Global Policy Fellows Program: Lessons Learned

Describes IHEP's program to create a global network of higher education policy analysts and researchers to address issues of access for underserved populations. Presents thematic findings from six countries and recommendations for effective collaboration

The Future of Private Loans: Who is Borrowing, and Why?

Examines developments in private loans within the student lending industry, characteristics of loan borrowers, and trends that might impact the growth of private loans in the future

From Aspirations to Action: The Role of Middle School Parents in Making the Dream of College a Reality

Looks at the number of parents who have taken steps to prepare for their children's college education by the time their children are in middle school

Diversity Pipeline Programs in Legal Education: Context, Research and a Path Forward

This report, commissioned by the AccessLex Institue, highlights the issue of diversity in legal education, provides an overview of the diversity pipeline, explores programs that seek to improve the pipeline, and provides several recommendations for leaders and supporters of diversity pipeline programs. As the racial and ethnic diversity of the United States continues to grow, it is increasingly important that comparable cultural diversity grows in the legal profession. Diversity in the legal field is central to ensuring public confidence in the legal system and provides society with a sense of fairness in the judicial system. The benefits of diverse leadership are numerous, particularly as the U.S. engages with a global, multicultural marketplace. To address gaps in the educational pipeline to the legal profession, many diversity pipeline programs have emerged to inspire interest, engagement, and success in degree programs in law. The goal of this report is to identify some of the key factors that are associated with successful diversity programs based on a scan of the literature, both within and outside of law school pipeline programs

Persevering to Completion: Understanding the Experiences of Adults Who Successfully Returned to College

In recent years, both policymakers and practitioners working to increase postsecondary attainment rates in the United States have shifted their focus from college access to college success. At the same time, they have recognized that the prevalence of 36 million adults with some college education but no postsecondary credential is an important consequence of the many challenges facing American college students. Adults with some college but no credential face a range of barriers to both re-enrolling in college and completing a credential if they re-enroll. Those who have made several attempts to attend college may be burdened by student loans and other educational debt but cannot reap the social and economic benefits associated with earning a postsecondary credential. Given this reality, policymakers and postsecondary institutions must identify effective ways to support these individuals if and when they do try to return to college. Commissioned by the Lumina Foundation, this study offers a unique opportunity to better understand the experiences of adults who stopped out of college, re-enrolled, and either successfully completed a credential or seemed likely to do so. Based on a new survey of these successful returning students, the study investigates the challenges and supports they view as important to their ability to remain enrolled and attain a postsecondary credential, with the goal of identifying factors that facilitated their success.

Higher Education in Michigan: Overcoming Challenges to Expand Access

Examines in detail the barriers to higher education in three underserved Michigan communities, and recommends options for improving access at the state level, coordination among institutions, healthcare training, public transportation, and affordability

Knowledge Syntheses Search Strategy Repositories: Canadian Case Studies

Knowledge synthesis research is central to evidence-based medicine. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses literature search extension (PRISMA-S) outlines full reporting of the search strategy component including uploading documentation of all search strategies into a data repository to increase accessibility, transparency, and reproducibility. In response to the PRISMA-S recommendations, Canadian universities and health care institutions have been increasingly offering local services for librarians to support depositing and sharing search strategies in a digital data repository on the Borealis platform. Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository, is a bilingual, multidisciplinary, secure, Canadian research data repository which supports open discovery, management, sharing, and preservation of Canadian research data. We argue that knowledge synthesis searches are data, and therefore, deserve a place in data repositories. Three case studies of knowledge synthesis repositories from three institutions will be presented: McGill University, Université de Montréal teaching hospitals, and the Health Sciences Information Consortium (HSIC) which includes the University of Toronto and affiliated hospitals. This talk will discuss the reasons for choosing a data repository, decisions made, challenges encountered, and lessons learned

Biomarkers and Noncalcified Coronary Artery Plaque Progression in Older Men Treated With Testosterone.

ObjectiveRecent results from the Cardiovascular Trial of the Testosterone Trials showed that testosterone treatment of older men with low testosterone was associated with greater progression of noncalcified plaque (NCP). We evaluated the effect of anthropometric measures and cardiovascular biomarkers on plaque progression in individuals in the Testosterone Trial.MethodsThe Cardiovascular part of the trial included 170 men aged 65 years or older with low testosterone. Participants received testosterone gel or placebo gel for 12 months. The primary outcome was change in NCP volume from baseline to 12 months, as determined by coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA). We assayed several markers of cardiovascular risk and analyzed each marker individually in a model as predictive variables and change in NCP as the dependent variable.ResultsOf 170 enrollees, 138 (73 testosterone, 65 placebo) completed the study and were available for the primary analysis. Of 10 markers evaluated, none showed a significant association with the change in NCP volume, but a significant interaction between treatment assignment and waist-hip ratio (WHR) (P = 0.0014) indicated that this variable impacted the testosterone effect on NCP volume. The statistical model indicated that for every 0.1 change in the WHR, the testosterone-induced 12-month change in NCP volume increased by 26.96 mm3 (95% confidence interval, 7.72-46.20).ConclusionAmong older men with low testosterone treated for 1 year, greater WHR was associated with greater NCP progression, as measured by CCTA. Other biomarkers and anthropometric measures did not show statistically significant association with plaque progression

Does student loan debt deter higher education participation? New evidence from England

Research among prospective UK undergraduates in 2002 found that some students, especially from low social classes, were deterred from applying to university because of fear of debt. This paper investigates whether this is still the case today in England despite the changing higher education landscape since 2002. The paper describes findings from a 2015 survey of prospective undergraduates and compares them with those from the 2002 study. We find that students’ attitudes to taking on student loan debt are more favorable in 2015 than in 2002. Debt averse attitudes remain much stronger among lower-class students than among upper-class students, and more so than in 2002. However, lower-class students did not have stronger debt averse attitudes than middle-class students. Debt averse attitudes seem more likely to deter planned higher education participation among lower-class students in 2015 than in 2002

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery