Institutions that have organized and centralized their data enjoy an obvious advantage in grappling with strategic planning and other issues. As the drumbeat for accountability, planning, and demonstrating effectiveness to internal and external stakeholders intensifies, the stature and importance of institutional research offices on most campuses…

Distance education in its many forms had been around for decades, but the Western Governors University (WGU) was arguably the first "virtual university" (VU) in the United States, or at least the first VU that gained widespread attention from the press and public. After the governors in the Western Governors Association announced they would create…

The rationale and procedures are described for moving academic planning from "disjointed incrementalism" to a continuing, systematic, cyclical process involving six phases. They include: institutional assessment, goal clarification, data analysis and modeling, designing and testing change efforts, implementing the strategy, and program monitoring…