With near unanimity, American scholars of higher education as a field of study redefined the profession of institutional research as applied research to support decision-making at one particular institution and as a rule did not contribute to generalizable knowledge about higher education or higher education administration. For presidents and provostsContinue Reading
Whereas institutional researchers from the early twentieth century advanced the profession as the study of higher education “just as scientific investigation in the natural or social sciences,” the field suffered from arrested development under the direction of the Association for Institutional Research after 1965. The publications closely associated with theContinue Reading
The first institutional researchers took many of the necessary steps to establish standards for a community to study higher education “just as scientific investigation in the natural or social sciences.” Today, however, significant associations like the National Association of System Heads (NASH) and the American Council on Education (ACE) doContinue Reading
Almost fifty years of continuous institutional research at colleges and universities, as well as statewide, built a comprehensive portfolio of research and scholarship. Heading into the 1960s, institutional researchers and their like-minded colleagues among accreditors and other professional associations greatly extended the scope of activities for the study of higherContinue Reading
Following advances for institutional research at the University of Illinois and University of Minnesota during the early twentieth century, interest in offices of institutional research picked up considerably in the 1950s. In particular, state boards demonstrated the power and relevance of institutional research for statewide planning by defining the extrinsicContinue Reading
