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.…

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)

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 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…

Recent changes are examined in the organization and functions of offices of planning and institutional research and in the relationship between those offices and the offices in charge of administrative information systems or data processing. Recent changes of this type at the University of Pennsylvania are discussed. Its metamorphosis is compared…

The NCHEMS Information About Students (IAS) project has as one of its primary goals the development of procedures and materials to assist institutions of postsecondary education in conducting attrition studies. It was the intent of the IAS project to develop and pilot test a questionnaire and accompanying procedures that would help institutions…

Advanced communication and computing technologies create new resources and new opportunities in expanded role relationships for institutional research. Approaches to impact analysis and the rates of future change are discussed. (Author/MLW)