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…

In the modern world, higher education is transitioning from enrollment mode to recruitment mode. This shift paved the way for institutional research and policy making from historical data perspective. More and more universities in the U.S. are implementing and using enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which collect vast amounts of data.…

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…

The accuracy and reliability aspects of data integrity are discussed, with an emphasis on the need for consistency in responsibility and authority. A variety of ways in which data integrity can be compromised are discussed. The following sources of data corruption are described, and the ease or difficulty of identification and suggested actions…

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)

A strategic plan for the University of Miami charts specific objectives, programmatic and financial, that will lead it to prominence among the nation's teaching and research universities. Long-range plans for the information systems and academic systems of the university are discussed. (MLW)

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)

Problems of the college or university that center around the people who use the institution's computers are examined. It is suggested that effective use of computers in higher education depends on how well the users and providers understand the constraints and problems of each information system. (Author/SF)

The paper sets the stage for the effective and efficient use of computers in institutional research. The microcomputer and the mainframe computer are contrasted for those researchers who have a choice of where to process data. General computer use, specific microcomputer and mainframe computing guidelines, and an application utilizing both…

Student data banks for ongoing research and evaluation have been implemented by a number of professional schools. Institutions selecting software designs for the establishment of such systems are often faced with making their choice before all the possible uses of the system are determined. Making software design decisions involves "rational"…

Recent trends indicate the increasing concern regarding the broad issue of accountability at institutions of higher education. Because of this, colleges and universities are being forced more and more to base their decisions on hard fact instead of intuition. The institutional research function is instrumental in assisting in this kind of data…

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)

Presentations are on the five topics of functional models of institutional research: (1) and the political scene; (2) at public and private colleges and universities; (3) for improving communications between institutional researchers and data processors; (4) for deriving qualitative decisions from quantitative data; and (5) for special interest…

The purpose of this project was to study the feasibility of coordinating educational information systems and associated data processing efforts. A non-profit organization, representing key educational agencies in the state of Minnesota, was established to advise and guide the project. A statewide conference was held under the auspices of the…

The survey holds an increasingly important place in institutional advancement. As college and university decision makers turn more and more to their constituencies for support and assistance, a competent information-gathering and processing network becomes crucial. Heuristic v algorithmic designs, Attitude Information System, and the microcomputer…