Through a grant with the Institute of Education Sciences, AIR's Lynn Mellor and Jason Lee are examining the implementation and outcomes associated with Texas’s enactment of a statewide policy requiring students to complete a financial aid application as a high school graduation requirement. The study aims to learn how districts are supporting students and parents regarding completing college financial aid applications and how this may lead to increased college enrollment for Texas high school students.
In 2022, Ascendium will launch an open Request for Proposals (RFP) aimed at addressing gaps in evidence for strategies that support rural learners from low-income backgrounds in earning degrees and credentials with labor market value. Through this RFP, Ascendium has committed funding for 8-10 projects, employing a diverse mix of research methods and subjects, that respond to one or more overarching research question themes. To optimize the design, implementation, and cross-project learning potential of this initiative, Ascendium awarded a grant to AIR to serve as an intermediary partner to support RFP design, grant management, and synthesis of insights across the funded multi-faceted research efforts.
AIR is conducting a consensus study on behalf of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Committee on Defense Research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Other Minority Institutions (MIs) that will examine the status of Department of Defense (DoD) research at HBCUs and other MIs. The goal of the study is to gain understanding of the methods and means necessary to advance research capacity at these institutions to comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States.
The project seeks to determine the differential cost of providing an equal educational opportunity to community college students from different backgrounds to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in order to support legislative policy debate surrounding reform of the public community college funding system in Texas. To determine the cost, the team at AIR is conducting a cost function analysis to estimate the cost of generating outcomes of community college students in Texas.
American Institutes for Research is supporting the Technical Assistance team at the Center for Innovation in Postsecondary Education at the University of South Alabama in building the capacity of five HBCUs in North Carolina to serve black adult learners. AIR is helping the TA team build content via webinars about data use and data driven decision making and facilitating conversations about strategic goals and needs of campus staff and faculty to understand capacity needs. The goals of the project is to change policy and practices that support removing barriers for black adult learners to complete a postsecondary credential.
AIR, in collaboration with Quality Education for Minorities and the Kapor Center, is examining learning environments that enable undergraduate students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to thrive and subsequently attain doctoral degrees in science and engineering (S&E). The goals of the study are to (a) identify unique characteristics of S&E learning environments at the 21 HBCUs ranked as top producers of Black baccalaureate degree recipients who earn S&E doctorates (“anchor institutions”), (b) identify HBCUs that have similar characteristics as the anchor institutions and have a high potential to graduate students who go on to earn doctoral degrees, and (c) develop and disseminate a model that builds HBCU capacity to produce graduates who go on to earn S&E doctorates. Click here to access the project website.
The College Completion Network, led by AIR and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, brought together research teams focused on postsecondary success for students—coordinated by a network lead—to share ideas, build new knowledge, conduct strong research, and share findings. Specifically, the network worked to refine and evaluate interventions for increasing the number of students who earn degrees in open- and broad-access institutions with the goal of providing college leaders and policymakers with reliable evidence on promising strategies.
The research teams in the College Completion Network conducted studies to refine and evaluate interventions for increasing the number of students who earn degrees at open- and broad-access institutions with the goal of providing college leaders and policymakers with reliable evidence on promising strategies.
AIR, in partnership with the Competency-Based Education Network (CBEN) is administering the CBE Program Model Mapping Survey to gather information on a set of dimensions on which Competency Based Education (CBE) programs vary, and information on how CBE programs have implemented those dimensions. The aims of the survey are to develop a CBE Program Model Mapping resource to help facilitate conversations among practitioners, and support researchers’ ongoing work to look structures and practices that serve learners and support positive outcomes, including low-income learners, adult learners, and Black and Latino learners.
To improve equity in access, AIR will utilize US Census Data to examine the characteristics of veterans eligible for the Post- 9/11 GI Bill (PGIB) who do not use it (“GI Bill skippers”). AIR will then build on the above analysis to do a deeper dive on why veterans with characteristics of particular interest to the foundation (e.g., students of color) or particular combinations of characteristics from the factor analysis (e.g., women of color with dependents), did not use their benefits. By collecting and analyzing additional qualitative interview data from these groups, AIR could identify needs as well as policies and practices that might help veterans with these characteristics use their PGIB benefits and pursue postsecondary education going forward.
Using New Jersey Education to Earnings Data System (NJEEDS) within the Coleridge Initiative platform, the American Institutes for Research conducted a comparative analysis of earnings outcomes for degree completers who transferred, stopped out, or did neither— whom we refer to as “traditional”—on the way to their degree. The study highlights interesting patterns in degree completers’ labor market outcomes based on their path to their degree. It suggests that as long as students complete their degree, stopping out or transferring does not negatively affect earnings.
