Resource Library

This Ascendium-supported report outlines how the Community College Research Center's thinking has evolved in the six years since it published Redesigning America’s Community Colleges, an influential book on guided pathways. Since that time, the center has studied the adoption, implementation costs and effects of guided pathways at more than 100 institutions. The report offers high-level recommendations, including increased use of experience-based learning, early advising tied to academic majors and customized onboarding paths for older adults returning to school.

This research brief is one of several co-funded by Ascendium and produced through the Tackling Transfer initiative, a partnership between the Aspen Insitute’s College Excellence Program, HCM Strategists and Sova. It outlines the elements of a transfer-receptive campus culture and clarifies ways that transfer student success and the faculty values of collegiality, fairness and academic excellence can align. Research is based on analysis of support strategies for transfer students at The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus.

The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center released the fifth of a nine-part report series that provides institutions and researchers with near real-time data on how the COVID-19 health crisis is impacting transfer students. This report, co-funded by Ascendium and ECMC Foundation, shows that higher education lost about 191,500 transfer students, nearly three times last year’s losses, with racial and ethnic disparities widening in the number of students who transferred from two- to four-year institutions.

The Rural Works initiative, supported by Rural Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), focuses on the alignment of systems to help rural workforce stakeholders overcome barriers. With funding from Ascendium, Rural LISC has used the framework to engage postsecondary education and workforce partnerships over the past year, highlighting their initial successes in this new report.

In response to the current economic upheaval forcing people to reskill to continue their careers, the Education Strategy Group has released the Accelerating Recovery through Credentials Adult-Ready Playbook. Funded in part by Ascendium, the playbook encourages state and postsecondary education leaders to prioritize and commit to urgent reskilling. The playbook prompts postsecondary education leaders and policymakers to complete a self-assessment that then leads them to detailed strategies and key action steps for five priority areas: accessibility, program change, operational change, data and partnerships.

This report is one of several funded in part by Ascendium and produced through the Aspen Institute’s Tackling Transfer initiative. It shines a light on Metropolitan State University for prioritizing transfer student success as part of their core business and mission. This report aims to provide a valuable set of lessons for postsecondary education institutions everywhere to prioritize transfer student success, create clear program pathways and provide tailored advising for transfer students.

This report is one of several funded in part by Ascendium and produced through the Tackling Transfer initiative, a partnership between the Aspen Institute, HCM Strategists and Sova. It highlights the unique needs of rural transfer students and profiles three emerging practices that community colleges can use to support rural students through different transfer pathways to earning a bachelor’s degree.

The National Association of College and University Business Officers produced these flexible, user-friendly videos and activities to help all campus employees understand how they can help students overcome systemic barriers and succeed. The six-part curriculum, supported by Ascendium, includes modules on overcoming implicit bias, understanding and overcoming systemic racism and more.

The Understanding the Landscape of Higher Education Prison Survey was designed as a follow-up to the 2020 Annual Survey of Higher Education in Prison Programs. The Landscape Survey updates program statistics, including demographics, funding, technology and evaluation. With support from Ascendium, this survey was designed and distributed by the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison, partnered with the Research Collaborative for Higher Education in Prison at the University of Utah and the University of California Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

This report is one of several funded in part by Ascendium and produced through the Tackling Transfer initiative, a partnership between the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, HCM Strategists and Sova. It shares lessons and reflections from higher education system leaders in Minnesota, Texas and Virginia from their work to improve transfer student success and close equity gaps as part of the national Tackling Transfer project. Through sharing transfer data and setting goal benchmarks, these leaders hope to inspire and inform other state-level efforts to set and monitor transfer student goals.

Ascendium supported the Institute for Evidence-Based Change to produce a series of guides on Caring Campus, a holistic approach to improving a sense of student belonging and connection on campus with the goal of increasing student success. This third guide details ways professional staff and others can incorporate concepts of racial equity, specifically the behavioral commitments, into the Caring Campus approach.

This episode is the fourth in an eight-part podcast series from Rural Matters on rural postsecondary education and workforce development. Sponsored by Ascendium, this episode features a panel discussing the digital rural economy. Each guest shares insights on a range of topics, including working with postsecondary institutions to offer digital opportunities, along with creating local digital communities and using micro-credentials to open up opportunities for rural learners to earn and verify their skills.