A Summary of Recent Briefs (on Higher Education Effectiveness)

“Search for a Paradigm” draws to a conclusion a series of essays on the state of higher education and scholarship on institutional research that shape the mission and values of Historia|Research. As a more concise statement of the argument, and to suggest a reading order as an alternative to the dates of publication, we provide the following summary:

In the National Research Council’s report, Scientific Research in Education (2002), the authors define six design principles for a federal agency to advance education research that, we suggest, provide a framework with which to re-structure institutional research offices as sites of scientific inquiry in higher education. The second of these design principles, translated for application to institutional research offices, calls for “structures to guide the research agenda, inform funding decisions, and monitor work” to foster the advancement of social scientific investigations and revitalizes institutional research to fulfill the promise of its origins.

Standing as an impediment to that purpose, however, scholars in the new field of higher education re-defined administrative institutional research and its practice in terms that dismiss the possibility of contributions to scholarship – or, the “class of facts” that represent the “nature of things”^[1] in higher education as a field of study. Moreover, the consensus literature, that we represent as the Michigan State School of Institutional Research, categorically denies the structure of science and contributions to knowledge of “pervasive and lasting significance” by institutional research.

As a result, the United States, alone, is likely squandering, on average, $1,000,000 per year per institution on institutional research conducted by virtual offices, ad-hoc committees, and functional unit leaders untrained in basic or applied research – a system that clearly is not meeting “the needs of the future” and therefore demands “fundamental change.”^[2] Therein, the dominant paradigm for scholarship in higher education runs counter to the principles of scientific research in education as advanced by the National Research Council, while higher education institutions, the informed decisions of presidents, and college students as a whole suffer the indignation and consequences of the misguided public discourse on the productivity and effectiveness of higher education administrations.

Over twenty years later, professional resignation to the paradigmatic doctrine of institutional particularity, the ideological linchpin of the Michigan State School of Institutional Research and organizing principle of scholarship in higher education, retards the progress of scientific investigation and the accumulation of knowledge in higher education. The deficiency of scholarship in higher education is nowhere more apparent than in the reliance on twentieth century research methodologies in decline – surveys, case studies, interviews, and sundry non-reproducible, non-replicable studies.^[3]

The philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, notes, “Again and again complex special apparatus has been designed for” the refinement of measurements and the scope of “facts” for a science.^[4] Yet, it is difficult to point to any integration of methodology and technology that amounts to a “complex special apparatus” for institutional research. As in many other respects, however, the institutional researchers of the 1960s, those who first established the higher education as a field of study, proposed the parameters for systems and technology to measure and report the activities and resources of colleges and universities. Their vision may not have come to fruition in the ensuing years, but their framework for a paradigm for institutional research as a social science remains.

Historia|Research regards the vision of the original institutional researchers within reach — more so today than at any other time. To learn more about our solution for higher education institutions, contact us for a webinar on how we apply the ideas outlined above in our approach to building the infrastructure for institutional research, planning, and effectiveness.