnings Classification at Four-Year Colleges and Universities
A bachelor’s degree remains a key lever to achieve economic success. Median earnings disaggregated by educational attainment demonstrate the importance of a bachelor’s degree for securing a job and making strong earnings. The difference in median weekly earnings of a person with a high school degree ($930) compared to someone with a bachelor’s degree ($1,543) adds up to an additional $32,000 over one year. This wage premium grows even larger as a person advances in their career. Despite…
Past Event
May 20, 2025
Providing Credit Transfer Visibility to Improve Credit Mobility
In a Tuesday Session with DXtera Institute, Emily Tichenor and Chris Buonocore from Ithaka S+R/JSTOR Labs will discuss the Transfer Explorer project. This spring ITHAKA launched a new, public, non-profit, national credit mobility website to help address the many challenges college students face when they move between institutions or attempt to transfer credits they earned in high school or elsewhere. Currently in its beta release, Transfer Explorer will expand in 2025 to contain data from a growing number of…
Past Event
April 30, 2025
Open Codes, Open Minds
Navigating AI and Open Education in College Instruction
At the Cal Poly Humboldt Library Innovation Summit, focused on “Digital Humanities, Polytechnics, & AI,” Ithaka S+R’s Mark McBride will present a hybrid Zoom session on navigating AI and open education in college instruction. The session will take place at 10am on Wednesday April 30, 2025. See the full schedule for more details.
Blog Post
April 23, 2025
Collaborating with the PSEO Coalition to Advance Research on Postsecondary Outcomes
Ithaka S+R is proud to announce a new engagement with the Postsecondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) Coalition. As a research collaborator, Ithaka S+R will work closely with the Coalition’s leadership and member institutions to develop a robust research agenda that leverages PSEO data, alongside other federal data sources, such as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and American Community Survey (ACS), to explore critical questions about postsecondary outcomes and workforce dynamics. This collaboration will focus on generating…
Blog Post
April 17, 2025
How Is Kentucky Supporting Adult Learner Engagement?
A New Brief Shares Lessons Learned
Across the nation, there are 36.8 million individuals under the age of 65 with some college and no credential. Approximately 557,000 of these learners have stopped out from Kentucky colleges and universities. Re-enrolling adult learners with some college, no credential is a growing priority across the US and in Kentucky. Credential completion helps individuals get high paying jobs, brings in new tuition revenue for institutions, and helps regions develop a workforce needed for a healthy economy. Individuals and…
Issue Brief
April 17, 2025
Supporting Adult Learner Engagement in Kentucky
Addressing Administrative Holds, Past Due Balances, and Targeted Supports
Ithaka S+R and Kentucky CPE worked together to understand how administrative holds and unpaid balances affect institutions and adults with come credit, no credential. This reportsummarizes our key findings and offers potential solutions for institutions and states across the country, using examples from Kentucky. Part one covers administrative holds, part two focuses on past due balances, and part three discusses how institutions can adjust to the changing landscape of administrative holds.
Case Study
April 15, 2025
Leveraging Existing Efforts to Enhance College Fluency
Insights from Montgomery County Community College
To further examine and develop effective strategies to foster college fluency, Ithaka S+R and BMCC have collaborated on the College Fluency Capacity Building initiative with support from IMLS. The fourth case study in this series looks at Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania and explores how effective MCCC has been at connecting students to resources even in the absence of a dedicated college fluency program, while pointing to the additional impact these efforts could have if they were formalized.
Blog Post
April 14, 2025
Holistic Credit Mobility Acceleration Cohort Kicks Off
Takeaways from the Community of Practice
Last month, Ithaka S+R and Complete College America officially launched the holistic credit mobility acceleration cohort. Over the coming year, the 11 state higher education and university systems and institutional consortia participating will convene regularly to develop a unified language around credit mobility, identify best practices, policies, and technologies, and collaborate to move the needle on credit mobility.
Blog Post
April 9, 2025
Integrating AI Literacy into the Curricula
A New Cohort Project Gets Underway
While the technological and commercial landscape remains fluid, and the long-term impacts of AI on teaching and learning remain contested, colleges and universities are ready to shift from reactive to proactive engagement with AI. AI literacy will be a cornerstone of that engagement at many institutions. The idea that students will need to know how to use and think critically about AI is one on which skeptics, agnostics, and advocates can largely agree. A few universities have already launched AI…
Issue Brief
April 8, 2025
Advancing Student Success at High-Graduation-Rate Institutions
Insights from the American Talent Initiative Student Success Research Grant Program
The American Talent Initiative’s Student Success Research Grant Program supported research studies aimed at deepening our understanding of the institutional practices and strategies that can improve student success at high-graduation-rate institutions. The findings will offer actionable recommendations for supporting lower-income students, while raising awareness of the challenges that they—and the institutions that serve them—continue to face. These short briefs aim to equip institutional leaders with key research insights, empowering them to implement strategies that foster meaningful, lasting change.
Blog Post
April 2, 2025
Notes from the Postsecondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) Virtual Showcase
In late February, close to 200 higher education, state agency data leaders, policy analysts, funders, and researchers gathered virtually to explore best practices and new opportunities for connecting postsecondary success data with workforce data. Through a series of presentations and demonstrations, convened by the Postsecondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) Coalition, participants learned about how state agencies and institutions are sharing data—both internally and across states—to improve understanding, advocacy, and decision-making at the nexus of higher education and workforce development.
Research Report
March 31, 2025
Terrain Leveling
Design Strategies for Improving Higher Education in Prisons
A growing body of research documents the barriers faced by incarcerated students—such as limited access to technology and conflicts with correctional staff—but far less attention has been paid to the role of the built environment in shaping educational experiences. This project, led by Ennead Lab and Ithaka S+R, examines how spatial, architecture, and design features impact learning inside prisons. It draws on qualitative interviews and site visits to advance both research findings and a portfolio of design interventions.
Blog Post
March 20, 2025
Highlights from SXSW EDU 2025
The Growing Role of AI in Education, Learning Styles, the Value of Higher Education, and Student Belonging Take Center Stage
Earlier this month, I attended the SXSW EDU Conference in Austin, Texas, where I led a panel session about Ithaka S+R’s credit mobility work. The conference featured wide-ranging sessions covering key topics in the K-12, higher education, and education technology sectors. I wanted to highlight a number of sessions that stood out to me, focused on the growing role of artificial intelligence in education, leadership in challenging times, student mental health and learning styles, and building cultures that…
Blog Post
March 19, 2025
How Have Institutions Responded to Transcript Withholding Limitations?
In recent years, institutions have started to move away from the practice of stopping students with unpaid balances from accessing their official transcripts. These transcript holds have been criticized as ineffective tools for debt collection and for their role in the creation of stranded credits, credits students have earned but cannot access. In July 2024, regulations from the Department of Education went into effect that limited this practice. By that time, at least 13 states had already adopted similar…
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. The prior reports explored the anticipated and actual 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.
Past Event
March 15, 2025
Using Lasso Regression to Examine Vertical Transfer Paths and Predict Student Success
At the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) 50th Anniversary Conference, Martin Kurzweil, Lexa Logue, David Wutchiett, and Colin Chellman will give a presentation of research using lasso regression to address multicollinearity and interaction effects in estimating graduation and academic outcomes for students transferring from community colleges to bachelor’s colleges. The session will be held on March 15 at 1:45-3:15pm ET.
Blog Post
March 5, 2025
New Lessons for Improving Community College Transfer to Independent Institutions
Updates to the Playbook for Transfer Pathways to the Liberal Arts
While nearly four out of every five community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, only 16 percent do so within six years. One oft-overlooked method to increase bachelor’s degree attainment among community college students is to strengthen transfer pathways between two-year and independent (i.e., private, not-for-profit) four-year institutions. Independent institutions often provide flexible degree options, personalized supports, and greater efficiency in credit transfer, all of which can help community college students complete a four-year degree.
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.
Blog Post
February 27, 2025
National Holistic Credit Mobility Acceleration Cohort
Announcing 11 Members
In collaboration with Complete College America, we’re excited to announce the selection of 11 distinguished higher education organizations for the Holistic Credit Mobility Acceleration Cohort. This initiative aims to enhance credential completion rates by promoting flexible and equitable credit mobility pathways for postsecondary students across the country. The cohort members’ efforts will build upon the best practices of early leaders in the field, as outlined in Credit Mobility Strategies in Action, a case study research report we published…