Student Success Charts

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Next week, I’ll be back to my regular cadence of a longer-form post and This Week in Student Success. But this week, I want to experiment with a format I really love from another newsletter, and share an announcement about my student success game.

A cornucopia of charts

One of the general-interest newsletters I love and read every time is Adam Tooze’s Chartbook. Inspired by it, I want to experiment with an occasional student success version—perhaps once a month. Some of the charts will probably come from the original Chartbook. OK, this week they almost all did - across many editions - but that will not always be the case. And you should go subscribe to the original anyway, if only so you can heckle me about my choices.

Here goes.

Le mur démographique

As of this year, deaths have exceeded births in France.

Nobody reads anymore

Somehow this does not shock me. Though I feel like I am making up for a good portion of the population.

Tracing the impact of federal cuts to research funding in the US

If that didn’t depress you, the science and technology policy think tank, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), has modeled the impact of the current administration’s cuts to research funding, including the NIH, NSF, and other agencies.

Bread & circuses

Offered without comment

Graduate earnings

From the U.S. Census Bureau. One of the key takeaways for me was how much those with some college but no degree are penalized.

And a view from abroad

I’m fascinated by what’s happening in the Nordics, especially when it comes to certificates (i.e., short-cycle tertiary education). I may have to go investigate.

Silo smashers - the student success game

One of the things that always strikes me when working with higher education clients on student success (or, frankly, on any issue) is how little different units within the same institution talk to one another. Yet this kind of cross-unit communication and shared understanding is critical to the long-term effectiveness of any major initiative, especially student success.

As a low-pressure way to encourage that communication, and to help institutions surface issues that may be hindering their student success efforts, I’ve created a board game that student success staff on a campus can play for an hour or two. I’ve also built a facilitation process around it to help identify the challenges, assumptions, and misunderstandings that need to be addressed for student success efforts to actually work.

If you’d be interested in playing the game at your institution, or in having me facilitate it at a conference you’re organizing, let me know.

The idea is that each player chooses a particular type of student (first-generation, low socio-economic status, online, international, etc.) and tries to guide that student from the starting point to graduation, facing challenges and making choices along the way. These challenges and choices vary by student type. Each player also has opportunities to invest in student supports, which in turn affect the outcomes.

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