This article focuses on the complexity of researching institutional culture and the ethical dilemmas posed in representing staff according to race and gender, drawing on three qualitative studies undertaken at a previously white South African university between 2000 and 2007. During the research process, issues of representation became a concern…

On November 7, 2010, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) hosted a national executive forum during its annual strategic enrollment management conference. Titled "The College Rankings Debate and Future Implications: Assessing the Value of an Institution's Undergraduate Experience," the…

Research leadership in Australian universities takes place against a backdrop of policy reforms concerned with measurement and comparison of institutional research performance. In particular, the Excellence in Research in Australian initiative undertaken by the Australian Research Council sets out to evaluate research quality in Australian…

In this paper we review recent increases in tuition at public institutions and estimate impacts on enrollment. We use data on all U.S. public 4-year colleges and universities from 1991 to 2006 and illustrate that tuition increased dramatically beginning in the early part of this decade. We examine impacts of such increases on total enrollment and…

Many teacher education institutions share a concern about assessing their preservice teachers' knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to teaching diverse P-12 students. This case study describes the iterative and sometimes difficult process involved in the development of a diversity awareness survey at one institution. The survey discussed…

In recent times, higher education institutions have paid increasing attention to the views of students to obtain feedback on their experience of learning and teaching through internal surveys. This article reviews research in the field and reports on practices in other Australian universities. Findings demonstrate that while student feedback is…

Spin-off firms may be seen as a key mechanism for the external transmission of knowledge developed at universities. The proliferation of academic spin-offs in recent years has led universities to develop specific rules for the regulation and management of the spin-off process. This paper draws on the Italian experience. More than fifty Italian…

Over the years parents, professionals, and politicians have come together to advocate on behalf of children's rights. Advocacy can occur individually, collectively, or a combination of both. Although some advocacy efforts are more successful than others, it is the process of the advocacy and voices behind it that matter most. In this guest…

When the history of American higher education is rewritten years from now, one of the storylines of the first decade of the twenty-first century likely will be the emergence of student engagement as an organizing construct for institutional assessment, accountability, and improvement efforts. The engagement premise is straightforward and easily…

This quantitative study utilized secondary self-reported data from the 2008 administration of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey from two Texas public universities to investigate the pre-college demographic, academic, attitude, behavioral, and familial factors that may relate to students' self-reported political…

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the extent to which students' retrospective self-reported gains from high school are associated with college self-reported gains. As such, the chapter offers an empirical test of how accounting for one's predisposition to report educational impact changes estimates of the effects of college experiences…

Over the past 10 years increasing numbers of charter schools have been considered a viable option for many students seeking to obtain a quality education. Public charter schools and their administrators and teachers are obligated to follow the principles enshrined in federal mandates, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement…

The increasing demand of constituents to conduct analyses in order to help inform the decision-making process has led to the need for Institutional Research (IR) guidelines for community college educators. One method of maintaining the quality of research conducted by IR staff is to include professional development about ethics. This article…

Research capacity building has become a prominent theme in higher education institutions in China, as across the world. However, Chinese TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) academics' research capacity has been quite limited. In order to build their research capacity, it is necessary to understand their perceptions about research. This…

Organizations are thought to adopt or evolve to an organizational strategy that will improve organizational effectiveness. Familiar strategies in the business world include a production strategy, low cost strategy, and market orientation strategy. In the world of higher education however organizational strategies may take a different form such as…