Postsecondary Innovation
Lessons Learned
Jason Palmer
Deputy Director, Postsecondary Success
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Twitter: @educationpalmer
GATES FOUNDATION
Four program areas:
• Global Development
• Global Health
• U.S. Education
• Policy & Advocacy
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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THE PROBLEM AND THE OPPORTUNITY
Source: The Pell Institute (University of Pennsylvania)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Our vision is a U.S.
postsecondary education
system that propels social
mobility and economic
development.
We invest in partners to
transform higher education so
that more students, especially
low-income, minority and firstgeneration students, graduate
with affordable, high-quality
certificates or degrees.
U.S. EDUCATION
• More than $4 billion invested over 15 years
• More than 300 postsecondary institutional partners
• Ranging from Harvard, MIT and Carnegie Mellon
• To Morgan State University (HBCU), Sinclair Community College (OH),
Austin Community College (TX) and Miami Dade (FL)
• Almost 100 non-institutional partners and grantees
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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THE PROCESS OF “INNOVATION DISCOVERY”
1. Define the problem or loss point
2. Find positive deviants with data
3. Define the innovation (taxonomy)
4. Fund research, white papers,
product development,
communities of practice,
playbooks and scaling efforts
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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PROMISING INNOVATIONS DISCOVERED
 Adaptive Learning
 Emergency Financial Aid
 OBF
 Advising Redesign
 FAFSA Simplification
 Pathways
 CBE
 Fifteen To Finish
 Predictive Analytics
 Certifications
 Institutional Transformation
 Programs Of Study
 Credit Transfer
 Investing In Equity
 Strategic Finance
 DevEd Redesign
 Marketable Credentials
 Undermatching
 Digital Courseware
 Non-Cognitive Factors
 Work Study
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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IMPROVING EQUITY – UNDERMATCHING
 The vast majority of low-income students
apply to community colleges or non-selective
public institutions within 50 miles of where
they live (and very few earn a degree, even if
they were great students in high school)
 Some qualified low-income students apply to
selective institutions like UVA, where they
enroll and earn degrees at same pace as
high-income students with equivalent test
scores and grades
 Unfortunately, the majority of low-income
students do not apply to selective institutions
where they could succeed (usually because
they don’t know about financial aid options)
Source: Hoxby Turner Research (American Honors Graphic)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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IMPROVING EQUITY – UNDERMATCHING EXEMPLARS
U.S. News
Rank
Institution
Pell %
Predicted Pell %
Difference
39
UC Irvine
44%
34%
+10%
37
UC Santa Barbara
38%
29%
+9%
23
UCLA
32%
24%
+8%
20
UC Berkeley
34%
30%
+4%
30
UNC Chapel Hill
20%
22%
(-2%)
 Best practices: Extensive outreach & incentives for low-income students
Aggressive transfer policies and CC recruitment
Maximize special programs:
College Advising Corps, Posse, Questbridge, Blue Ridge Scholars
Source: IHEP (via Washington Monthly)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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COLLEGE ADVISING CORPS
• Founded in 2005 at UVA by CEO Nicole Hurd (then Assistant Dean and
Director at the University’s Center for Undergraduate Excellence)
- Nicole received a Governor’s Volunteerism and Community Service Award for
National Service from Governor Kaine in 2007
• Today, CAC is the only provider of college access support that leverages
partnerships with colleges and universities to
- Engage entire high school communities - including families - to promote
“college going culture” in addition to 1:1 advising
- Deploy “near-peer” advisers – recent college grads, over half from low
income backgrounds and/or first generation college attendees themselves,
who can mentor students drawing on a combination of CAC’s best-in-class
college access knowledge base and their own relatable personal stories
- Provide a full range of college supports: college process knowledge, college
visits, application support, and financial aid assistance
• CAC also provides a post-college paid national service (Americorps)
opportunity for over 500 advisers each year
IMPROVING EQUITY – TRANSFER
 UCLA in 2013/14:
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17,061 transfer applications
-
Admitted 4,897 (28.7%)
-
Enrolled 2,879 (16.9%)
-
Approx 23% of new admits / year
 University of Washington
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33% of all new students are transfers
Source: CCRC (Community College Research Center at Columbia University)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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IPASS (ADVISING REDESIGN)
Research
•IPASS and redesigned
advising can improve
retention by 10% and
graduation rates by 5%
IPASS1
• $3M
• 2013-2015
• 19 colleges
IPASS2
• $8.2M
• 2015-2018
• 26 colleges
CONFIDENTIAL
© Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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IPASS (ADVISING REDESIGN) – BEST PRACTICES

Make advising a strategic priority

Redesign advising to focus on
completion & institutional transformation

Select and implement a comprehensive
IPASS technology solution

Institute 15 To Finish (defaults)

Professional Advisors (First Year)

1 : 250 Ratio (or better for populations
that need additional support)

Strongly encourage major selection
during First Year (3rd Semester latest)
PROGRAMS OF STUDY & CERTIFICATES

966K certificates awarded in 2013 (+100% over 15 years)

U.S. institutions awarded 1.84M bachelors degrees in 2013

Certificate holders in computers and information earn
$70,400 per year, more than 50% of all bachelors degrees

Women with computer, business or electronics certificates
earn more than 50% of all bachelors degrees
PROGRAMS OF STUDY – COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, STEM
© 2014 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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COMPUTER SCIENCE RELATED DEGREES (U.S.)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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COMPUTER SCIENCE ENROLLMENT GROWTH
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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COMPUTER SCIENCE PATHWAYS
“Traditional”
Post-Traditional
New Models
ABET accredited
colleges and universities
(traditional cost & length)
Accredited programs
(fragmented market, quality
variety, hybrid attributes)
Truly alternate models
(non-accredited, focused on
lower price or placement)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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DIGITAL & ADAPTIVE LEARNING
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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$20M DIGITAL COURSEWARE CHALLENGE
Intelligent courseware empowering
educators and students by enabling
dynamic, flexible, and responsive
instruction
Collaborates with partner institutions to
build, implement, and support Candela
Open Courses
Sequence-driven adaptive learning
platform that can be integrated into
existing learning management systems
Offers students free peerreviewed courseware that meets
scope and sequence
requirements for most courses
(based on open textbooks)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Uses an artificial intelligence algorithm
to sequence and personalize learning in
order to maximize learning retention
Adaptive learning programs that
leverage the Open EdX platform Adaptive eLearning platform that allows
educators to create interactive and
and a decade of lessons learned
adaptive
learning experiences while
from Carnegie Mellon OLI
preserving academic control
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Carnegie Mellon  Acrobatiq
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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Vision for Next Generation Courseware:
Putting Faculty in control
SmartSparrow @ ASU (Sciences for non-majors)
© 2015 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
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INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION – ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

“ASU has been on a mission to expand access
by finding and admitting qualified students from
all across the country. President Crow sees ASU
as the model of a public research university that
measures itself by inclusivity, not exclusivity.”

Over the past 25 years, ASU has:

Increased its admissions rate

Grown from 32K  80K undergrads

Grown from 3%  34% Pell

Dramatically grown transfer students

Adopted IPASS in 2007; Retention and graduation rates have grown

Digital learning has grown from 0  10,000 online students (incl. Starbucks)
THANK YOU
Postsecondary.GatesFoundation.org
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
ImpatientOptimists.org
@GatesEd
@EducationPalmer