Topic: Student learning and outcomes
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 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…
Blog Post
February 2, 2016
To Measure or Not to Measure: Which Student Outcomes Should Make the Cut?
Few would question whether colleges and universities should have administrative systems in place for measuring learning and course outcomes for all students, in ways that can be quantified and used to help institutions meet their goals. But not all outcomes are created equal, and deciding which outcomes schools should systematically measure for all students can be difficult and controversial. When thinking about colleges engaging in systematic quantitative measurement of student outcomes, three core questions come to mind: (1) Is promoting…
Blog Post
January 26, 2016
(Re)introducing the Educational Transformation Team
The new year brings a new member—our fifth—to Ithaka S+R’s Educational Transformation team. It seems like a good opportunity to (re)introduce our program’s staff, which includes three new members since July 2015. In addition to me, the director of the program, we have two senior researchers and two analysts. Our team brings together a diverse and complementary set of skills and backgrounds, enabling us to take on a range of project work focused on research, policy, and practice…
Blog Post
January 6, 2016
Mismatch Theory and the Missing Role of the Institution
At this point, any frequent consumer of higher education news is well aware of the controversial remarks Justice Antonin Scalia made during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Many are also likely familiar with the subsequent debates about affirmative action and “mismatched students” that these remarks provoked. In speculating whether black students preferentially admitted to UT Austin might be better off attending “a slower-track school where they do well,” Justice Scalia prompted numerous articles,…
Blog Post
December 21, 2015
2015: A Retrospective
The end of 2015 is upon us, and it seems a good time to look back on what we have done well and to identify areas in which we can do better in the new year. The good news—this has been a stellar year for Ithaka S+R publications. In the two program areas—Educational Transformation and Libraries and Scholarly Communication—we have issued 21 research reports, case studies and issue briefs. The Educational Transformation program has focused on case…
Blog Post
December 9, 2015
Parenting as a College Outcome
Amidst the flurry of a vital and long-overdue national conversation surrounding college completion, affordability and debt, and post-graduate employment, it is easy to conceive of the outcomes and value of higher education as mostly economic. Do students learn skills and earn credentials that lead to fruitful labor force participation and economic self-sufficiency? However, as change and innovation sweep across higher education, it is important to keep in mind the broader range of valuable outcomes and goals we hold and ensure…
Blog Post
December 3, 2015
Idaho’s Bold Initiative
Will It Help?
Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed reported on the recent announcement by the state of Idaho that, beginning with the class of 2016, the state’s high school graduates would be guaranteed admission into at least some, and possibly all, of Idaho’s eight public colleges and universities. For more than 20,000 public high school graduates, admission into five of the state’s postsecondary schools would be guaranteed while the remaining three – Boise State University, Idaho State University, and University of…
Blog Post
October 29, 2015
Valencia College’s Collaborative Re-design
“Culture” is often treated as a mystery ingredient in the recipe for promoting student success. A good culture catalyzes well-designed interventions and produces positives results. A bad culture impedes the take-up or spread of practices that should otherwise work, leading to disappointment. But like airborne yeast in a sourdough, an institution either has good culture or it doesn’t. But what if culture weren’t a background condition? What if, instead, it can be designed, intentionally? And if so, how? Valencia College,…
Case Study
October 29, 2015
Collaborating for Student Success at Valencia College
In recent years, a promising conversation about change at community colleges has emerged. Employing the language of redesign and reinvention, this conversation emphasizes comprehensive, broad-sweeping reform, and calls for a reorientation of community college missions around student learning and student success. Though it is hard to disagree that improving student outcomes is desirable, the traditional enrollment and funding models for community colleges make a true institutional “reset” difficult. Understanding how institutions have successfully gone about redesigning their operations and culture…
Blog Post
October 28, 2015
Is Self-Exploration in College an Outdated Concept?
Time and again, the concept of “self-exploration” as a crucial component of the college experience makes its way into discussions about restructuring undergraduate degree programs in the US. Proponents of such self-exploration argue that focused career-training programs and guided pathways programs are too regimented and narrow, denying students the precious gift of self-exploration and discovery that results from exposure to a vast array of courses of their choosing. Recent innovations in higher education may also limit certain exploratory experiences for…
Blog Post
October 21, 2015
CUNY’s ASAP Program Helps Students Graduate
Will It Scale?
Last week, Inside Higher Ed reported that the City University of New York plans to scale-up their Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, or ASAP, at six CUNY community colleges and three senior colleges that offer associate degrees. The most aggressive effort to expand ASAP will be at Bronx Community College, where all new full-time students will be automatically enrolled in the program. One goal of the plan is to increase Bronx Community College’s three-year graduation rate from 11 percent…
Blog Post
October 8, 2015
Should Higher Education be More Vocational?
On June 8, Hakubun Shimomura, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, sent a letter to the 86 national universities, asking them to take “active steps to abolish [social science and humanities] departments or convert them to areas that would better meet society’s needs.” American educators have been both perplexed and critical of this mandate, some to the point of threatening to end exchange programs with Japanese universities. For those who love the humanities and social sciences, it…
Blog Post
October 1, 2015
Reducing the Pell Graduation Gap: What Works?
Two weeks ago, the New York Times published its second annual “College Access Index,” which measures socioeconomic diversity and accessibility at America’s highest performing colleges and universities. Adjusting its methodology from last year, the 2015 College Access Index incorporated each institution’s average Pell Grant recipient graduation rate into its score (a new addition), along with the institution’s Pell enrollment rate and net price for low income students (both of which were used in the index’s 2014 iteration). Last…
Blog Post
September 29, 2015
Testing the Impact of Proactive Advising
A growing body of research has attributed at least part of the gap in degree completion between low- and high-income undergraduates to low-income students’ difficulty navigating the terrain of academic choices in college. Deciding on a major, choosing courses, and recognizing a warning sign and knowing what to do about it are all more challenging for students who have less background familiarity with college. Ill-informed choices have real consequences: A student’s failure to register for even a…
Blog Post
September 17, 2015
Transforming the PhD to Improve Undergraduate Learning?
In his recent book “The Graduate School Mess” and a series of online articles, Leonard Cassuto of Fordham University eloquently describes how graduate schools fail to prepare PhD students for the undergraduate teaching positions they will most likely hold in the future. And lack of preparation is the least of it: many graduate programs at least implicitly teach students to disrespect teaching-intensive jobs, although they now significantly outnumber research-centered jobs. In the context of growing concern over the quality of student…
Blog Post
September 10, 2015
Developing a Strategic Focus in North Carolina’s Community Colleges
With 58 schools that enroll more than 800,000 students annually, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) is the third largest system of higher education in the nation. The prospect of getting such a large and complex system to align on anything would strike many as unrealistic. Yet, NCCCS’ efforts to establish a strategic focus on access, excellence, and success has permeated the priorities of both the System Office and institutions throughout the state. NCCCS has achieved more than mission-alignment,…
Case Study
September 10, 2015
Reshaping System Culture at the North Carolina Community College System
With 58 schools that enroll more than 800,000 students annually, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) is the third largest system of higher education in the nation.[1] In 2010, NCCCS embarked on SuccessNC, a strategic initiative focused on sharing best practices, developing performance-based student success metrics, and testing system-wide policies to improve student access and success across all NCCCS schools. The SuccessNC initiative states that its ultimate target is increasing “the percentage of students who transfer, complete…