A place-to-place migration study of first-time freshmen in American four-year colleges and universities presents student migration patterns for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia in Fall 1986. Migration patterns of all first-time students are reviewed, but the focus of the analysis is first-time freshmen, the most critical…

This study investigated the organization, compliance, and concerns of public higher education regarding the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. A survey was developed and mailed to 480 colleges and universities selected randomly within each Carnegie Classification. Analysis of responses from 270 institutions…

This paper discusses the role that the Office of Institutional Research and Strategic Planning played in providing data support, planning, and cohesiveness as Utah Valley Community College worked to become Utah Valley State College. The two tier model adopted at Utah Valley State College aspires to describe a cost-effective four-year college with…

Six research avenues were used to study transfer students for recruitment and enrollment management purposes: (1) current application, enrollment and program data of transfer students were examined; (2) internal persistence rates of transfer student cohorts were tracked for 6 years; (3) persistence rates of transfer students after 1 year were…

A process for selecting peer institutions for budget and program review of public postsecondary institutions is discussed. Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a national database, were used to select peer institutions. The first task was to identify the kinds of institution representatives to include as…

This paper classifies the university economic impacts on a local community into their short- and long-term effects. The study then offers a classification scheme of university communities by the size of their regions and by their influences. Next, the paper suggests ways that economic impacts vary across university types and describes and…

A prevailing common notion regarding fund-raising success in higher education is that institutions with "more" of certain important characteristics achieve higher totals in voluntary support than institutions with "less." The corollary, which also prevails, is that if there are not high levels of these characteristics, the…

Two surveys of urban public universities, conducted in 1978 and 1987, provide a rich database for analyzing and explaining change in these institutions over a 10-year period. Continuing an analysis of trends and conditions begun in 1987, data from a sample of urban universities are compared to those for higher education in general. Local…

The paper reviews findings, many of them unexpected, of college institutional research offices and other educational researchers listed under the following headings: the working student, the academic load, economic background, cooperation, cultural literacy, retention, and outcomes assessment. Noted findings include: the student who holds a…

This paper reports on findings of a multi-faceted preliminary study designed to identify the technical information needs of academic department chairpersons at a public urban university. Study methodology involved: (1) two 2-hour focus group sessions in which a total of 10 department chairpersons participated; (2) short written reports from the…

This paper illustrates how planning, with the aid (or complicity) of institutional research, can be a revolutionary activity that facilitates change within an organization and brings the organization to a more accurate understanding of itself. It describes the use of strategic planning at Minot State University (North Dakota) to change a culture…

This paper analyzes the current proposals by the government of Alberta, Canada, to implement an accountability framework for the province's postsecondary institutions using performance indicators. The paper develops a conceptual framework for performance indicators based on a discrepancy model of evaluation using three metaphors: mechanical,…

Factors that influenced applicants' decisions to attend Tufts University, a private institution in Massachusetts, were studied based on a 1985 survey. Enrollment decisions were examined for the following groups: matriculants and nonmatriculants, liberal arts and engineering applicants, applicants from each of seven geographic regions, applicants…

An ongoing study was initiated to provide a reliable means of defining and measuring factors affecting students' performance as they move from high school to college, including the reasons why some are more able than others to excel and/or persist. The study provides public high schools, colleges, universities and the Missouri Coordinating Board…

The most widely accepted classification system of institutions of higher education, the Carnegie system, does not provide any sub-groupings for the category of two-year institutions. This lack of precision has inhibited the understanding of the diversity among and between community colleges, their missions, functions, curricula, students, and…