From 2005 to 2018, AAC&U led a national public advocacy and campus-action initiative to champion the importance of a liberal education for individual students and for a nation dependent on economic creativity and democratic vitality. At the heart of the initiative-titled Liberal Education and America's Promise, or LEAP, was a distinctive…

In 2019, twenty community colleges joined Strengthening Guided Pathways and Career Success by Ensuring Students Are Learning, a two-year project led by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The project draws on the guided pathways framework to support institutions as they (1) map academic pathways and degree programs to student…

"How College Contributes to Workforce Success: Employer Views on What Matters Most" presents findings from a wide-ranging survey of executives and hiring managers that was conducted in partnership with Hanover Research. The survey explored employers' views of what constitutes workforce preparedness, the educational outcomes and…

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) periodically surveys its members to better understand how colleges and universities are defining and articulating learning outcomes, providing access to engaging learning experiences (i.e., "high-impact practices"), and assessing student success. Though equity has been a…

As students face rising tuition costs, increasing debt burdens, and uncertain employment prospects, a central question arises: Is college worth it? Although empirical research consistently finds that a college education is a profitable investment, media stories continue to cast doubt on the value of the degree. Findings from two recent studies…

In the eighteen months between the COVID-19 pandemic's initial impact on higher education and the start of the 2021-22 academic year, many events shaping and crystalizing ideological perspectives transpired across the nation and around the world. For the millions of college students returning to campus, as well as for faculty and staff, the…

Drawing from campus-based research projects sponsored by the AAC&U and the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, "From Equity Talk to Equity Walk" provides practical guidance on the design and application of campus change strategies for achieving equitable outcomes. The authors offer advice on how to…

Conversations about liberal education typically focus broadly on mission, goals, curricula, cocurricular educational opportunities, or overall student outcomes. Conversations about teaching and learning, by contrast, are more granular, focusing on what happens in the classroom, the teaching practices that faculty individually or collectively elect…

"What Liberal Education Looks Like" presents a guiding vision of educational excellence that is grounded in equity and inclusion. In distilling the principles, practices, and contemporary challenges of liberal education, this signature AAC&U publication clearly describes the learning all students need for success in an uncertain…

"We Hold These Truths: Dismantling Racial Hierarchies, Building Equitable Communities" describes the work of Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) Campus Centers at colleges and universities across the country to dismantle the tools that perpetuate oppression and entrenched racial hierarchies. By creating positive narratives…

The newest publication in a series of reports on the AAC&U Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education (VALUE) Initiative--?We Have a Rubric for That: The VALUE Approach to Assessment--compiles ten years of evidence to provide an argument-based framework for the assessment of student learning in higher education using the VALUE…