Financial support for institutional research is relatively stagnant, and thus institutions are likely to seek tuition revenue to offset the costs of research and teaching. It is likely that this has led to increases in tuition driven activities, and thus has limited research activities of academic physical therapy (PT) programs in particular.…

This concluding chapter discusses the main challenges currently facing institutional research at small- and medium-sized colleges and describes how the field may evolve.

Community colleges and minority serving institutions play important roles in the U.S. higher education system. These open and predominantly broad access institutions serve more first-generation, low-income, post-traditional, and racially and ethnically diverse student populations than any other sector. Institutional leaders will increasingly need…

Institutional research (IR) experts can offer a wealth of knowledge to many campus departments, such as assessment. Utilization of dashboard techniques is a good way to improve the quality of university information that is available to support assessment research and do so in an efficient way. Institutional research at Wayne State University…

This chapter utilizes the duties and functions of institutional research to outline the skills needed by institutional research professionals in an evolving digital institution. The concept of future-proofing, explained and considered in this context, encourages professionals to develop skills for the present with the future needs of data-informed…

This chapter describes a new conceptual framework that informs research on factors influencing transfer in STEM fields of study from 2-year to 4-year institutions, presents a new survey instrument based on the framework, and offers directions for future research in this area.

A national survey of a professional field is an appropriate and logical undertaking for a professional membership association such as the Association for Institutional Research (AIR). The National Survey of Institutional Research Offices is the most comprehensive survey of offices of institutional research ever undertaken. The goal was to collect…

This chapter builds on prior chapters and focuses on higher education trends on the horizon and the resulting impact on external reporting for institutional researchers. Three practical recommendations and examples for institutional researchers are also presented.

This chapter discusses how understanding differences between National Guard members, reservists, active duty personnel, and veterans in higher education can better inform institutional evidence-based decision-making to support military-connected individuals' college access and success.

This chapter discusses principles that support using data about teaching and learning and offers several strategies particularly well suited for use by institutional researchers at small colleges in helping faculty, staff, and administrators use data on student learning for improvement.

This chapter puts forth a model of student-success-focused policy development at small colleges that elucidates the role of the institutional research (IR) professional, highlighting how the breadth of roles and responsibilities that IR professionals serve at these institutions intersect with traditional training and background.

The higher education sector today faces an environment unlike any it has seen before. Serving a wide variety of internal and external stakeholders and facing diverse and fast-changing economic, social, and political pressures, universities can benefit from corporate-like approaches such as the use of analytics to inform strategic decision-making…

Data quality has become a pressing issue for many campuses in recent years, as colleges struggle to extract timely, accurate, and consistent information from ever-proliferating institutional data sources in order to meet strategic decision-making and accountability demands. In this mixed methods study, a survey and semi-structured interviews were…

This chapter explores how critical lenses can be used to conduct transfer research and proposes a new methodological approach to understand the complex experiences and success of diverse transfer students.

Understanding one's competitive stance in a globally competitive environment provides the requisite awareness to maintain both competitive edge and institutional responsiveness. In this chapter, three case studies are presented to provide examples of ways in which strategic scanning can enhance the academic program development process and how…