Announcing AACRAO Research Grants
Starting this year, AACRAO intends to award up to three AACRAO members a $2,000 research stipend to be used toward the completion of an advanced degree and the development of a draft academic research article. The application form is currently open, and we will accept applications through September 1st.
Purpose
The purpose of the grants is to encourage applied research on enrollment management issues and to foster the next generation of higher education leaders. The research grant program intends to support the pursuit of advanced degrees among AACRAO members and to stimulate thought, discussion and research on emerging topics in higher education enrollment management.
Research Topics
The applicant selects the topic to be researched with supervision by a faculty member at his or her institution. Appropriate topics may be drawn from a wide range of subjects of interest to the AACRAO community. Applicants are not restricted to the suggested topics listed below as long as their proposals address the stated purpose of the Graduate Research Grant Program. Major research topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Enrollment management
- Recruitment and marketing
- Admissions
- Transfer and articulation
- International admissions
- Diversity, equity and access
- Administrative information technology
- Student services
- Financial aid
- Enrollment Services
- Retention
- Student Success
- Federal and state policy
Eligibility
Applicants and awardees must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Be an active AACRAO member; and
- Be enrolled at an accredited institution of higher learning for the academic year in a graduate program leading to a master’s or doctoral degree; or
- Be enrolled in a series of graduate certificates in enrollment management at an accredited institution of higher learning.
Schedule for 2016-17
The objective of the current research program is to initiate awards by the start of the fall 2017 semester.
- May 2017 – Application submission opens.
- September 1, 2017 – Electronic submission of complete application is due.
- September 30, 2017 – Stipend awarded to recipient(s).
- February 1, 2018 – Draft conference presentation due.
- May 14, 2018 – Draft SEMQ article due.
For additional information and for the application form, please click here.
Upcoming and Ongoing AACRAO Research
May 60-Second Survey - Results
The Joint Statement on the Transfer and Award of Credit is being rewritten by AACRAO, the College Board, WICHE and CAEL. Institutional membership on this committee includes: Montgomery College (Maryland), York College of Pennsylvania, Capella University, CUNY LaGuardia, the University of California System, Florida International University, Cleveland State University and Everett Community College (WA). The goal of the statement rewrite is to identify transfer credit best practices and to provide guiding principles for working with transfer credit and transfer students. The May 2017 60-Second Survey was designed to help the advisory committee learn more about our member institutions’ current transfer policy and practices. We also collected several samples of transfer policy for the soon-to-be-implemented policy repository. Key findings are included below.
Key Findings
- Just ten of the responding institutions do not accept any transfer credit.
- Institutions with fewer than 1,000 students are less likely to accept transfer credit than others.
- Among the eight in this particular sample, four are undergraduate, graduate and/or professional institutions; two are graduate and/or professional; and one each undergraduate, other.
- A quarter of graduate and/or professional institutions report accepting undergraduate transfer credits. It is unclear from this data what purpose that transfer credit serves.
- Not all institutions post their transfer policy in a location available to the public.
- The majority in that sample are U.S. institutions and either public or private, not-for-profit schools. This data is of note because of the requirements for institutions participating in Title IV to post the “policies of the institution related to transfer of credit from other institutions” on the College Navigator website and the institution’s website “in an easily accessible manner.” However, it is unknown whether the institutions in this group participate in Title IV programs. If they do not, they are not required to post the policy.
- The items addressed in the transfer policies vary widely by institutional size, type and control as well as the academic level of the policy.
- Several states and provinces maintain a website on transfer practices and policies.
- The most sought after guidance includes accreditation regulations, international transfer credit, high school credit/dual enrollment, and length of time credits are valid.
Chief Enrollment Officer Career Profile Survey
It’s been three years since we completed the first Chief Enrollment Officers Career Profile Report. The survey associated with the report will be distributed this summer. The first report can be found at: http://www.aacrao.org/resources/resources-detail-view/chief-enrollment-management-officer-career-profile-report. The original survey begins on page 24. If you have any suggestions for changes, please let me know by the second week of June research@aacrao.org.
Current Higher Education Research and Related Topics
CUPA-HR Releases the 2017 Salary Data
AACRAO has taken the position of not soliciting salary data from our members because CUPA-HR collects and reports on this data annually. We have extracted some key position salary data by institutional characteristics from the administrators and professionals reports. This has been provided for informational purposes. For the complete data set, see the CUPA-HR site.
Wealth Gap Fueling Education Gap and Upward Mobility
The Urban Institute used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) from the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan. They used this data to “estimate the relationship between educational achievement (at age 25) and family wealth (at 18).” They found the following:
- “Young people from high-wealth families (wealth above roughly $223,500) are more than one and a half times as likely to complete at least two or four years of college by age 25 as those in low-wealth families (wealth below $2,000)” and
- “Among families in which parents did not graduate from college, young people from high-wealth families are roughly twice as likely to be upwardly mobile as those from low-wealth families.”
Social Media and College Choice among Underrepresented Students
Royall & Company surveyed over 5,500 college-bound students about their media use and preferences. They found the following:
- Students use a mix of institutional and personal resources to learn about college choices.
- Underrepresented students use social media to learn about and interact with colleges more?? than their counterparts.
- More than three-quarters still like paper mailings as a source of information.
For additional findings, please see the full report available through the link above.