Institutional leaders are under pressure to improve instructional quality and student outcomes while maintaining or reducing marginal costs. As part of its collaboration with Strada Education Network, ACE worked with Ithaka S + R to develop a tool and a corresponding paper that allows academic leaders to estimate the return on investment (ROI) for different instructional improvement efforts.
The ROI tool builds on the framework developed in a 2017 ACE white paper by Jessie Brown and Martin Kurzweil, which describes how instructional improvement initiatives can generate institutional revenue through improvements in student outcomes.
The paper and the accompanying step-by-step guide below, describe how to use the tool and provide some background information on its development.
The beta version of the ROI tool, and an example of the tool in use, are available below the two publications. Please note: The tool is a downloadable Microsoft Excel file and must be operated on Microsoft Windows.