In order to demonstrate the value of higher education and evaluate the effectiveness of various policies and practices, researchers are increasingly expected to merge data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) with a range of other federal and private-sector data sources. In this article, I detail a number of the most…

The federal government has collected data from colleges and universities for more than a century. However, how and what data are collected has evolved over time, as has the purposes for collecting those data. The most systematic collection of data happens through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which is required to be…

This chapter describes the development of a state-level student tracking system that enables the state and institutions to follow various cohort types of students across institutional boundaries. The system was developed by the Policy Research and Data Warehousing section of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). SCHEV is the…

Data mining of IPEDS data is used to develop models that calculate predicted graduation rates for two- and four-year institutions. (Contains 7 tables and 5 figures.)

Provides guidelines for building a consistent and reliable database of expenditures within an institution of higher education. Stresses the importance of involving key constituencies, including both data providers and data users, in decisions about building the data elements for such a database and the resulting campus cost studies. (DB)

Provides information regarding the National Educational Longitudinal Study database that was used for many of the studies in this volume. Provides relevant background and instructions so that others may use this resource from the National Center for Education Statistics. (Author/EV)

The increasing data about institutions of higher education and the availability of this data are described and evaluated. The data bases need further development and coordination of standards, exchange guidelines, and accessing procedures to be most beneficial. (Author/LBH)

Stresses the importance of common understandings of cost definitions and data collection in order to create reliable databases with optimal utility for inter-institutional analysis. Examines definitions of common expenditure categories, discusses cost-accumulation rules governing financial reporting, and explains differences between direct costs…

The expanding networks of computer hardware, software, and organizations for controlling them and the institutional data bases they access are described. Improvements are making the data sources accessible but raise some new problems for data managers and institutional researchers. (Author/LBH)

Launching an alumni survey requires consultation with many campus constituencies, thoughtful decisions about intent and content, careful planning of all operational procedures and proper promotion. Census surveys, telephone versus mail surveys, decisions on data entry, timelines, costs, publicizing, etc. are discussed. (MLW)

Campuses should act on salary equity issues before litigation arises. Campuses must resolve database problems, unfocused studies, problems in data interpretations, and constraints on implementing findings if they are to take timely actions. Internally motivated monitoring and court-ordered monitoring are discussed. (Author/MLW)

Proprietary software available to the institutional researcher is discussed. It is suggested that as more institutions use proprietary software, the institutional researcher may find that varying levels of involvement in the process of evaluating and acquiring such software can result in the availability of more useful facilities. (Author/SF)

Efforts to assess quality of academic life at Vanderbilt University (Tennessee) resulted in a plan to merge qualitative and quantitative measures and uncovered political, logistical, and fiscal issues in collection and use of the two kinds of data. Although qualitative databases are costly, they are also very useful in different ways. (Author/MSE)