Institutional report cards are increasingly being used by higher educational institutions to present academic outcomes to external audiences of prospective students and parents, as well as program and institutional evaluators. While some prospective students are served by national transparency measures most users mine information from the…

The author argues that while outcomes assessment may be an imperfect process, if completed in a systematic and deliberative manner, it can help determine the overall direction, culture, and success of an academic department. Most important, assessment can spark meaningful pedagogical and curricular discussions that can lead to substantive academic…

In Texas, educators working to coordinate the efforts of fifty community colleges, thirty-eight universities, and six university systems are bringing the resources of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative to bear in order to ensure that the state's nearly 1.5…

The retreat of state funding for higher education and other factors has increased competition and program duplication among campuses. Subsidies of in-state student tuition has shrunk; the perception of public good investments has transformed into students paying their educational costs, for what is considered private good, by borrowing against…

Greater accountability in public higher education systems is a fact of life in the current political climate. Increasingly, one form this accountability takes is performance funding, which arises from elected officials' need for assurance that taxpayer funds are not only being invested and used properly but are resulting in desired outcomes at…

This chapter describes the system office for community college institutional research for the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities. What makes this System Offices for Community College Institutional Research (SOCCIR) somewhat different from the others reviewed in this volume is that the Minnesota system IR office has responsibilities for both…

This study conducts an intersectional analysis of two adjoined qualitative studies, reanalyzing the data using a college opportunity framework (González, Stoner, & Jovel, 2003) to examine how sources of social capital available within three high-"minority," high-poverty high schools in Texas shape college opportunities for Latina/o…

Since 2004, Rhodes State College has been at the forefront of developing an institution-wide model of institutional effectiveness--Strategic and Institutional Effectiveness Planning System (SIEPS). A focus on both measuring mission effectiveness and strategic achievement led to development of a unique electronic application that tracks the direct…

This chapter discusses Washington State's Student Achievement Initiative, a new performance funding system for community and technical colleges. Its purposes are to improve public accountability by more accurately describing what students achieve from enrolling in state colleges each year and provide incentives through financial rewards to…

A decade ago, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology had a few simple goals. It wanted to sharpen its educational mission, broaden students' skills, improve graduates' job-placement rates, and give the institution better ammunition for proving its worth to accreditors. It turned to the "electronic portfolio," becoming one of a small but growing…

This article presents an interview with two people who had responsibility for leading the development of the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA)--a joint project of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), supported by the Lumina…

In September 2006, the Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education issued an indictment of American higher education. Costs are too high, said the panel formed by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, graduates rates too low, and learning outcomes a mystery. Moreover, "compounding all of these difficulties is a lack of clear,…

The Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) provides a framework for public universities to provide evidence of success and increase public confidence. The goals of the VSA are threefold: (1) Demonstrate greater accountability and stewardship to the public; (2) Enhance effective educational practices by measuring educational outcomes; and (3)…

Two brief papers examine the "vanguard college" proposal, postsecondary education concept that parallels the charter school movement for K-12 education. Vanguard colleges would agree to exceed state (Massachusetts) performance standards in exchange for greater operational freedom, fiscal autonomy, and faculty benefits. Guidelines focus…

This study examines how a state system of higher education, located in the Rocky Mountains area of the United States, allowed faculty members from the state's public institutions of higher education to control the design and implementation of a pilot assessment of statewide general education courses. One of the primary reasons faculty were allowed…