Globalization, demographic shifts, increase in student enrollments, rapid technological transformation, and market-driven environments are altering the way higher education operates today. Institutional Research and Planning in Higher Education explores the impact of these changes on decision support and the nature of institutional research in higher education. Bringing together a diverse set of global contributors, this volume covers contemporary thinking on the practices of academic planning and its impact on key issues such as access, institutional accountability, quality assurance, educational policy priorities, and the development of higher education data systems.

American higher education faces a challenging environment. Decreasing state appropriations, rising costs, and tightening budgets have left American colleges and universities scrambling to achieve their missions with ever more limited resources. Campus leaders have therefore increasingly relied upon institutional research and strategic planning departments to make transparent and rational decisions and to promote good stewardship of critical but finite resources. Institutional Research Initiatives in Higher Education illustrates the wealth of institutional research activities occurring in American higher education. Featuring chapters by a prominent mix of authors representing community colleges, traditional undergraduate institutions, land grant institutions, research and flagship universities, and state agencies, this book provides numerous insights into the contemporary challenges, innovative programs, and best practices in institutional research. With contributors from a variety of regions and types of institutions, each chapter provides rigorous analysis of campus-based research activities in areas such as strategic planning, admissions and enrollment management, assessment and compliance, and financial planning and budgeting. Like the departments it studies, Institutional Research Initiatives in Higher Education is an invaluable resource for university administrators, researchers, and policymakers alike.

Institutional research is more relevant today than ever before as growing pressures for improved student learning and increased institutional accountability motivate higher education to effectively use ever-expanding data and information resources. As the most current and comprehensive volume on the topic, the Handbook describes the fundamental knowledge, techniques, and strategies that define institutional research. The book contains an overview of the profession and its history, examines how institutional research supports executive and academic leadership and governance, and discusses the varied ways data from federal, state, and campus sources are used by research professionals. With contributions from leading experts in the field, this important resource reviews the analytic tools, techniques, and methodologies used by institutional researchers in their professional practice and covers a wide range of topics such as: conducting institutional research; statistical applications; comparative analyses; quality control systems; measuring student, faculty, and staff opinions; and management activities designed to improve organizational effectiveness.

This book examines the relevant roles, skills and knowledge needed to build the institutional research capacity across the higher education sector globally. The information contained herein will inform IR practitioners, senior level institution officials, and higher education scholars. With a focus on building the capacity of the IR profession, this book’s primary audiences include senior leaders who wish to introduce or strengthen their understanding for effective decision support and staff members who are currently in decision support units and those who wish to serve in this capacity. However, this book also offers detail on the decision support function to higher education scholars who seek to better address how data can inform policy and planning in higher education. Through a broad discussion about the roles and skills of the practitioners, this book will also enumerate the ways in which decision support practitioners can be valued contributors in shaping the future decisions and direction of specific institutions and higher education broadly.

The book provides a thorough overview of Institutional Research (IR) ? i.e. applied higher education research undertaken within universities ? in South Africa. It is a collection of essays focusing on the character and institutional setting of IR; how IR is embedded into the mechanisms of steering, shaping and reforming higher education; and what the major results were of IR in select thematic areas. The book is a valuable resource for higher education researchers and social researchers in South Africa interested in higher education. It ÿalso deserves to be read by practitioners and policymakers in the field of higher education in South Africa. It serves as an interesting case study for higher education researchers all over the world.

Take a broad, balanced look at the present and potential MOOC landscape in higher education. This special volume highlights current trends and issues related to the emergence and development of a new instructional form in higher education: Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In these online distance education courses, enrollment is usually open to anyone who wishes to take them. This volume provides institutional researchers with information about the possibilities and challenges for current and future research on MOOCs. Topics covered include: defining and classifying MOOCs and who takes them, defining what persistence in them means or should mean, describing the legal issues MOOC providers and enrollees face, and identifying trends in the "big data" that MOOCs can provide. This is the 167th volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Timely and comprehensive, New Directions for Institutional Research provides planners and administrators in all types of academic institutions with guidelines in such areas as resource coordination, information analysis, program evaluation, and institutional management.

The relationship between research, on the one hand, and policy/practice on the other hand, is complicated and collaboration between scholars in research on higher education (RHE) and institutional research (IR) practitioners is often lacking. This book marks a collaborative effort of a diverse range of South African RHE and IR scholars and asks the overarching questions: What do we know about the utilisation of South African research on higher education (SARHE) and its subset of research known as Institutional Research? How and by whom is this research used? The book begins by looking at the historical underpinnings of SARHE and delineating the shape and size of this body of research. This is followed by a series of case studies on South African Higher Education institutions and governmental bodies, investigating how, when and by whom are research on higher education and institutional research used in the decision-making of these organisations. This book is the first of its kind in South Africa and sets out to lay the groundwork for further research into the use, uptake and utilisation of RHE and IR in this country.

Institutional research (IR) is a growing, applied, and interdisciplinary area that attracts people from a variety of fields, including computer programmers, statisticians, and administrators and faculty from every discipline to work in archiving, analyzing, and reporting on all aspects of higher education information systems. Cases on Institutional Research Systems is a reference book for institutional research, appealing to novice and expert IR professionals and the administrators and policymakers that rely on their data. By presenting a variety of institutional perspectives, the book depicts the challenges and solutions to those in higher education administration, and state, federal, and even international accreditation.