Discusses issues concerned with diversity and selecting peer institutions against which institutions of higher education attempt to "benchmark" themselves. Suggests diversity and peer selection can be closely linked conceptually within single scales of similarity and dis- similarity. A case study illustrates connections between diversity and peer…

Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of…

Diversity is a policy objective pursued by most higher education systems; at the same time these systems are also concerned about equity of access and the quality of educational opportunity. For a variety of reasons, individual institutions attempt to benchmark themselves against other institutions. Both activities involve measurement,…