Ivy Tech Realizes 7 Percent Differentiation in Student Success
After providing access to extensive library of materials, school sees access model emerge as a differentiator for student success
As the largest singly-accredited community college in the nation, Ivy Tech has students all around the country, many of whom encounter barriers to academic success. In 2020, the leadership team at Ivy Tech knew they were facing a challenge of student affordability; about 25% of students couldn’t afford their course materials and research showed they were graduating with high amounts of debt which would take decades to repay. Students had to make the tough choice between affording day-to-day necessities and course materials, which created another barrier to their educational success.
Ivy Tech administrators sought an innovative solution that would ensure each student had access to everything they needed to be successful—all on the first day of class. Utilizing federal funding provided by the CARES Act during the pandemic, Ivy Tech was able to purchase Cengage Unlimited, a digital learning subscription service, on behalf of their 90,000 students.
By providing free access to this comprehensive catalog of educational content, tools and resources, Ivy Tech was able to ensure students had their course materials while also alleviating some of their financial stress. By integrating Cengage Unlimited with their institution’s learning platform and administration, they created Ivy+. This program was designed to provide frozen tuition and all required textbooks for one price, plus free course materials on the first day of class for the entire year.
“Cengage Unlimited is really a well-rounded suite of content that can help students succeed in multiple ways. ”
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After a thorough analysis of the student success data from fall 2020 and fall 2021, the overall result was that students who accessed Cengage Unlimited materials in their courses had 5% higher success rates than students in non-Cengage course sections. That number grew to 7% in fall 2021, suggesting that Cengage Unlimited is a growing differentiator for success for Ivy Tech students.
A breakdown of demographic segments demonstrated even higher differentiators in student success in certain segments of the student population. The greatest gain was a nearly 20 percentage point differentiator for Latinx students.
In addition to increasing student success, Ivy Tech relieved students from immense financial burden by providing Cengage Unlimited at zero cost, saving them approximately $3.9 million* in course materials.
A year into the project, Ivy Tech has enhanced student success and decreased students’ financial burdens, making the decision to provide Cengage Unlimited to all students a bold choice that provided an impressive return for the school.
This content was paid for and created by Cengage. The editorial staff of The Chronicle had no role in its preparation. Find out more about paid content.
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