Recent changes in European higher education have accompanied a strong desire and need by national ministries to have comparable data across institutions and a growing recognition from campus leaders that effective planning and decision-making requires reliable institutional data and analyses. This has induced changes and restructuring of duties…

Although institutional researchers devote a great deal of time mining and using student data to fulfill mandatory federal and state reports and analyze institutional effectiveness, financial and personnel information is also necessary for such endeavors. In this article, the authors discuss the challenges that arise from extracting data from…

Administrative computing in higher education and its implications for the management of colleges and universities are explored. The evolution of administrative computing is traced from the use of minicomputers to the implementation of a management information system. (Author/SF)

Institutional research and the role of information systems are examined and three types of information provided by institutional research offices are discussed: institutional studies, management analyses, and periodic management reports. The varying characteristics of research offices are described and the role of the institutional research office…

Internal institutional auditing can improve effectiveness and efficiency and protect an institution's assets. Many of the concepts and techniques used to analyze higher education institutions are qualitative in nature and suited to institutional research, including fiscal, operational, data-processing, investigative, management consulting,…

The report outlines how the University of Alaska (Fairbanks) could move toward institutionalizing a chief information officer and merge campus academic and administrative information systems. The chief information officer would have such responsibilities as strategic planning participation, information systems planning, development of…

Concerns about published comparisons of colleges and universities are organized into a framework to guide further research. A systematic method for addressing specific issues about the guides is presented, and the environment in which the guides are used is examined. Research needed to assure that the guides make a valued contribution and are fair…

The Total Quality Management approach is used as a framework for a discussion of methodological issues related to diversity in higher education, including classification of race and ethnic information, data aggregation, and use of several key indicators (access to college, persistence, and student progress). (MSE)

College and university institutional researchers can use unemployment insurance wage and related files to describe and compare students' workplace status before, during, and after enrollment. However, some issues must be addressed, including data delays, uncovered employment and other work status, confidentiality of records, information…