When John B. Simpson, president of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, compares the campus over which he presides to its public-university peers, the contrast can be unflattering. Buildings and laboratories need upgrading. Richer, more prestigious institutions have a leg up in attracting renowned scholars and big-ticket federal…

To properly evaluate the financial contributions of each revenue source, institutional researchers must use key economic concepts in their work. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Argues that community colleges must be able to incorporate information about themselves and their clientele into delivery systems, operational strategies, and strategic planning. Underscores the importance of program evaluation in institutional planning and of needs assessments as a vital communications process between service area and college.…

Faculty performance and vitality are perennial issues that should be clearly linked to revitalized or reaffirmed institutional missions and to shared commitments to institutional excellence. It is suggested that there must also be institutional concern for faculty and the quantity and quality of students. (MLW)

Considers leadership development and research as two ways of improving institutional decision making. Proposes an agenda for future development to strengthen the financial management of the nation's community, technical, and junior colleges. (AYC)

Ten pitfalls for financial analysts are described: information lags, misinterpreting trend data, data shortcomings, sample institutions' problems, misuse of panel ratings, using same indicators for private and public institutions, underdevelopment of conceptual framework, arbitrary financial health scales, shaky use of discriminant analysis, and…

Eight strategies are recommended to higher education in the 1990s including committing to improving quality; stressing customer service; increasing use of data and analysis in management; developing data on outcomes issues, processes, and behaviors; and working cooperatively with elementary and secondary education. (MLW)

Several national data sources available to the public can be used to examine institutional impacts of student financial aid and to compare institutional data with national averages. (Author/MSE)

Higher education's search for growth in revenues and missions, largely successful to date, may be reaching its limits. If this is true, future attention in college administration will focus more on reducing expenditures, with implications for institutional research opportunities, use of resources, and the institutional research office's…

Proceedings of the 1983 conference of the North East Association for Institutional Research are presented. The contribution of institutional research to university decision making and the topics of student outcomes assessment, retention/attrition studies, marketing/market research, departmental studies, computer and technological applications, and…

Small increases in research and development funding and the state of the economy pose serious challenges to research universities. It is unlikely that the financial pressures will moderate. Research universities will be challenged to downsize by restructuring resources without compromising their quality. (Author/MSE)

The various and developing forms of governmental intervention and control affecting universities are discussed. State intervention and control, program audits and evaluations, and federal intervention are described. The cost of interventions into institutional autonomy and the negative effect on quality are seen as increasing. (MLW)

Changes in higher education that affect teaching and research are addressed in the proceedings of the 1982 forum of the European Association for Institutional Research. In addition to six invited papers on adaptation or guidance of universities, papers on faculty, resources and cost indicators, research facilities and equipment, and institutional…

A procedure for developing a costing model is described. Limitations of a cost analysis are also reviewed, with attention to the problems of handling joint products, obtaining accurate faculty effort data, measuring educational outputs, and calculating marginal costs. A researcher charged with developing a costing model is faced with the task of…

Key ingredients of long-range planning described in the literature during the last 10 years, the role of an office of institutional research, and a coordinated long-range planning process as it might occur in a public four-year college or university are described. A successful long-range planning process is characterized by centralized…