A new report from the SERU survey of research universities, entitled “The Multi-Engagement Model Understanding Diverse Pathways to Student Success at Research Universities,” shows that students at our nation’s largest public research universities are not “academically adrift.” The study was authored by John Douglass, Igor Chirikov and Gregg Thomson of the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. My new article at Forbes.com discusses the topic in more detail.

The report shows students are highly engaged across categories that develop their capacities across many dimensions of experience. The survey measures student focus and commitment to academic, research, civic, extracurricular, and career areas. “Students spend their effort not just in the classroom and truly benefit from a lot of different opportunities that research universities provide – research extracurriculars, civic engagement, career development,” says co-author Igor Chirikov, who notes that “students are active in different areas, and they don’t overlap.” These universities are also providing benefits after graduation, as shown in the report from Georgetown’s Center for Education in the Workforce. SERU member universities, all AAU or R1 institutions, provided an average ROI for graduates of bachelor’s programs in 2021-22 of over $236,000 after 10 years and $956,000 after 20 years.

You can see all the details on this topic in my article at Forbes.com entitled “SERU Survey Shows Students are Engaged and Not Adrift.”