Research & Reports
This year, our 20th, has been pivotal for our organization as we begin the next phase of our student success work. We introduced our new Institutional Capacity Assessment Framework and Tool (ICAT). We have begun to roll out our new Community Vibrancy Framework, which took two years to develop and is now beginning to gain traction. And, we have continued to grow our Network, which includes expanding our reach to under-resourced colleges and learners through our new Scott-funded Accelerating Equitable Outcomes cohorts.
We cannot continue to innovate and push the student success reform movement without the deep engagement and commitment of our Network colleges who help us learn, evolve, and grow as an organization. The Annual Reflections we receive from colleges across the Network provide important feedback that helps us assess our work and impact. This year, we had a record response rate (70%), representing a broad cross-section of institutions by institutional size, main campus location, federal designation, level of ATD engagement, and ATD award status. This unusually high rate tells us that you are engaged in the work and want to know more about what other colleges are seeking to accomplish, which this summary aims to do.
Why we need to continue transforming our institutions
As we know from 20 years of experience, transforming our institutions and changing the trajectory of student and community success is a steep climb. The march toward equitable mobility requires that we continually test what works and doesn’t work, review the data and adjust, and introduce new innovations to accelerate change. It requires perseverance in the face of tight resources, enrollment uncertainty, talent drains, and varying local contexts for our work. It demands visionary leadership, capacity building, teamwork, execution, and bringing in partners who can work with us to bolster our capacity and peer learning to help us solve problems and renew our resolve.
This year’s data tells us just how challenging this work is and how urgent it is that we continue. The Strongest student success accomplishments were in areas of integration and alignment of student success initiatives with priority goals, increased use of data to inform decision making, and intensified focus on student success among faculty and staff. Progress on student success metrics (i.e., moving the needle) was much less common. While institutions report making progress in improving structures, policies, practices, and attitudes, only about 16% to 28% of Network colleges report making “strong” or “extreme” progress on student retention or student completion, narrowing equity gaps, reductions in student costs, or creating stronger workforce outcomes.
Equally important, creation of both an equity-minded culture and a student-focused culture were reportedly slower to progress over the last Annual Reflection report.
The fact is all institutions — even those that are moving the needle — have work to do. This year’s reflections tell us where there is new momentum and what the challenges are across five areas of capacity to help institutions achieve their goals. It also creates a picture across all colleges of what they are doing and how that differs from previous efforts.
Capacity building, renewed interest in ICAT
In a time when resources are tight and the need to support students and community in more areas is growing, institutions need to have a clear view of what their capacities are and how they can ensure that they have the support they need from staff and ATD through peer learning, tools, and coaching.
Renewed interest in ICAT
To help determine which areas of capacity they most need to build, colleges expressed an interest in using the new ICAT. More than one-third (35%) of Network colleges indicated they would be “very” or “extremely” likely to administer the newly designed ICAT 2.0 in the spring of 2025. We will begin administering the next-generation ICAT in early 2025 with mature colleges who can use it to reboot student success efforts, assist with engagement in a new round of strategic planning, or prepare for an accreditation visit.
Biggest capacity building needs
Of all the areas where colleges need to increase capacity, respondents said that their top two challenges were improving teaching and learning and using data. These areas were the top two challenges for newer and more mature ATD colleges alike.
- Improving teaching and learning: Drawing on ATD’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit, professional learning series, and support for new teaching and learning centers, more than 9 in 10 (91%) Network colleges focused on professional learning for faculty and 81% on engaging in pedagogical improvements to better support active learning over the year.
- Data use: While smaller colleges do not have robust data systems, many institutions say that they are awash in data but don’t make good use of it. They need to build trust in the data and connect it to continuous improvement, informed decision-making, and more meaningful learning experiences. And they need help simplifying, identifying, and sharing data that is more accessible and meaningful to all. To address these challenges, data coaching this year resulted in 83% of Network colleges working harder to get data into the hands of faculty and staff (e.g., through dashboard creation) and also resulted in disaggregation of data among Network colleges to identify student groups in need of additional support (80% of colleges). Institutions are also working to develop a robust culture of evidence and inquiry, particularly through the establishment of data dashboards, enhancing institutional data literacy, and leveraging data to inform practices as part of student success efforts.
Strategies to increase access and momentum
This year, as we transition to using new metrics that measure community as well as student success challenges, three-quarters (75%) of institutions report that they have organized data in congruence with ATD’s new access, early momentum, milestone, and mobility metrics. Though still transitioning, institutions are already taking a deep dive to introduce efforts to bolster access and momentum. In fact, the qualitative analysis revealed that retention and persistence (first priority) and strategic enrollment growth (second priority) were the top goals reported by Network colleges this year.
Respondents from virtually all Network colleges (91%) say they will modify their student success priority goals for the next academic year. As in past years, colleges were asked to describe their top three student success priority goals through an open-ended question. Generally, the priority goals described were broad in nature and centered around the following:
- Enrollment
- Course completion (rates, ratios, or benchmarks)
- Gateway course completion
- Retention and persistence
- Program/degree completion
- Transfer and bachelor’s degree completion
Broadening strategic enrollment
Institutions report that they need to improve in recruiting adult learners, leveraging current efforts to reconnect students who have stopped out, and rethinking high school enrollment to college, which will hit a cliff in the next few years. So, it is no surprise that this year, 8 in 10 (80%) of Network colleges focused on broadening student enrollment by developing more effective approaches to reach and recruit working adults and connecting with K–12 partners to strengthen the enrollment pipeline.
- Some 93% of Network colleges included program enrollment by student group as a key performance indicator of the past year.
- Network colleges also reported priority goals that were specific to student populations, the most common being students of color and adult learners. Other populations identified as priorities by colleges included K–12 students, low SES or poverty impacted students, online students, part-time students, and women.
Dual enrollment expansion
This year, more than 8 in 10 ATD Network colleges (82%) emphasized dual enrollment expansion while more than three-quarters of institutions expanded partnerships (76%). Significantly, 8 in 10 institutions (80%) are seeking to connect dual enrollment strategies — which have been a recent key to enrollment stability — with equity goals. They are doing so by introducing K–12 and community partnerships to facilitate access to institutions from racially minoritized and poverty-impacted students.
Expansion of holistic student services Basic needs support was the highest rated holistic student supports (HSS) solution as well as the most common student success strategy overall. This was followed by stronger sense of student belonging (85%), advising redesign (76%), simplifying student admissions/onboarding (75%), and integrating student academic/nonacademic supports (72%).
Barriers to success and key indicators Competing institutional priorities and talent recruitment/competitive wages were the top two challenges to achieving student success with 70% of respondents saying these were either a strong or extreme hinderance. These were followed closely by communicating for understanding and buy-in, institutional data capacity, local/state funding, and financial resource limitations.
We also have seen a shift in key performance indicators (KPIs) that suggest colleges have a clear sense of their goals and that some need to be encouraged to address performance bottom-line issues.
The good news is that 90% of institutions are focused on early momentum metrics, and the Network is also rapidly shifting its focus from course metrics to program metrics and adding these to their student success KPIs. This is encouraging and has implications for the designs of our program review models and the insights we can gain from these reviews. The bad news is that only about half of our colleges are tracking and owning baccalaureate completion after six years.
Recommitment to equity
We have also seen a recommitment to equity and furthering our equity agenda as ATD colleges across the nation continue to navigate a fluid external environment that challenges the ability of colleges to provide services that target the needs of individual groups of students. The vast majority (85%) of respondents said that their colleges are working on identification and modification of policies and practices that create equity barriers for students. Professional learning to enact equity minded/inclusive campus culture and equity-minded goal setting were also common (68%–71% of Network colleges). Nearly six in 10 colleges (59%) facilitated courageous conversations around equity. Development or refinement of an institutional equity statement (39%) was the least common action.
Moving Forward
ATD Network colleges are making strategic changes to move into a new direction that will allow for whole college transformation. This approach is needed to ensure that our campuses are not only more equitable and giving students greater opportunities to succeed but that they are also taking on the larger challenge that will lead to college sustainability and help their communities thrive.
ATD will continue to support and strengthen those services that you tell us provide the greatest benefit. This year, over nine in 10 (94%) Network colleges reported that ATD had an overall impact on their student success accomplishments this past academic year, including 53% reporting the impact was “strong” or “extreme.” Coaching remains the number one valued ATD support service followed by DREAM and our toolkits and guides, especially those focused on teaching and learning, HSS, and shortened terms.
Your feedback will also inform other areas of work we may need to strengthen or grow, including the following:
- New data services to address capacity gaps and to complement coaching and annual Data and Analytics Summit offerings
- Support for strategic planning, particularly for student success integration
- Developing policies and resources on AI to address academic integrity, erosion of critical thinking skills, ethical and productive use of AI, and data privacy and security
- Creating additional service to small colleges, rural colleges, and TCUs on numerous teaching and learning reform strategies, K–12 partnerships, adult learner recruitment, data literacy programs and strategies, and other initiatives
- Supporting coaching and learning activities to help colleges address competing institutional priorities (maintaining focus on student success), communicating for understanding and buy-in, and building data capacity
- Offering more virtual, affordable learning events that are organized by similar college characteristics, geographic regions, and/or role-alike positions, as well as promising, evidence-based practices.
We appreciate the time you and your team took to complete the Annual Reflections. They are a significant help in our planning and programming efforts, providing actional information to help us identify what is happening across the Network, what the key challenges and emerging needs are in every area of focus, and what should be new areas of focus for our peer learning and direct ATD support.
We also appreciate the value you see in our support. For the first time, 90% of all respondents said that they would be “very” or “extremely” likely to recommend ATD to other colleges.
We will continue to work to earn your trust by providing expert coaching, developing peer learning programs and funded initiatives that will continue to help build institutional capacity and identify key lessons from the field, and being responsive to the needs of the Network.
Looking forward to seeing you at DREAM 2025 in Philadelphia.