In 2015, 26 two- and four-year institutions received three-year grants to implement reforms consistent with the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) initiative. Grantees committed to launching or enhancing existing technologies and undertake related organizational changes that would enable them to provide more effective advising and support to all students. CCRC was engaged as a research partner to document the iPASS colleges’ implementation efforts and outcomes.
CCRC analyzed key performance indicators (KPIs)—including student retention from the first to the second semester and first-term grade point average—using administrative data collected from all 26 participating institutions. This report describes trends in KPIs, aggregated by college sector and cohort, in the participating colleges from 2011 to 2017—from the period before the initiative started until about two years after the grants were awarded.
Because iPASS reforms cannot easily be isolated from other reforms the colleges were carrying out, it is difficult to directly associate the modest changes observed over time in KPIs. This report also includes college scores on an iPASS development index, a weighted measure CCRC researchers created to gain insights into the level of adoption of iPASS technologies and practices across the 26 grantee institutions as of fall 2017, when colleges provided answers to an institutional survey about their efforts. The authors find that while no institution had fully implemented iPASS, at most institutions, substantial progress was being made.
