Topic: Access to higher education
Blog Post
December 20, 2023
Keep It Simple: Previewing Changes to FAFSA
In December 2020, policymakers passed the Free Application of Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Simplification Act to address barriers to higher education related to federal student financial aid or Title IV aid—named in reference to Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the landmark legislation that in part sought to provide financial assistance for students in postsecondary and higher education. Key benefits of FAFSA simplification are a streamlined application process, removal of barriers for…
Past Event
February 22, 2024
ACT Community of Practice: Collaboratively Designing a System-wide Student Transfer Tool
National Institute for Transfer Student Success Annual Conference
At the National Institute for Transfer Student Success Annual Conference, this session will spotlight how the ACT Community of Practice has been vital in the development, enhancement and implementation of CUNY Transfer Explorer. Presenters Pooja Patel, Emily Tichenor, Rocio Rayo, and Tracy Newton will give a brief background of the Community of Practice’s inception and discuss how the model has fostered collaboration across colleges within CUNY and across systems between CUNY and SUNY. Examples of activities, discussions, and contributions…
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,…
Past Event
February 21, 2024
The Enormous Benefits of Credit Mobility Transparency: CUNY Transfer Explorer as a National Model
National Institute for Transfer Student Success Annual Conference
Having faculty work together to articulate courses and programs across institutions is notorious for taking years to complete, if it completes at all. In a session at the National Institute for Transfer Student Success Annual Conference in St. Louis, MO, Ithaka S+R’s Martin Kurzweil will join Lexa Logue and David Wutchiett to describe an alternative approach for facilitating student transfer consisting of obtaining high-quality credit transfer information and then making it public, enabling students intending to transfer and those persons…
Blog Post
November 29, 2023
Reflections on the 2023 National Conference on Higher Education in Prisons (NCHEP)
With the restoration of Pell grants for incarcerated students on July 1, the 13th annual National Conference on Higher Education in Prisons (NCHEP), held November 9-11 in Atlanta, marked a turning point in the evolution and growth of the field. This NCHEP was the largest ever, selling out registration weeks in advance and with a record number of first-time attendees, including librarians and representatives from departments of corrections. Most notably, in keeping with the conference theme of “Closing the Gap,”…
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 9, 2023
Who Has Stranded Credits?
Insights from a New Ithaka S+R Survey
In August 2022, the Ohio College Comeback Compact (“Ohio Compact” or “Compact”) was launched to offer a pathway to re-enrollment for stopped-out college students with stranded credits in the Northeast Ohio region. The Compact allows stopped-out students to return to any of the eight participating public colleges and universities despite owing institutional debt and having their transcript withheld. Through the Compact, students are eligible to receive up to $5,000 in debt forgiveness and a release of their transcript…
Research Report
November 9, 2023
Institutional Supports for Students with Stranded Credits
Survey Results from the Ohio College Comeback Compact
As of 2023, 43.6 million borrowers owe more than $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. The burden of debt negatively impacts borrowers' ability to provide for their families, purchase a car, or buy a home. However, there is another, often overlooked, institutional debt that students may owe their former institutions after stopping out. It is estimated that 6.6 million students owe $15 billion in unpaid balances to their institutions.
Past Event
November 30, 2023
Comprehensive Recruitment and Transfer Advising Tools for Student Success
Promoting Transfer Equity and Transparency in Higher Education
At the New York State Transfer and Articulation Association Downstate Meeting, Ithaka S+R’s Emily Tichenor will join Nechelle Calhoun, Lexa Logue, and Chris Buonocore in a panel on recruitment and transfer advising tools for student success. The session will include a presentation on the Ithaka S+R Articulation of Transfer Credit (ACT) project as well as a demo of CUNY T-Rex Transfer Explorer and Universal Transfer Explorer. The panel is scheduled for November 30 at 10am ET.
Blog Post
November 3, 2023
Revisiting Student Success
Insights from the 2023 NISOD Fall Virtual Conference
The National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) hosts an annual fall virtual conference to bring together faculty, librarians, and student support services personnel to exchange best practices aimed at enhancing student success in community and technical colleges. The conference schedule focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, holistic student supports, and teaching across different modalities. Sessions highlighted insights from faculty and staff across different departments on how to improve students’ educational experiences and equip them for success…
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 31, 2023
Aligning the Conversation on Technology Use for Education Programs in Prisons and Jails
A Collaborative Update and Call to Action for the Education in Prisons and Jails Research Community Given recent policy changes and expanded access to postsecondary education, technology options for education programs in prisons and jails are increasing at all levels. Education technology vendors are responding to these changes with new platforms, instructional content, and devices that can be used to support education programming inside facilities. At the same time, there is a growing need for research on the use of…
Past Event
November 10, 2023
Higher Education in Prisons at the Digital Crossroads: The Present and Future of the Field
NCHEP 2023
At the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison’s 13th National Conference on Higher Education in Prison (NCHEP), Ithaka S+R’s Kurtis Tanaka and Ess Pokornowski will review results from our survey of technology in higher education in prison programs, breaking down key facts and figures and discussing how insights from the survey inform their current and future work. They will also be joined by Stacy Burnett of the JSTOR Access in Prison Initiative in a conversation on technology access,…
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 19, 2023
Assessing the Effectiveness of Transfer Associate Degrees in Washington
In the state of Washington, 45 percent of bachelor’s degree earners at its public universities transfer from a Washington community and technical college (CTC), similar to the average transfer rate nationally. Considering how many students in Washington take this path to a credential, it is important for the state to understand how various transfer pathways and transfer degrees impact student outcomes.
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
October 5, 2023
Pell Restoration for People in Prison
Webinar Recording and Additional Resources
On September 29, we hosted a webinar, “Pell 101: Information for Librarians and Those Serving People in Prison,” to share information about the restoration of Pell funding for students who are incarcerated. Panelists included prison education journalist and Open Campus reporter Charlotte West, Vera Institute of Justice Associate Initiative Director Ruth Delaney, and NASFAA Education Specialist Sheila Meiman. We’re pleased to share the recording here. Below, you will also find our panelists’ responses to questions raised during the…