This report is a summary of projects and activities completed by the British Columbia Council on Admissions and Transfer (BCCAT) during the period April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009. Its purpose is to inform the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) of the steps taken in British Columbia to improve student mobility and credit transfer in…

In late 2006, SDN Children's Services, an Australian not-for-profit provider of services for children, families and communities, engaged a research team that was "embedded" within the organisation for 1 year. This action represented a significant investment of resources, such as staff time and organisational funds, and demonstrates SDN's…

Institutional research (IR) is a multifaceted function, occurring at many levels and in many types of settings, addressing numerous audiences, and embracing an almost infinite array of topics. The IR community is well served by understanding the role that consultants play in the panoply of postsecondary education. With the growing complexity and…

The world of policymaking on the campuses of colleges and universities is messy, ambiguous, and contested. In this complex environment, which Kingdon (2003) has aptly called a "policy soup," the role of institutional research is often not only to provide answers to existing policy questions but to produce information to help transform…

Producing analyses that are accurate, timely, and simple is a constant challenge for institutional researchers. The stakes are high: when the analysis is incomplete, arrives too late, does not adequately address the question, or is simply too much to comprehend, decision makers fall back on anecdotal thinking or gut-level reactions that can lead…

Whereas community colleges and for-profit institutions both provide postsecondary educational opportunities, they are different in a host of dimensions. This brief describes some of those differences--not to win a debate or suggest public policy, but to show why comparisons made between the community colleges and for-profit institutions are more…

Rates of tuition increases in both private and public higher education that continually exceed inflation, coupled with the fact that the United States no longer leads the world in terms of the fraction of young adults who have college degrees, have focused attention on why costs keep increasing in higher education and what categories of higher…

The aim of this article is to contribute to understanding of the issue raised when executives do action research in their own organizations for doctorates. There are a number of significant challenges for those executives considering action research in their own organization, which are explored under the headings of, preunderstanding, role duality…

In January 2005, AAPAR was born from the American Association for Active Lifestyles and Fitness (AAALF) and the American Association for Leisure and Recreation (AALR), thus providing a home for special-interest subjects that do not fit neatly into the other units of the Alliance. This article includes a brief history of AAPAR with a focus on its…

This ethnographic study of "goal displacement" in an adult day care center explains how and why certain goals come to surpass others in the organizational practices of elder day care settings. Adult day care is often oriented towards providing family caregivers with respite rather than attempting to directly improve the lives of the elders…

Enrollment management is a major component within the organizational structure of most four-year universities today. However, this is not necessarily the case with community colleges. With the continual decrease in public funding and increased competition with private colleges and universities, public community colleges are now being forced to…

The principal's desk is a crowded place at the end of the year. Memos from the superintendent, school board meeting minutes, parent messages, and reports on many aspects of the school and its functions make the desk appear to be the school's dumping ground. Among these reports is the librarian's annual report--a summation of the year's goals,…

"Kairaranga" operates as a partnership between the Ministry of Education, Special Education, Resource Teachers: Learning and Behavior (RTLB) and the tertiary sector. The journal was published by and for RTLB from 2000 to 2003, but the partnership model has been in operation since Volume 5, Issue 2, 2004. After three years of…

Shadowing entails a researcher closely following a subject over a period of time to investigate what people actually do in the course of their everyday lives, not what their roles dictate of them. Behaviors, opinions, actions, and explanations for those actions are reflected in the resulting thick, descriptive data. There is little written that…

University league tables in their present form have been around for two decades. One of their objectives has been to help would-be university students (and their parents) make an informed choice of university and course. In the United Kingdom, historically, they have taken the form of a numerical hierarchy topped (predictably) by Oxford and…