The origins of institutional effectiveness are traced, its evolution within community colleges is described, the use of the term "institutional effectiveness" is analyzed, and a practical, operational definition of the term is presented. The author hopes that this definition and the discussion in this article prove useful to community college…

The lack of consensus among researchers in defining the focal construct of rurality has led to contradictory conclusions of whether or not a rural-urban performance gap exists in higher education. Compounding this problem are the changing definitions of rural and urban, even among governmental agencies. Thus, this study used two different…

Directed primarily at the University of Mid-America (UMA) as a specific program to be evaluated, this report sets forth criteria that can also be applied to other nontraditional educational programs and other programs in general. In a section on terminology, definitions are offered for criteria, standards, indicators, measures, success, and open…