A complicated question — and a quick answer. It depends. We all know this — yet, we keep looking for the silver bullet to solve our student success challenges. The …
New Report: A Review of Student Success Initiatives
The landscape in higher ed is changing. Today more than ever before, institutions are serving increasingly diverse students, each with unique needs — and doing it with less money. With …
Some Student Success Initiatives Aren’t Working (Here’s How to Make Sure Yours Are)
It’s no secret that higher ed is changing. With 74% of students now considered “non-traditional” (U.S. Department of Education), meeting students’ unique needs is essential. Yet spending per student has …
Top 3 Takeaways on The Cost of Status Quo
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome can feel a bit maddening, can’t it? Sometimes, student success work can feel like we’re running in …
5 Questions with Monroe Community College: Quantifying the Impact of Academic Support Programs
As operating costs per FTE increased by 36% for Monroe Community College, retention remained flat. Expensive initiatives designed to keep students in school didn’t seem to be having the desired …
5 Questions with University of Missouri-Kansas City: Measuring the Impact of Supplemental Instruction on Persistence
Even though UMKC was seeing 1-2% bumps in overall retention, outcomes were not increasing for underrepresented minorities who are central to the school’s mission. We spoke with Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, …
Monroe Community College: How Clarity About What’s Working Has Changed Our Conversations
When we set this year’s goal to increase term to term persistence by 3 percent and our fall to fall retention rate by 2 percent, we understood that step one …
University of Missouri-Kansas City: Impact Analysis Informing Decisions to Maximize the Efficacy & ROI of Supplemental Instruction
One of the hardest things institutions try to do is to stop engaging in some of the practices that have long been part of our culture and our history — …
Intentional intervention design and analytics
Intervention design and data instrumentation in the context of causal inference need to be intentional. That is, intervention, data, and associated analytics must be designed to answer specific business questions …
Three Basic Big Ideas When Understanding Results
All around us in Higher Education are tantalizing reports of “results” or gains in student outcomes achieved by colleges and universities through new programming, products, or initiatives. “11% increase in …