College student retention constitutes a long-standing and critical problem for many colleges and universities. Although the average national rate of first-to-second year persistence stands at 68.5%, rates for types of colleges and universities vary from a low of 56.4% for 2-year public colleges to a high of 81.5% for private PhD-granting…

This concluding chapter reflects on the established and evolving body of transfer research and offers future directions for institutional research and higher education scholarship around transfer.

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.

In this chapter, the author presents suggestions for improving the effectiveness of external reporting while minimizing burden. Recommendations include repurposing existing internal reports to address the needs of external reports.

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…

The Study Centre for Catholic Education was established in 1996 by the Italian Bishops' Conference to support the Italian Catholic schools. In these 20 years, it has published every year a Report about different aspects of the sector and has made a periodic quality monitoring of the Catholic schools. It has published also an annual data collection…

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.

This chapter synthesizes the national discussion on other solutions to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), such as a national student record system, and complications. The authors will briefly examine the pros and cons of IPEDS while primarily focusing on national alternatives, as well providing specific examples for…

This chapter details the benefits and costs of participating in optional external reporting and considers how best to determine which reports represent the best use of time and resources.

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.

Analyzing the number of publications and proportion of corresponding authors of Latin American scholars and scholars from the German Max Planck Society (MPS) and the Leibniz Association (LA; 1954-2018), this article asks if North-South partnerships continue to represent power imbalances. Our bibliometric analysis indicates that (a) in comparison…

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.